The Sales Head Office; Selling and Sales Management

Bill Porter is likely the most intriguing sales person you’ve never heard of.

Bill Porter started with the Watkins Company in 1955 selling their products door to door. For those of you that haven’t heard of Watkins, they have been selling natural home and health care products since the late 1800’s. Their roots are as a direct sales organization with reps selling and distributing product door to door.

Bill Porter has cerebral palsy and the story of Bill Porter is one of perseverance.

Bill persuaded a Watkins manager in 1955 to give him their worst route, a 10 mile stretch in Portland, in order to prove himself. At first he struggled to connect with the homeowners on his route but Bill persevered and over the course of 4 decades built amazing relationships with his`clients. He was named Watkins salesperson of the year in 1989 and knocked doors on his route until 1997.

In 2002 TNT released a made for TV movie called Door to Door based on Bill Porter’s life. William H Macy plays Bill and does an amazing job. If your expecting the Boiler Room or Glengarry Glen Ross you’ll be disappointed. If you are interested in an inspiring story about a sales person that overcame huge odds to produce great results, make the effort to track this movie down.

My current team is generating excellent prospecting activity. They are willing to hit the street every day and meet with business owners to uncover opportunities.

The biggest challenge my team is having is managing follow up; more accurately ensuring that follow up is taking place in a timely fashion.

I was scouring the web the other day and found a video from a Vanouver sales trainer named Shane Gibson.

Shane highlights a great eample of persistant, creative follow up, that ultimately led to a sale. A good lesson for all of us:

2 Right 2 Left Prospecting

If you are doing business in an area of town, an office building or an industrial complex, you should always take 10 minutes and visit each 2 companies to the left and right of the company you are there to see.

If you keep some information packages in your car, you will have everything you need, to walk in and have a very brief, informal meeting with the companies around your customers. Don’t be afraid to tell them why you are in the area - visiting current customers.

In most industries the receptionist is not the decision maker and has little influence. When faced with a live person and not a phone call, though, they will be much more inclined to give up information. If you generate a good list of opening questions to ask the gatekeepers you should have good success at getting a brief, impromptu meeting with the person who you want to speak with.

And the sales cycle begins!

If you did this with a portfolio of 70 clients, you will hit about 280 additional prospects during your regular visits. If you close 5% of those, you have just found 14 new accounts. The 14 new customers would represent approximately $xx,xxx in net new business for your region.

Keys to success:

Yes, it’s basic and straightforward which makes you wonder why so many salespeople drive home or back to the office after a meeting.

I have a great success story from one of my reps that I want to pass on! This fellow met with a large corporate prospect of ours today; the client has 160 stores and 3,000 employees and is one of the biggest opportunities in his territory. The call went well and it looks like we will be providing them products and services on a go forward basis - enough business that they should end up as one of our top ten accounts over the next 12 months.

After hearing about this win, I logged in to our CRM to take a look at the length of the sales cycle with this client. I knew that we had been persuing them for the past three years and wanted to find out why this particular rep had succeeded where a previous rep had failed. The key to closing this client was patient persistance. The previous rep had ultimately found the buyer but had only put 4 activities (calls/emails) in over a 2 year period to try and book a face to face sales call.

The new rep, on the other hand, logged a persistant 18 activities over a 5 month period before booking the first meeting! 

I would encourage you to take a look at your stuck accounts/prospects and ask yourself if you have exhausted every possible avenue in gaining an appointment. Throw another call in (and let them know you will be following up on the message if they don’t return your call), send a letter, use their company internet to find a new contact or drop in in person. Get creative. Eventually you will be rewarded and your sales will grow substantially.