Here is the first principle: Know the game that you’re in.

To recruit quality sales people, you must understand the makeup of salespeople and adjust your recruiting practices accordingly. Know how they think. Know their motivations. Know their sales processes. Know their work habits. And you must remember that thought processes, motivations, sales processes, and work habits are interconnected and each affects and reflects the others. Without the right thought processes, salespeople won’t have the right motivations or work habits. Without the right motivations, salespeople won’t have the right thought processes, sales processes, or work habits.

Salespeople can be divided into three categories:

• 3%-ers
• 27%-ers
• 70%-ers

In this industry, we all want 3%-ers. We want to find them, recruit them, and hire them. We want them working for us. The 3%-ers are those top-notch sales people who possess the highest levels of discipline, tenacity, and implementation skills. All you have to do is give them the highest compensation package and then get out of their way. I call them F.O.N.s—Freaks of Nature.

The challenge is with the F.O.N.s is they’re already working—for someone else. You, as a sales executive, have to have a recruiting program so attractive that when they find a compelling reason to leave their company, they will think of yours first, and then you can get the benefit of their discipline, tenacity, and implementation.

Immediately below the 3%-ers are the 27%-ers. This is the group that with the proper motivation, encouragement, support, and training structure, will move up to become a 3%-er. Many 3%-ers are already using their sales skills at another company, so as with the 70%-ers, you must be ready, when they start looking for work at another company, with the recruiting program that will spark their interest your company and potentially bring them and their skills to you.

A very important part of recruiting is the interview, and a very important part of the interview is the question that will help you find out how the interviewee thinks: “What do you want money for?” Both the 3%-ers—the Freaks of Nature—and the 27%-ers will give answers like these: “I’m trying to build that impenetrable financial wall around my family.” “I’m trying to increase my savings account.” “I’m trying to become free of debt.” Those and similar answers will prove that the interviewee is a true 3%-ers or 27%-er.

At the bottom level are the 70%-ers—the projects. These are the salespeople who are just existing from paycheck to paycheck. Their discipline and tenacity levels are low. When they implement, they don’t implement the right sales processes. They call in sick all the time, they have car issues getting to the office, and so on and so forth.

With an interviewee you suspect of being a 70%-er you will also ask “What do you want money for?” And you will get the answer “Oh, I want to pay bills.” Bless that person’s heart if they need money simply for bills, but if they’re coming to your company, they need to increase their sales maturity. An increase in sales maturity means an increase in the things that will pull them out of the 70%-er range: an increase in discipline and tenacity, an increase in correct implementations, an increase in the proper motivations that will lead to those increases in other areas. With sales maturity in thought processes, motivations, sales processes, and work habits, they will move up and become a 27%-er and even 3%-er—but that improvement needs to happen before they ever arrive at your company. I work with companies here in Dallas that don’t want any 70%-ers: they will continue to recruit and recruit until they get that great mixture of 27%-ers and 3%-ers.

One last thing about the seventy percenters is this: they don’t mind being a job-hopper, and even work so that will happen. All they try to do is work hard enough to where you don’t fire them, but if you do, that’s no problem—all they’ve done is to work so they will get fired on purpose so they can go to another company and start the process over. But they are not helping themselves or you—they are only perpetuating low revenue generation and not only poor work habits but poor life habits.

Learning about the different types of salespeople—the F.O.N.s, the 27%-ers, and the 3%-ers—and how to recognize them is interesting and very important. Knowing which salespeople to attract and how to attract them will help you generate more revenue and continue your success. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.

Watch More Videos in This Series

• Recruiting Mastery: Have A Plan
• Recruiting Mastery: Interview Tactics
• Recruiting Mastery: McQuaig Assessments

Have A Systematic Approach To Recruiting Salespeople!

Relying on the path of least resistance is also like taking a person who is good at customer service, or another aspect of business, and hoping that person will turn out to be a salesperson. However, this usually does not work. Having a systematic approach that will help you find salespeople—good salespeople—does work. With a systematic approach, sooner rather than later you will recruit the top people, build a sales force that does exactly what you want it to, and receive so much revenue that you won’t have to recruit.

Don’t allow 70%-ers to pierce the corporate veil!

They should never walk into the office. They should never even call into the office. To recruit the right people—the 3%-ers and the 27%-ers— you need to learn some important facts about the recruiting process. Write the numbers down from this graphic. These are the exact numbers that work well in the sales industry for hiring top-notch salespeople. You will have to go through 30 resumes to find 10 qualified people. Then you will have to do phone interviews. From the phone interviews, you will bring the top three candidates into your office for a formal interview. After you interview those three top candidates, you find the number one person for that position and now the leverage is in your favor. You’ve done the right things to bring the right person on and avoided hoping that somebody is going to make it in your sales department.

Here are a couple of things that will help you with this:

• A recruiting flyer. Don’t date stamp the flyer. Don’t time stamp it. Use it for everything! It should be done in pdf and jpg formats, high-resolution or low-resolution depending on the application. It’s a tool you can use over and over again.
• A career package. The career package is the first step to finding the 3%-ers and the 27%-ers. When you find the résumés that look good, send the prospective applicants an email with the editable PDF career package attached and have them fill it out and return it.

The career package will include information about the company (more information than in the recruiting flyer) and a bit about compensation, but the bulk of the package will be made up of questions, including “landmine questions,” that will help you prevent the 70%-ers from ever applying or being in communication with you—identifying them now will make sure they don’t pierce the corporate veil.

One of the best landmine questions is “Would you take a drug test?” That will eliminate all the people who are on drugs. Another question is “During an interview, will you be able to give us examples of your high-level closing skills?” If they don’t have closing skills, they’re not going to apply. The fill-in-the blank landmine “Write ‘yes’ or ‘no’ if you took more than five sick days off last year” will let you know if someone has the habit of taking a lot of sick days—whether they need to or not. And then you will know that you won’t be bringing that person into the recruiting process.

It’s very important. You have to have a plan, a systematic plan, that will work 24/7, and one where the infrastructure, once it’s laid out, will work for you. Remember: take control of your destiny and your company’s destiny. Stop hoping, and go out and find those right people. If you have any other questions, please leave a comment below.

Watch More Videos in This Series

• Recruiting Mastery: Know The Game You’re In
• Recruiting Mastery: Interview Tactics
• Recruiting Mastery: McQuaig Assessments

First Identify How A Person Thinks Of Themselves

Let me tell you a really quick story. The president of a Baltimore, Maryland, CPA firm and I were in his office working on sales functions. He reads an email from an employee and gets mad. He goes on to tell me about what this person is doing—all the things that you don’t want your salespeople doing and I looked at him and said “I don’t know why you’re mad at the person you hired because it’s really your fault.”

He said, “Hey, what do you mean it was my fault?”

“You hired that person. It’s your fault. You don’t have a strong recruiting program in place. You’re loose here. Otherwise you would have hired the right person and you wouldn’t be having this situation. It’s so preventive.” I replied.

He slammed his fist down on his desk and said “Give me one recruiting tactic that will help me try to choose the right person.”

“Okay. The person who sent you this email—is their car in the parking lot?”

He said yes. So we take the elevator to the parking garage, and as we walk up to the car of the person he’s complaining about, the first thing I notice is that both quarter panels have got dents in them, and I also notice that it’s white… but it’s not really white—it’s dirty. It’s a four-door car and I walk up to the passenger side window and look in and see a grungy, disgusting middle console and McDonald’s bags, which had probably been in there for months, everywhere. I look in the back seat of the car and what do I see? Two spare tires. Now, there are challenges people have in their lives, but let’s see what your level of self-esteem is, what persona you want to show to others, let’s see who you are as a result of looking at your car.

So here’s interview tactic number one:

Always excuse yourself out of the face-to-face interview, find out what kind of car the interviewee is driving, where its parked, and take a look at it—exterior and interior. My typical rule of thumb is this—if it’s missing one hubcap, they’re out.

Here’s interview tactic number two:

Again we’re talking sales here, not HR or customer service—involves putting a script in front of them, giving them a person’s name and phone number, giving them a phone, and telling them “Call that person and run that script.” It doesn’t matter whether they make that call: you watch their body language. If the person calmly looks at the script, says “Sure,” and makes the call, perfect. But if the person looks at the script and scoots back in their chair just an eighth of an inch, they have fear, and fear and high-revenue producing sales can’t co-exist.

Fearless salespeople do far better than fearful sales people.

Look at the person’s body language. If the person moves toward the phone, they have no fear. If the person moves away from the phone, they have fear. Identifying how a person thinks of themselves and finding out if a person has fear at the prospect of making a sales call will save you a lot of heartache in the future and, more importantly, when you get the person with the right car and the person who will go ahead and make that call without thinking about it, then you typically have the right person for that job.

Now, are these the only tactics you need to identify a good salesperson? No. There are still more things that must be included in the interview process, but these are two key things that will help you determine whether you have the right candidate or not. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.

Watch More Videos in This Series

• Recruiting Mastery: Know The Game You’re In
• Recruiting Mastery: Have A Plan
• Recruiting Mastery: McQuaig Assessments

Put your candidate through a sales personality assessment!

The one that I believe is the best is the McQuaig Sales Personality Assessment. Know this: I have been dabbling with personality assessments for almost thirty years. I know and understand Meyers-Briggs, I know Disc, I know BrainStyles, I know the colors, I know the animals, and all those kinds of things out there. But McQuaig, by far, uses the most extensive assessment to find out who the individual is and what the individual is, and it is a great tool to confirm the suspicion of the sales manager that this is the person who we’re actually going to hire because what they are in reality is how they are on the assessment.

As we look at the McQuaig Sales Assessment, one of the assessments that we use tells us if people really understand the dynamics of the position for which they are applying. Another one that we use will actually take a snapshot of the person’s situational style. What the situation tells us is how the person wants other people to perceive them and a snapshot that tells us how the person really is. It enables us, without a shadow of a doubt, to find out how they react to situations.

• Do they have dominance in their personality style?
• Do they have a little bit of that sociability that we’re looking for?
• Do they have that high level of drive that will give them discipline, tenacity, and implementation?
• And, most importantly, are they independent? Will we be able to put them in the sales position and let them run, or are we going to have to babysit?

All these suspicions need to be confirmed before you hire that person.

So if we can help you out with the McQuaig Sales Assessment so you can confirm your suspicions that the person you suspect is the right candidate for the job is the right candidate for the job, please let us know. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.

Watch More Videos in This Series

• Recruiting Mastery: Know The Game You’re In
• Recruiting Mastery: Have A Plan
• Recruiting Mastery: Interview Tactics

One of the most common gripes I encounter from Sales People or Business Owners is that their prospects or clients are always canceling their (face-to-face, webinar or phone) appointments or even worse, they are getting no-shows. Digging deep into the psychology of this phenomenon will enable you to comprehend why they do this.

Understanding the principle that “time is more valuable than money” is huge for all of you. Beyond this understanding, I am going to share with you battle-tested tactics that can help achieve nearly 100% success rates on your appointments.

Better yet, these tactics will help you avoid showing up on unqualified appointments such as the one in this photo that was an actual sales call that I was on with one of my students in Northern California. Rest assured that the rust on the lock of the gate in the photo would be the same kind of rust that will cover your commission checks if you don’t make changes right now to your processes of earning a successful appointment.

Remember this:
“You don’t know what you don’t know!”

Recently in front of an audience of successful sales people I asked this question: “How many steps does it take to earn a successful appointment?” Their answer was appalling! The majority said “one or two things have to happen before setting an appointment.” Ouch! A salesperson or business owner that understands TIME knows this to be a fairy-tale!

Listen up…. one or two steps to earn an appointment is a recipe for disaster! In an effort to get tracking towards 100% success with your appointments, you MUST follow this 8 Step Sales Mastery Program. And before we dive into those steps, you must get a firm foundation of the main reasons…

Why Prospects/Clients Blow Off Your Appointments!

1. Prospects/Client Don’t Respect You!

Because you have not EARNED their respect! Typically, you have approached them and have  done exactly what all other sales people do in setting appointments. You have not done  anything DISTINCTIVE that sets you apart from the pack of sales/business owner wolves. You need to WOW them with respect-earning sales tactics and be VERY distinctive!

Out of the gate you must EARN the prospect(s) respect AND give them a reason to make the appointment. You gain respect and give them a reason to make the appointment by invoking your 8 steps and NEVER doing what your sales competition does. Anything done exactly like your sales competitor detracts from your goal of SETTING AN APPOINTMENT.

Here are some examples of losing your prospect’s respect:

1. You pitch to the gatekeeper on your product, offering, or service, thus wasting the gatekeeper’s most precious commodity—time! The gatekeepers always talk about YOU after every phone call or face-to-face meeting. So… are they your sales deputies or sales destroyers? You must earn THEIR respect too!
2. You get lucky and your prospect takes your call. You start it off by um-bumming while at the same time asking how their weekend was? Great . . . now you have taken the call from a professional call to a social call—thus destroying your creditability as a professional sales person and giving you the reputation of a professional time waster. But wait . . . you say  you were told by your sales manager to “break the ice!”? There are much better ways to break  the ice, yet there will be no ice breaking unless you KILL their 3 biggest fears when they heard  the phone ring.

2. You Have Not Given Them a Reason to Make the Appointment!

In your communication with the prospect, you have typically justified your company and product, offering, or service (P.O.S.). However, you also must address WHY the P.O.S. is of the highest value to them and create URGENCY so they will keep the appointment. Put yourself in  their shoes. “WHY should I make this appointment? What is the benefit to me and why do I  need to do it NOW?” “Do I really need to devote my time to this sales person/business owner?”  Answer these questions for every prospect and earn their respect! Answer these questions for  every prospect and watch your appointment success ratio begin to rise!

“Before I began Chuck’s Professional Sales Coaching program, only 67% of my clients showed up for their appointments. Since then, the rate has shot up to 89% in just three months, bringing me about 144 more clients annually. I owe such fabulous progress—unheard of in my field— to the system I have in place because of your coaching program!”

—Ray Croff, President, Turtle Creek Financial

Now On To Our 8 Steps To Earning an Appointment…

Step 1: All Data Loaded Into Outlook

However the data comes in—provided or gathered—the first step is to create the Outlook contact file folder. I heavily recommend Outlook because the majority of your prospects and clients use Outlook. Outlook also syncs up with the other major players: Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, Mac and others. Remember, most internal CRM systems do not allow the sales person or business owner to easily communicate with the outside world, thus leaving you at a tactical sales disadvantage. You MUST use Outlook!

In a perfect Sales Mastery world you would obtain this information:

• Name
• Address
• City, State, Zip
• Personal email (more important than biz email)
• Biz Email
• Cell Number
• Office Number
• Home Number
• Date of birth (year is not necessary)
• Hobby or passion

Also obtain any other details that could be important to you in the future. Load as much data as you have into their contact folder. The month and day of birth gets propagated into the details page under “birthday.” When you perform this function it automatically propagates the day of their birthday on your Outlook calendar. (See page 79 of the Sales Mastery book for an exact example.)

As your ongoing lifelong relationship with this prospect or client continues, you will use the “Notes” section to take notes of all your communications and insert any important documents into this section, making it easy to find important documents whenever you need them. Additionally, their contact file is a one-stop-shop. You can email, set a calendar appointment, create a task, and set a reminder and a variety of other important functions all off one screen!

Is the prospect/client a VIP or NVIP? Why do we designate VIP/NVIP from the start? You tell me. And then make sure this information is included in the “Notes” section of their contact file. In addition, is the prospect a D, S, R, or T? (See Personality Selling—chapter 3 of Sales Mastery).

Step 2 – Send Two Mail Pieces BEFORE You Call To Set Appointment

That’s correct: I request that you send out a minimum of two mail pieces to the prospect before you EVER try to call them! Getting into their consciousness before any phone call is critical. This can take what would have been an extremely COLD call and turn it into a warm call.

• Mail Piece #1 – Goes Out Immediately! The Jim Rohn Treasury of Quotes Book, colored envelope, handwritten including the address, .62 cent stamp (minimum), and absolutely no return address. Make sure to dedicate the Rohn book to your prospect, and include your Main Point Card and your Referral Response Card.To order Jim Rohn books at .55 cents each, click here.
• Mail Piece #2 – Follows 7 days later. (If your sales cycle is very short, then send it out in 3 days). Legal-size colored envelope, hand-addressed, stamp (no postage meter), and NO return address. Contents of the envelope? Something about your company, your product, and something on YOU! My students use a sales tools that is called a Fast Facts Profile. I personally use (2) two-sided flyers that tell about my seminars, sales coaching, sales tune ups, and sales tools.

Step 3 – Propagate IContact

IContact is the main email only database that I use for my entire e-mail database. I use this for my quarterly newsletters and whenever I need to hit my entire e-mail list quickly. The tracking stats they have are awesome and allow me to see what each recipient is doing or not doing not to mention ongoing tracking of opens, bounces, etc. As an example, I know how many times you open my newsletters and specifically what pages are being viewed.

For a limited time, they are offering a free trail of the system.
Click this link to find out more and start your free trial.

Step 4 – Prepare To Make Phone Call

However, don’t do much preparation! Gather what 411 you need and then get mentally prepared to make the call. Getting mentally prepared means understanding the prospect’s 3 fears when they hear that phone ring:

1. You are selling something.
2. You will WASTE their time.
3. You will be just like the salesperson they just hung up with and you will be just like the next salesperson on the next phone call they answer.

So… place some command in your voice, be urgent in your speaking, and KILL these 3 call fears in the first ten seconds of the call. Let them know immediately that you are BUSY, you know they are too, and that you will be respectful of their time!

Step 5 – Make the Call

However, right before you dial, I want you to State Out Loud the purpose of earning this appointment. And that is to SET the appointment. The purpose of the call is NOT to be polite, the purpose is NOT to ask them how their weekend was, the purpose is NOT to interrupt them or talk over them, the purpose is NOT to over-do a nauseating amount of pleases and thank yous, the purpose is NOT to be over-accommodating, and certainly the purpose of the call is NOT to kiss up. The purpose of the call is to EARN an appointment because you have a product, offering, or service that will BENEFIT the prospect and a get together between the two of you will be mutually beneficial to both parties.

As you dial, your Outlook contact folder for this specific prospect should be open and your cursor should be positioned in the “Notes” box. You should have already the date typed in and now you are ready to take notes from your call. Additionally, have two appointment times prepared to give the prospect and be ready to immediately propagate your Outlook calendar “Invite” feature.

Now… we all know that getting that appointment is not as easy as making a phone call. We also know that many things can happen on that first call… from being hung up on in a worst-case scenario to actually selling a P.O.S. in a best-case scenario. Regardless of all the options, you need to focus on these three options (changes as you see fit for your sales cycle, etc.):

1. Set an appointment.
2. Set an appointment.
3. Set an appointment.

Stay focused on setting the appointment, not on SELLING them on your P.O.S. I cannot tell you how many live sales calls (face-to-face and phone) I have attended where the sales person actually starts s-e-l-l-i-n-g the gatekeeper! Say less and F-O-C-U-S on earning the appointment.

Bauer Power Tips For Getting the Appointment:

1. Have urgency in your voice at beginning of call.
2. Be brief.
3. Stand at beginning of the call so your lungs have full 100% air capacity, giving you more horsepower in your voice. More command in your voice means more control over the call.
4. Refer back to the Jim Rohn book within the first 30 seconds.
5. Be prepared for all possible pushbacks, objections, and kisses of death to the meeting request.
6. Say “NO” to any Kiss of Death requests.
7. Don’t ever say “All I need is an hour…” Always say “it will take a matter of moments…”
8. Be prepared to offer ONE BIG FAT claim of what benefit your P.O.S. brings to the prospect.
9. When the appointment is agreed upon, set it in Outlook, and END THE CALL!

Bauer Power Out-of-Box Tactic:
Before you end the call, ask they prospect WHY they will fulfill their commitment to their appointment. Get them to state back to you WHY they will keep the appointment. Their response will let you know just exactly what kind of a job you did on selling the appointment!

Step 6 – Set The Appointment Using Outlook’s Calendar “Invite” Feature

Outlook is the greatest client utilization tool known to mankind—and it is a MUST that you learn how to maximize its sales person-to-client potential. Outlook has many sales-related applications and here is one that is sure to set your sales world on fire.

Here is the greatest sales tactic using Outlook: once you master the calendar “Invite,” your prospect’s computer will now GO TO WORK on YOUR BEHALF! Once a prospect accepts your meeting request, three important functions happen immediately:

1. You are notified via email that the prospect has accepted your meeting invite.
2. It acknowledges in your calendar that they have accepted the meeting.
3. It confirms the appointment in THEIR Outlook calendar.

The prospect’s computer now reminds the prospect of the pending meeting and in essence their computer is now working for you! Open up the calendar to the specific day and time and click inside the specific time block that represents your appointment time. The form looks like this:

• Subject Line: Type “QUICK VIP Meeting with (Prospect’s Name).” The reason why I use the word QUICK, EVEN if the meeting is expected to last an hour, is because I still want the prospect to know that I am time sensitive and will not waste his or her time.
• Location Line: Type “Address of the meeting.”
• Start Time: Add appropriate time–use time zone when needed ex: 4pm ET/3 pm CT
• End Time: Add appropriate time-use time zone when needed ex: 5pm ET/ 4 pm CT. Some sales people or business owners can use exact times. Others who are unable to set exact times can use time ranges such as 8 am-to-noon or 1 pm-to-5 pm.
• Main Body: Click “Insert” and add your email signature graphic. You may also add any other pertinent points for the meeting—however, don’t sell your P.O.S.! You may also add your P.A.L. (pre-appointment letter—see: Step 7—Send Your P.A.L.).
• Time Zone: If the meeting is in another time zone, click your time zone, so when they accept it on their side, it automatically indicates the correct time zone on their side.
• Categorize: Click on “Categorize,” click new, and select a specific color for the type of meeting that you are having. You can color code for any sales-related tasks, making it easier on your eyes when you are working in your calendar as much as I do!
• High Importance: Click on as needed.
• Low Importance: Click on as needed.

Bauer Power Discipline Tip:
Once you become disciplined at these steps, it will take only a matter of a few seconds to complete all these tasks. To become PROFICIENT at this you will have to P.D.R. – PRACTICE it, DRILL it, and REHEARSE it!

Bauer Power Commitment Tip:
In some cases, in the body of the calendar appointment that I am sending the prospect/client, I write: “Commitment is doing the thing you said you would do, long after the mood and emotion you said it in has left you!” That phrase, used in conjunction with each of these steps, will show your level of serious professionalism and in many cases will cause the prospect/client to make the appointment even when they have considered canceling it.

Step 7 – Immediately – Send Your P.A.L. – Pre Appointment Letter

Every sales person should have a P.A.L. This device should be generic in nature, easily accessed, and used for every appointment. P.A.L.s can be used for face-to-face meetings as well as phone or webinar meetings. The P.A.L. can re-establish that you are time sensitive and set the exact boundaries for the meeting. This helps in establishing a functional sales person-to-prospect relationship!

Here is an example of a P.A.L. that a few of my client companies use.
Make changes to fit your sales process:

Congratulations on taking the time to schedule a QUICK appointment with me. I am in your area for only a few (days/hours). I am very busy helping other _________________ and will be respectful of your time. Your scheduled appointment is for _________________. (Exact time or time range)

Being fully prepared for the appointment will help me (benefit, benefit, benefit). To maximize our time together, I would suggest the following:

• a private place to meet if applicable
• access to your . . . – (whatever you may need)
• copies of . . . (whatever you may need)
• list of common . . . (whatever you may need)
• biggest challenge you face as (whatever their business is)
• restatement of the BIG FAT Claim of your P.O.S.

Additionally, we would like to pass along a one-time offer.  If I place an order during this visit my company will pass along a 5% discount on your first order, as long as everything is complete before I depart your office.

I look forward to (benefit, benefit, benefit)

My personal preference is to add this communication to the body of the Outlook calendar invite as well as MAILING the letter!

Step 8 – The Afternoon Before the Appointment Date – SEND UPDATE

Open up the calendar invite for the specific appointment and click “Send Update!” This will once again send an email to the prospect reminding them of the appointment, the day before the appointment. And once again they will hit accept notifying you that they have again accepted the appointment.

By reading this article you have now moved closer to becoming just like the hundreds of salespeople who have graduated from my coaching program and used these battle-tested techniques. You, like them, should realize that Time is MONEY!

Doing these key critical steps will earn you successful appointments that for the most part will be kept by any prospect or client. You are showing them that you are precision based and utilizing the highest levels of sales professionalism. By removing any of these steps, you become LAZY and dramatically reduce the chances of pulling off a successful appointment. You MUST become cancellation defiant! Becoming cancellation defiant places more money in both yours and your company’s pocketbook!

Remember, to MAKE MORE MONEY, IN LESS TIME…
Put these procedures into practice TODAY!

Bauer Power Sales Challenge:

What other sales tactics can you utilize Outlook for? There are many, but you cannot find them in any Outlook manual or book: you must have a “sales” mind to generate them. What other strategies are you currently using? What ideas can you come up with? Post your answer here in the blog. Great ideas posted will receive $50 worth of $Bauer Bucks$.

Now you and your sales team can get informative and motivating sales tips, stories and quotes by following Sales Coach Chuck Bauer at http://twitter.com/coachchuckbauer, on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/SalesCoachChuck, on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/getsalesresultsnow and through LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckbauer

In addition to free sales tips and resources, you’ll get notified of expert training opportunities for your entire sales and management staff.

Why Chuck?

With more than two decades of winning experience in sales, marketing and communication-related fields, Sales Coach Chuck brings his innovative and distinctive business insight to any business environment. His passionate commitment to excellence is illustrated in his consulting, coaching and speaking work. With his no-nonsense approach to sales professionalism and managing for real results, Chuck has set himself apart from a field too often full of hucksters of half-baked formulas and hawkers of outmoded sales “tricks”.

Each week he personally oversees numerous sales processes; from listening to LIVE sales phone calls to sitting in on LIVE face to face appointment between professional salespeople and their clients. He truly lives out his motto: “Set the example by exceeding the standards.”

So what are you waiting for?
Follow Chuck Bauer on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn today!

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Don’t pass on this intelligent investment!
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Today, more than ever in the sales industry, using time to be more productive is an alarm being sounded around the country in our industry. Because of the “perceived” economic slowdown, companies are asking sales forces to do more & be more, so that everyone can have more.

As I listen to sales people and sales managers, this “theme” is being replayed all over the country. To the sales manager who is griping that his and his team goals have now been increased; to the sales person who suffers the same fate and continues to gripe to his colleagues, I say to each of you STOP wasting time griping and START today becoming more sales efficient and become major TIME PRODUCERS.

These step by step Time Producers are based on actual time spent with sales people, sales managers, and high level sales executives who own companies that have sales forces. Because I am working in the depths of their sales organizations on a day to day basis, I really get a front row seat to the R-E-A-L-I-T-Y of the inner-workings of salespeople, and more importantly, who is a Time Producer and who is a Time Waster.

The Lunch Hour
By far, the Number One Time Waster of all time. Okay . . . let’s see how this really plays out for the typical salesperson. (You, the reader, are not typical, correct?) At approximately 11:15 am your time zone, you start looking at your watch, counting down the minutes you have until it’s time to go to lunch. Worse than that, you don’t realize that the “shift” in your brain has just decreased you from being at the highest levels of being in your sales zone (hopefully) to the lowest levels of sales focus.  The closer you get to noon, the more of your focus is being spent on “lunch” versus “sales.”  This situation is just like writing out a blank check to your aggressive and tenacious competitors.

From there it probably develops like this. You have communication with your fellow salespeople on who is going and where to go. You hook up, leave a little early to beat the crowd, enjoy lunch, and then head back to the office after running a quick errand or two. Back at the office for a photo finish 12:59 pm arrival while observing if the sales managers’ car is in the parking lot. With a mad dash, you’re back in your chair by 1:00 pm.

Because of eating unhealthy food, we’re a little sluggish and you feel like taking a nap. So, off to the Red Bull bar for a quick “upper” while meeting others at the bar/kitchen for more non-sales related discussions. By the time you get back to your office and start working, you have really just Time Wasted about 1-2 hours. (For those of you now thinking you need the 1-2 hour break to be more tuned in to your next set of sales calls or appointments, make sure to read the next section on Dinkin’ Off!)

Let’s take this 1-2 hour Time Waster and turn it into a Time Producer. First, consider eating lunch at your office. Early each day, prepare a meal/snack and take it with you to your office or with you in your car, if your car is your office.  For me, I use a dorkey food bag and tote my meals around in that. You can go as far as preparing meals on Sunday night that could cover you for 3-4 days.

Secondly, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, only go to lunch with a prospect or client. I promise you that in doing so will only further your career versus going with your sales buddies. Successful professional sales people know that selling time is their most valuable asset. In fact, it is more important than money itself.  You cannot recklessly squander away time on sales buddies or non prospects. You must learn to maximize time spent with prospects and clients!

Sales Managers – these same principles apply to you. However . . . you should be taking one of your salespeople to lunch every week. And when you take them, STOP talking to them and really listen to what they may have to share!

Dinkin’ Off Time
Almost as bad as the lunch hour! I classify Dinkin’ Off in a variety of ways:

• Hanging out in the lunch/break room
• Mentally checking out
• Having the dreaded country club mentality
• Excessive or lengthy bathroom breaks
• Smoking
• Improper cell phone usage
• Text messaging
• Day trading
• Stock market watching
• Improper Internet usage
• Social phone calls
• Sales buddies golf
• The list could be endless!

You, the readers know exactly what YOUR specific dinkin’ off items are. Neither I . . . nor your sales managers would expect you to get rid of all these bad habits yet we expect you to get close to eliminating them. If you truly have an ownership mentality (versus an employee mentality) as it applies to your sales positions, you know that dinkin’ off is just like robbing a bank. You rob your bank and the bank of your company. Robbing banks is a felony. Robbing your own bank is stupidity.

One of the companies that I consult has a very strict policy on NO CELL PHONES being allowed in the office. Now, think about that for a moment, most of you have co-dependent relationships with your phone. Your phone OWNS you. Don’t believe me?  Okay . . . just video tape yourself the next time you hear your cell phone ring and you are unable to locate the phone by the end of the first ring. Send me the video; I am always up for a good laugh!

I know that many of you use your cell phone in your business. I understand. It is the Time Wasting tactics that you employ through the use of your cell phone that needs to stop.  If you are serious about your personal and professional goals, you’ll eliminate some of these bad dinkin’ off Time Wasters and turn yourself into a Time Producer.

Sleep
I am lucky. Lucky because I have been blessed with a great work ethic and major amounts of correct disciplines. Through these traits, I have utilized sleep to help me become a Time Producer. My discipline is early to bed almost every night, usually by 9 pm. Sometimes even earlier!  Going to bed early allows me to get up . . . E-A-R-L-Y!

Those two to three hours each morning allow me to get the jump on the day, and remember I have clients nationwide. Getting up at 5:30 every morning still allows me to get ahead of my east coast stuff and stay ahead of the other time zones. You would be amazed at how much productive time you will have by using these quite times each and every day.

Know this . . . getting up at 5:30 am is not that BIG of a deal. I have a client here in Dallas, Craig Foy who is the CEO of VITEC Online. Craig’s day starts each and every day at 4:30 am. In fact, he starts off his day with an invigorating bike ride which helps him with the daily demands of running a multimillion dollar business.

Whether you are an entrepreneur working from home, or a sales professional that works out of an office, getting up early and using that time to get the jump on your sales day will help you become a major Time Producer.

Daily Exercise/Eating Correctly
Obesity is now the #1 killer of Americans based on recent finding of preventable diseases that kill Americans. Smoking use to occupy the top spot. Smoking is now #2.

Being unfit physically is a Time Waster. It slows you down and in some cases you might even be medicated which could serve as a double whammy. Not to mention the loss of productivity, visits to the doctor, health insurance claims, etc., etc.

Eating unhealthy food is another HUGE Time Waster. Fast food, sugar laced drinks, caffeinated drinks, etc., all have negative effects on your body. You Red Bull addicts . . . know this. What comes up . . . MUST come down. Fast Food addicts . . . go watch the DVD titled “Super Size Me” and you’ll know what I am talking about.

To ward off being physically unfit, start a discipline of daily exercise. It could start with parking your car further from the front door of your office. Some may walk the stairs in your building during the lunch hour. Some may have a full blown exercise or workout regiment.   Another company that I consult for, the President works out and provides a health club membership to his sales staff. You’ll find many of them at the gym on their lunch hour. Perfect!

Food?  Eat energy providing foods! How about some green vegetables to start with? Or commit to no cheese for a month. Or, drink more filtered water and become better at portion control? You may not fit exercise into your sales day yet you still eat, usually 3-4 times a day. You can instantly benefit from making positive changes into your eating habits.

Recently, one of my sales students “joked” about the President of his company. He said the only way to get the President exercising was to “hang a pork chop out in front of a treadmill!” Well . . . if that is what it takes, make sure to order the pork chop without butter!

Start having better eating habits and start exercising each day. The advances you’ll receive will benefit your both professionally and personally. More importantly, you’ll become more of a Time Producer!

Food Bonus:
A few years ago I wrote an article titled “Become a Fat Buster!” My top techniques to busting up some of that body fat and becoming more physically fit through some proven eating/lifestyle changes. E-mail a note to chuck@chuckbauer.com and I’ll gladly forward you that article!  And remember, there is a bonus section about Health & Fitness in my SalesMastery Book of Quotes! Would you like a FREE copy of this book? CLICK HERE!

Office Organization
Your office needs to be set up as a “command center,” not a junk yard! You need to be clutter free and organized. Every extra pile of papers, every extra post it note, and every extra item that is not put away in it proper place, takes away from all your positive energy and in some cases it takes away from your sales focus. When you are time crunched for a deadline, the cluttered office or desk will catch up with you and can really cost you in efficiencies and could cause you to miss deadlines.

Utilize MS Outlook for everything. There is a huge amount of functionality with Outlook and it is possible to become paperless. Know this . . . every time you reach for a piece of paper, a post it note or scratch pad, you are INEFFICIENT.  If you will learn the ins and outs of Outlook, you will be able to do the work of two or more assistants.

You will find only TWO stacks of papers on my desk. The first one is my “day” calendar from Outlook (e-mail me at chuck@chuckbauer.com and I will send you a couple of examples of my actual daily sheets – you might even see your own name on my sheet?!) that I have printed off. I do this each day and I keep about two months worth clipped together. This helps me keep an eye on all my specific appointments and if I need to write something down it will go on the print out for that specific day. This eliminates the need for endless amounts of Post It notes.

The second stack of papers on my desk is my “pile” of active prospects. Each one has their Outlook Contact page printed out which of course contains notes, important facts, and sometimes my handwritten notes about our on-going conversations. Again, these papers are clipped together and within an arm’s reach of me at any given moment. The reason these papers are kept on my desk is simple. It is my reminder that when given moments of down time, I can pick up this stack of papers and start making sales calls without hesitation or THINKING ABOUT IT. One thing I will tell you is that I am a stickler on scheduling specific next steps with clients so this stack of prospects are ones that the communication has become “loose” for whatever reason.

A viewer of my YouTube videos once said: “An uncluttered office = an uncluttered mind!” How true, and when you are uncluttered you have more time and energy to focus on the major stuff happening in your sales career!

Law of Associations
You become the average sum of the five people you hang out with. Look around you and the sales people you are spending time with. What are they doing? What are they doing to you? Who is selling who? And what are they selling? What is their personal sales production? Are they a winner or a loser? Are they positive or negative? Are they drug free? Do they have high levels of discipline and tenacity? Do they implement important sales processes? Are they REALLY a friend?

What you may not realize is that they may purposely want you to fail because you are a competitor! Listen up Sales People. In many cases your fellow sales people do not want you to succeed!  Most sales offices contain bitter and unhappy salespeople who can infect others with their opinions and outlook on sales/life if given the opportunity. In some cases they may even try to create opportunities to spread their “cancer” throughout the office. WATCH OUT for these types!

I remember way back when. I could drink a ton of tequila; catch a bunch of largemouth bass; hit a softball a country mile; yet was making an okay living. Guess what? So were all my friends. Same thing. So, I had to expand my horizons and leave others behind to attain the higher goals I had set for myself.

Your associations have everything to do with becoming a Time Producer. Hang with people who will be your advocate and are doing better than you. Look for successful salespeople or business owners who intimidate you. Ask them if you can buy them lunch. Listen to their stories. Learn and implement. And STOP hanging around others that are Time Wasters!

Alcohol – Drugs
Both are HUGE Time Wasters. Okay, let’s make this simple. If you are going to drink alcohol, do it socially on Friday or Saturday.  Utilize Sunday to get your body recovered if that is the case so you will be ready for your sales week on Monday.  Limit use or stop alcohol all together. Drugs – STOP right now, get help if needed, grow up and STOP hanging with people who do drugs!

Bring Everything to Completion
This may be the second largest Time Waster, right behind the lunch hour. Sales People (and some humans) are notorious for not bringing things to completion or full circle. Example . . . your last sales call. Did you set a specific next step with your client, confirm the time and send an Outlook Appointment Invite via e-mail to get the client to accept it on his/her side?  That is being complete and not leaving things in a fog bank.

Being incomplete with typical daily tasks will drive President’s and CEO’s of companies crazy. Why?  Because it costs them TIME and MONEY and they constantly feel like the incomplete sales manager or sales person is in REVERSE rather than being in FORWARD.  Just this last week I am in a meeting with a President of a Sales Company and one of the major challenges that he faces is the amount of incompletions on his sales floor with his sales people.  Tasks left undone, paperwork not completely filled out, just a disorganized mess. TIME WASTEING!

Okay, watch the humanity of this Sales Person.

This “tasks” chart shows COMPLETIONS as well as incompletions. The full circles represent tasks that are completed; the half circles represent tasks that are incomplete. The left side of the page represents a current phase of the sales person’s life, full of incompletions and maybe a few completions. Then the unthinkable happens. Not really understanding the effect of the incompletions in their life, in their sub-conscious they throw their hands up in the air, say to themselves “that is too much to handle” (denial) and they draw a line in the sand and cross over to their next phase of life or in the example the right hand side of the page.

Guess what happens next? They repeat the same pattern! Get it?  Time Wasting at its finest. They are so far in REVERSE that they can never gain the sales traction necessary to attain the highest levels of sales success! Sadly, in some cases, this happens in their personal life as well.

A simple example of the very same thing would look like this. Imagine for a moment your kitchen. Think about every cupboard door, every drawer, the oven, the refrigerator and the microwave doors ALL OPEN AT THE SAME TIME. Now, this is an exaggeration but it really drives home the point with sales people. Close all doors and bring all items and tasks to completion in an effort to become a major Time Producer!

Procrastination
Procrastination is one of the biggest Time Wasters there is. “Procrastination is one of the biggest thief’s of time!” Recently in a SalesMastery seminar, a student claimed that before making a cold call that he spent, in some cases, as much as 30 minutes getting prepared for the call. He would get all of his thoughts organized, he would do Google Intelligence, and he would think about this and that and spend a ton of time on preparing to make the call PERFECT.

Ladies and gentlemen . . . what this student was telling me is that he suffered from a dose of call reluctance and procrastination. Sometimes it is simpler when you DON’T THINK and JUST DO!  So, instead of trying to make the perfect call, make each call perfect! Same thing goes with your sales processes. DO IT, probe a little in your fear or procrastination areas, get a little bumped and bruised, learn from your mistakes, tune it up and MOVE ON!

Want to be more of a Time Producer? Think about how many cold calls you can really make in thirty minutes, how many “probes” you can make looking for that significant call that YOU can turn into perfection. I’ll take 10-20 dials versus one dial every thirty minutes for sure! STOP over extending the “think,” stop over extending the procrastination and START DOING!

In regards to time and appointments, remember this:
Always early to appointments? You are a salesperson.
If you are LATE to an appointment . . . you are a BOZO.
If you are on-time to your appointments . . . you are a GENIUS!

Implementing these techniques will keep you from being overwhelmed & trapped in your sales positions. You can buy back your time by becoming a Time Producer and becoming more efficient.  When you start your implementation & disciplines, turn them into habits. Matt West, one of my top sales students often says after creating a good sales habit . . . “Pull the check book out and pay to the order of ME!” You have that same opportunity – get started right now and write out the check to YOU!

God speed & good selling,
Chuck

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