30 Minute Segment: The Ruthless Entrepreneur Show
Danita Bye

Guest Interview on The Ruthless Entrepreneur Show

Mark: Danita, great to have you on the show.

Danita: Great to be here, Mark. I’m honored to be working with someone who’s got a solid reputation for Making It Happen!

Mark: In a nutshell, tell our viewers why you decided to become a “turn-around specialist?”

Danita: I’m passionate about getting results. You know, Mark, you’d be surprised how many business owners, CEOs, and managers don’t have a well-defined, consistently measured sales process in place. And that just amazes me. How can you get where you’re going if you don’t know where it is? I guess that’s one of the biggest reasons I decided to become a sales turnaround specialist.

I started in sales training, Mark. However, I immediately hit a roadblock because not every problem can be solved with sales training. In order to deliver the results that my clients were expecting, I needed to develop a more comprehensive approach. Those who’ve been involved in the Baldridge Movement, Six Sigma, or Lean know that it’s about the processes, not the people. Therefore, I start to focus on the foundational sales processes that create breakthrough sales results.

I ask questions:

What is this organization’s target market?

Does it even have a target market?

Is it speaking clearly and directly to its target?

Does it have monitor key sales metrics on a regular basis?

Does it have an automatic course correction process in place?

Mark: Why the Wicked Witch of the West?

Danita: Sales is about delivering results. Period; I guess my focus on that earned me the nickname, which, believe it or not, is meant affectionately. It comes from a client who had a salesperson on board for nine months, a salesperson who delivered zero revenue, a salesperson who should have been producing within the first three months. Every time I met with this client, I asked, “When are you going to let this salesperson go?”

Of course, my client always gave the salesperson the benefit of the doubt. When that didn’t cut any ice with me, he mentioned how nice a person the salesperson was. Don’t get me wrong – I think being a nice person is important, but it wasn’t contributing to results in this case. And in the end, as I mentioned before, sales is about results. No results, no place on the sales team.

I coach leadership to be very intentional about:

· Setting clear performance, behavior, and activity expectations

· Communicating a clear target sales focus

· Providing a sales map

· Setting up a well-understood feedback system

· Rewarding performance

· And, last but certainly not least, defining and enforcing consequences for poor performance

If insisting on those consequences – and following through on them – makes me a “wicked witch”, then I’m proud to wear that pointy hat.

Mark: OK, let’s talk about economy and the sales culture for a moment here. This economy has become the perfect excuse for sales people who could not sell water in the desert to a dying man. But it also seems that seasoned sales professionals are using this excuse as well. You talk about “Accountability”. How does this relate to this prevalent excuses issue?

Danita: High performance salespeople drive themselves the same way that highly successful entrepreneurs do. They’re intensely passionate about success. They will do whatever it takes to achieve that success. And they stand personally accountable for results. Rather than blaming the competition, the marketing team, or the economy, they understand that they themselves are the only reason they don’t reach their goals. When they do fall short, they ask themselves what they might do differently next time, instead of wallowing in failure. Do they need to sharpen their skills, improve their message, or better understand the competition? Instead of wasting time manufacturing excuses, these salespeople should find out what’s broken and fix it.

Sadly, this kind of salesperson is a minority. Studies by Objective Management Group indicates that 60% of those who call themselves salespeople are blame-gamers. They point their fingers at everything and everyone except themselves. And being good talkers, they often convince their bosses – and themselves – that their excuses are valid.

Mark: In pro sports; teams are a lot like companies where moral get brought down by a few bad apples. Terrell Owens was a perfect example. He was “cancer” to whoever team he played for. You talked a lot about excuses having the same effect on a company. Explain?

Danita: 90% of the time, the companies I work with have an excuse problem. Often, it all started with a single cancerous attitude that soon spread through the entire organization because leadership didn’t diagnose the excuse and hold salespeople accountable.

When I’m invited in, I begin by auditing the sales organization. After that, we train leadership and management to spot and stop excuses before they spread. There are a number of ways to do that, and the first is to ask an excuse-busting question, such as, “What might you do to break through and get the results you’re looking for?” Next, insist on three alternative solutions to the problem. Finally, hold salespeople accountable for results.

Mark: I want to talk about “turn around”” situations for a moment. When does a company finally realize that they need someone like you to step in as an outside voice to fix things? Do you approach them? How does it work?

Danita: They usually don’t recognize the core problem on their own. When they’re missing their growth targets, for example, they’ll fire a few silver bullets at the problem. Because they’re aiming at the symptoms instead of the disease, these quick fixes fail. Often, a trusted party, such as a bank, director, attorney, CPA, or colleague suggests a proven approach and recommends my help. And after two or three dud silver bullets, they’re ready to take a systematic – not symptomatic – look at their business problems.

Mark: How do the sales managers and sales people react to such a situation? Do they welcome you with open arms, or is it an uneasy situation?

Danita: They are skeptical, to start. But once they realize that we’re there to help them succeed, that we have a proven process that delivers results, and that we have a reputation for getting those results, they’re on board. Well, most are on board. Typically, 20% of the sales staff don’t want to be in sales or don’t have the drive to move forward. When we come in and shake up the status quo, they often leave, resulting in a stronger and more results-focused team.

Mark: Do you have the power to hire and fire? How much leeway does a company give you when they bring you in?

Danita: I typically don’t hire or fire, though I do make strong recommendations. In hiring situations, I use a sales screening tool that’s 95% accurate in predicting who’ll be successful. So, I’m quite confident when I make a hiring recommendation based on it.

When it comes time to let salespeople go, I’m equally confident because I grew my own company from virtually nothing to a run rate of $20M in 10 years, and I know who’s not going to contribute to the future growth of a client company. Paired with my assessment tools, that experience has served me and my clients well when I unfortunately have to recommend firing.

Mark: I have owned my share of businesses and overseen various sales forces, but one thing that was always a challenge was hiring the right sales people. How can you read through their B.S. and see if they are capable or not? You talk about Sales DNA. What is that?

Danita: There are three core strands in the unique sales DNA that separates salespeople who can talk the talk from those who can walk the walk and produce bottom-line results.

- The first is a natural fit with a particular organization. A salesperson might successfully sell someone else’s widgets, but can they sell yours? Your pricing strategy may be different. Your key decision maker may be different. You may have to duke it out in a hyper competitive market, while the salesperson’s former employer held the market lead. And those are just a few of the 21 aspects we measure when assessing sales candidates. The closer we match those 21 fit criteria to candidates, the quicker the ramp up time will be.

- The second strand of DNA that we concentrate on is “fire in the belly.” Like the first strand, either you have this or you don’t. But while the first strand had 21 separate components – I guess you’d call them nucleotides, if you were a scientist – this one has three: core passion, accomplishment drive, and the will to succeed. We know that salespeople with fire in their bellies will do whatever it takes to be successful, and they’ll take personal responsibility for their results. They are coachable, trainable, and highly desirable for your team. We know that these people will keep reinventing themselves in order to stay ahead of the competition.

- Thirdly, we examine a salesperson’s natural way of thinking about sales. Does the prospect of selling someone energize them or drain them? Are they overly sensitive to rejection? Do they see sales as a way to help their clients or just a way to put something over on them? Their thinking is important because it determines how quickly they can close a sale, how robust their pipeline is, and so on.

Mark: What are some of the characteristics a sales person needs to become a top performer?

Danita: To be a top performer, a salesperson needs to be a lot like a Sequoia tree. If you don’t know much about these amazing trees, I’ll give you a quick rundown: these trees thrive in the presence of forest fires – in fact, they need fire to clear fertile ground, clear away dead wood, and burn away their seed casings so they can germinate. Mature trees respond to fire by allowing it to char their thick, spongy bark, forming a heat shield.

Business adversity is a salesperson’s fire. Are they going to let it burn them down? Or are they going to use it to their advantage? The latter attitude is hugely responsible for their success. The attitude of a salesperson that expects the fire and uses it to sell even more is the foundation for all the other sales traits we look for in assessment. I’m not saying it’s impossible to teach someone who doesn’t have this inborn attitude, but your ROI isn’t going to be anywhere near as good.

Mark: When do you finally realize it is time to cut a salesperson loose? Even when they are “commission only”? Why not keep them on if they are commission only? What is there to lose?

Danita: There are two common mistakes that entrepreneurs make when hiring and firing. First, they hire too quickly, usually based on a good rapport with a candidate. Second, they fire too slowly. By the time they get inkling that they’ve made a hiring mistake, letting the salesperson go is way overdue.

But if those salespeople are commission only, what’s the harm? Actually, there’s plenty of potential for harm, beginning with the time and money an employer is going to invest in training. Then there’s management time, company resources, wasting leads, and driving away current and future clients. In fact, a bad hire can cost a company four to ten times what they pay the salesperson in the first year. And that’s why an underperforming commission-only salesperson must be let go – and as soon as possible.

Mark: Let’s talk about prospecting for a few minutes. You talk about the importance of knowing your prospects pain. Why is this so important to sales performance?

Danita: Think about it: your decision maker is deluged with up to 3000 marketing messages each day, including via email, voice mail, billboards, the internet, television, print, and whatever else. To survive, our brains filter out everything but what we judge to be most important. And what’s most important to us? “The things that give us the biggest headaches during the day and the worst nightmares when we sleep.” So, if you want to get a buyer’s attention, you’d better address those headaches and nightmares. Otherwise, you’re wasting your breath.

To accelerate sales results, develop a bank of three to five powerful, pain-focused messages that you can use in your email, voice mail, and questioning campaigns. That’s one of the key skills we work on in our coaching programs.

Mark: How is this different from the traditional sales process?

Danita: The traditional sales process is oriented toward features and benefits, and the more, the better. It’s sort of a throw-up-all-over-the-prospect approach, figuring if you drown them in features and benefits, they’ll be helpless not to buy. And it’s old. It’s outdated. It doesn’t work today.

But it is easy.

The hardest work I do with a sales team is to help them get into their prospects’ heads and see life from their point of view. You have to start thinking what your prospects think, what gets them angry, what hurts them, and what happens when they don’t meet their goals. That’s hard work on a salesperson’s part, but your top people invest in that mental effort. They know that it translates into sales dollars and cents.

Mark: I have always been a huge advocate of knowing and understanding your competition BEFORE you make a sales presentation. Particularly when I know who my competition is BEFORE I meet with the prospect. As Sun Tsu says in the Art of War; “know your enemies strong points and evade them.” “Find you enemies’ weak points and attack.” The enemy in our case being the competition. What type of preparation do you espouse to sales teams when it comes to knowing their competition?

Danita: Your best weapon against the competition is to understand your prospect. You must understand what your prospect gains by going with your solution and what they lose by not taking advantage of it or settling for a competitor’s offering. If you ask questions and really understand their business pain while your competitors talk ad nauseum about features and benefits, you’re sure to win. Remember the advice of St. Francis of Assisi: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

Mark: Prospecting is the lifeblood of the sale superstar. Loser salespeople wait for leads from their company. Top performers are proactive and go out and make their OWN leads. As a seasoned sales pro who has been in the trenches, what are you 4 favorite prospecting methods. What would you recommend for sales pros and entrepreneurs looking to generate more business?

Danita: That’s a difficult question, Mark, because everyone has different skill sets and each market is unique. The best approach, though, is to use a mixture of prospecting methods, such as:

· Social networking

· SEO and SEM

· Speaking

· Web strategy, articles, and blogging

Beyond that, there are three other prospecting activities that are critical for any business, starting with referrals, which you should ask for from everyone. Then there’s cold calling and lead nurturing. With regard to lead nurturing, a salesperson should know that they’re going to close only one to three percent of their leads at any given time. Does that mean you should put the other leads to the side? No – keep nurturing them. Your goal is to close 100 percent of them over time. That’s where email nurturing programs can be especially helpful. In our coaching program, we have a section on how to do that.

Mark: What prospecting methods are a waste of time?

Danita: Anything and everything is a waste of time if you don’t track it and follow up with it. But properly tracked and followed up with, almost any prospecting method can be made to work. Again, it’s about process.

Mark: You have worked first hand with many top decision makers. Decision makers that salesperson’s try all day long to cold call and sell to. What advice can you give our viewers out there on how to properly cold call top decision makers? What feedback have you gotten that could be useful?

Danita: Talk in terms that you decision maker understands. Think about what keeps them up at night, and then frame all your communication around those core concerns.

Mark: Let’s now turn to the sales process. If you asked 100 people to explain their sales process you would probably get 100 different answers. Before you tell us your sales process, how important IS the sales process. Do you think it is a set of principles, or an ever changing process that fluctuates with each situation?

Danita: Process is everything. Statistics indicate that companies with a well-defined and well-used sales process will close 30% more business. However, one client of mine flatly disagrees: John says that if his salespeople don’t follow the sales process he’s outlined, they’re guaranteed not to get the sale. Process is that important.

Mark: OK, give us Danita Byes Sales Process for success.

Danita: Although every sales process is different depending on the product, market, and other factors, there are some commonalities. The most important is that your process must have a means of properly qualifying a prospect.

Sounds easy, but it’s easily misunderstood. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I’d been selling for almost 15 years before I really understood what it meant to qualify a prospect and how important it was to do it right. The fact is you can’t give a prospect a proposal until you’re 100 percent certain that they’re qualified to receive it.

To properly qualify a prospect, a salesperson has to know four things:

· Their prospect has pain. How do you know they have pain? They tell you – and they’re able to quantify it.

· They have money available to ease or eliminate their pain.

· They’ve told you their decision making process.

· They’ve agreed that when you present your proposal, they will answer with either “yes” or “no.”

Mark: Do you find the sales process different based on the size of the product, the type of the product, the type industry? Wouldn’t fluctuate based on what it is you’re selling?

Danita: Absolutely. Different products address different pains. Details of the process will be different, but the core approach, which is to qualify prospects based on their pain and their willingness to treat it, then focus all your efforts on that pain, doesn’t change.

Mark: I have always taught sales people that you have to have the mentality that this is YOUR business, even when you work for someone else. You only get paid for what you produce. Period - You are your own company. And if that is the case you need to treat it like you own company and put in together a business plan to follow. What’s your thought on sales people treating their sales career like their OWN business rather than following a strict corporate culture. I always thrived in that environment.

Danita: I agree 100 percent, Mark. That’s why our coaching programs are set up with that in mind.

Bio: Danita Bye

Nationally recognized sales management and leadership expert Danita Bye has built her reputation on building and inspiring intentional, no excuse, high-performance sales teams that deliver bottom line results. With her unique Fortune-100 turned-entrepreneur perspective, Danita helps CEOs and company presidents take their national and international businesses to the next level. Her excuse-free approach to sales management, combined with her leadership acumen, enables sales staff and sales management to increase sales, boost profitability and create predictable revenue streams, all while reducing sales costs.

As a 10-year veteran of the Xerox Corporation, Danita consistently achieved award winning sales performance before leaving Xerox to become an equity partner and national sales manager for Minneapolis-based Micro-Tech Hearing Instruments, where she increased annual revenues from $300,000 to $10 million in just seven years. Danita has authored articles in Upsize Magazine, The Hearing Review, the Star Tribune, and Business Journal, where she was recently honored as one of the its Top 25 Women to Watch. Danita also featured as a guest on “The Ruthless Entrepreneur television show” which will begin airing on Oxygen Network in 2010. Her new book, Sales Management in the No Excuse Zone, is due for release in 2010.

Danita can be contacted at Danita@SalesGrowthSpecialists.com or 612-267-3320

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