PROSPECTING YOUR WAY TO SALES SUCCESS

Chapter 20, For Sales People Only

I frequently run into salespeople who ask me whether they should go and work for this company or that company. Over the years, I have developed a pretty good understanding that it really doesn't matter so much whether you go to work for one or the other as long as you're working for a decent, honest company with a good product or service to sell. What matters a great deal more is which manager you work for. Whether he or she is called a branch manager, general agent, broker, sales manager, or supreme leader, your manager will be the most important person in your life for the next two years. (If you can survive the first two years, you can survive as long as you choose. By then, you're a professional.) I know many sales managers who almost never lose sales people due to failure. And rarely do they ever lose sales people to rival firms. These managers hire, train, manage, and motivate their sales crew to become winners.

So if you are out looking for a sales job, don't take the first offer you get. Conduct your own interview. You're interviewing for the most important person in your life for the next two years. Here are some things to look for as you interview for a manager.

     1) Can the manager see into the sales room from his or her office? This may sound like an odd requirement. However, I've seen too many managers who get behind closed doors, crunch their numbers, and never become really involved with the day-to-day activities of their sales force. They are protected by iron maiden secretaries, intimidating offices, throne-like desks, and while they may be very successful as sales managers, it's more likely they inherited an office with big hitters rather than grew their big hitters from scratch. You want an office where the manager is involved. If the manager can't see what's going on, in my experience, he or she is not involved.

     2) Find out what the manager's turnover is.

Ask the manager, "If you hired ten people a year ago, how many of them are with you today?" And then ask, "How much money are the ones who are still with you today making?" And finally, "Do you mind if I talk to two or three of your one-year salespeople!"

In talking with those salespeople, find out what you get in the way of additional training. Does the sales manager himself or herself ever go and make sales calls? And of course find out how much money the one-year survivor is making by asking him or her as well as the manager.

     3) Ask what the manager expects in the way of hours.

If you get a typical forty-hour-a-week answer, know that you are probably doomed to failure in that office. It takes a substantial commitment to get a new sales career off the ground, and if anybody tells you that you can do it by seeing only the old customers in a territory, you can figure at best you're good for whatever the starting salary or draw is and not a whole lot more. If you exceed that, they may cut your territory. You will never enjoy the great potential of a sales career if you're offered a 40-hour a week job.

     4) Find out if you can do the work.

If possible, ask to go out on a sales call with one of the one-year survivors and with someone who is established in the business. See if it's the kind of work you can do. I can tell you this for certain. If you don't like the work, or if you don't like the people to whom you sell, you are dooming yourself to a life of misery and frustration. What could be worse than getting up in the morning to go sell something you don't like to people you despise?