Dear Sales: Busy people don’t mean to be rude- Madlibs with Dan McDade

Dear Sales: Busy people don’t mean to be rude- Madlibs with Dan McDade:from The Funnelholic by Craig Rosenberg


You may have noticed by now, but whenever I crowdsource content I have some “go-to’s”. Dan McDade is one of them. He is always willing to share his experiences and tips. I ask him for something, and I always get something I can use. The Madlibs below is a great example…really thoughtful and helpful material. Enjoy.

1. The b2b buyer is, despite tons of cyberspace “ink” to the contrary, not a lot different today as compared to ten years ago. Picture thousands of zombies repeating (in their zombie voices) the following: “the buyer is 70% of the way through the sales cycle before sales needs to get involved” and you have a clear picture of what frequent bloggers and industry pundits sound like today. Folks, people still buy from people and people have just not changed that much.
2. The biggest innovation in sales is expecting sales to be more than bus drivers. Early in this century sales basically drove a bus full of engineers and made dinner reservations. Now sales actually has to sell.
3. The coolest thing happening in b2b sales is so much of selling is being taken inside. Field sales is growing very slowly. Inside sales is exploding.
4. My favorite Sales 2.0 technology is apparently not yet available. I don’t even like the moniker Sales 2.0. B2B organizations are at best operating at Sales 1.1 level. They have a long way to go to even approach Sales 2.0. More later in this series of questions.
5. My favorite sales book is The New Solution Selling. SPI has been on top of the latest trends for 25 years and they have managed to do that without tricks, gimmicks and “the flavor of the month” approach.
6. My favorite social media site is LinkedIn. I don’t know how you can survive without it. I am in and out of LinkedIn all day every day and I’ll bet you are too.
7. Social selling is overblown in the B2B space. If you are selling a complex service or product, let me know the next time you send out a tweet and pick up a $150,000 deal. Yes, I realize that this is an over-simplification, but really…
8. I use Linkedin to look up prospects, find out about companies, to look for new prospects, to communicate with my community, to learn about competitors. See #6.
9. Cold calling is very much alive and used by some of the fastest, most profitable companies today. If you sell a high ticket, complex solution with multiple decision-makers and a long sales cycle and you are depending on your market coming to you – you are in for a surprise.
10. In b2b, the idea of a funnel is as relevant today as it has ever been. Sure, there are lots of new, cool views of the funnel – but the reality is that the funnel is a great way to picture and manage lead flow.
11. The first thing every sales person should do is find the smartest person working in marketing in the same company and make them a friend. The more you understand what marketing is doing, and the more you treat them as relevant, the more they are going to do for you.
12. Voicemail is a powerful tool when combined with email and when used on a multi-touch, multi-media, multi-cycle basis. Over 20% of the opportunities we find for clients are as the result of a call or email response.
13. The biggest mistake sales people make is to call a lead 2 – 3 times, leave a very generic voicemail without any real value to the prospect and then give up on the lead when the prospect has not fallen all over themselves to get back to the sales person.
14. The biggest myth in sales is that you are born a sales person or not. Process makes perfect. You may not look like George Clooney or sell like Dale Carnegie, but deliberate, diligent, determined, deferential traits win the day.
15. My most forgettable sales experience was flying to Green Bay to visit the headquarters of a book store chain (a big one that I traveled a full day to get to). My appointment left me sitting in the lobby for 30-minutes and then came out and said that he only had five minutes so could I cover what I came to cover standing right there in the lobby. I said: “I know your time is valuable and so is mine. I can’t do justice to the subject in five minutes so I will just leave. Thank you”. I got a standing ovation from other sales people in the lobby at the time.
16. The hardest part of selling is realizing that busy people don’t mean to be rude… they are simply slammed with other priorities. 99.9% of the population is pretty much like you and me (pretty nice). You just have to ignore what I call the .1% jerk factor.
17. The next “hot-thing” in sales will be reducing the number of field sales people by providing fewer sales people with more highly qualified leads. The average company now provides sales with 20 – 30% of the leads they need to make their number (from marketing) expecting sales to find the rest. That’s insane. You have the most expensive and precious resource in your company qualifying leads (when 1 – 5% might pan out).
18. In 2015, sales will be more specialized than it is today. We talk about beaters, hunters and farmers today, but we don’t for the most part deploy that way. Better deployment will lead to more specialization.
19. My favorite sales saying is sales people do what you pay them to do, not what you want them to do… (followed by my second favorite expression about sales people: “Well, enough about me, what do you think about me?”)
20. Over the next couple years in sales, I can’t wait to see more efficiency via accountability for leads. Right now we are running marketing and sales organizations with an abacus while we run manufacturing with ERP, SCM… The way we currently run marketing and sales is going to have to change because the way we do it now is WAY too expensive.
21. Madlibs with the Funnelholic is more fun than a root canal but less fun than drinking a martini.

Dan McDade is President and CEO of PointClear, LLC, a prospect development firm that helps B2B companies drive revenue by nurturing leads, engaging contacts and developing prospects until they’re ready to purchase. The Sales Lead Management Association named Dan one of the 50 most influential people in sales lead management for the last four consecutive years. Dan’s first book, The Truth About Leads, is a practical, easy-to-read book that helps B2B companies focus their lead-generation efforts, align their sales and marketing organizations and drive revenue. Read Dan’s blog: ViewPoint l The Truth About Lead Generation. Contact Dan by email: dan.mcdade@pointclear.com.