REST IN PEACE.

Rest in Peace, Friend

The Demise of the Cold Call  

(From Hi-Value Capital Equipment Selling)

    

               In life, everything changes. From processes to organisms, there is nothing  absolute.  It is a fortunate fact that most of these changes take place very slowly, as otherwise, we would not have had our laws of academic fields (collectively called philosophy, here after) by which we try to understand, the things which happen all around us.        

               Some wits are of the opinion that science breeds ignorance. Their logic is that for every question science answers, two questions prop up. Therefore, science can never answer all questions because at any one time the number of questions is bound to be double or exponentially more then the number of answers. The thinking is I admit, original but the conclusions are in error. I ‘ll dispute this statement with a single sentence which is “do automobile designers start their design from the wheel?” No indeed! They do not.   
          

                  

           Similarly, capital equipment selling has also changed, in the sense that “cold calling” has become old and died. Let me define it still further, the cold call hasoutlived its usefulness just as the steam engine had given way to more modern locomotives. Cold calling was indispensable at one point of time for all selling, like the steam powered train. But in high value machinery and capital equipment selling, we do not design cars from the wheel.    However in volumetric selling, it’s still very much there-sales of hardware, valves, electrodes, machine oil mainly consumables etc. all depend upon cold calling.

                What is a high value sale? I’ll define it Anything from twenty grand and up. Earlier we did not have access to all that is happening in the world instantly. Hence, there were good chances that unless you shared the same watering hole with your competitors, you wouldn’t know who required your product. As competition grew more and more intense, watering holes became redundant and cold calling started. You dropped on potential customers and got introduced, got leads, got inquiries too if you were lucky. This is cold calling.

       

                But today with the modern technology you have at their disposal, that same information can be obtained from the internet in more details. Now let us  suppose you are an entrepreneur and you are purchasing filtration machines, of whatever type suits your purpose best, which is to filter and recover the mined coal particles and recover them. Say a  salesperson from a company comes along and makes a request to meet you. You meet him and he says they make filtration machines and he thought he would enquire if they have any requirement. You have plenty of things to do then to recite your requirement (you had met the man for the solution) so you direct him to an engineer, who tells him what he wants to know.  Say, if the proposal develops then  the person will want to meet you, but will you want to meet him?

HOW TO ATTEND A TENDER OPENING (PUBLIC SECTOR)

AS YOU'RE ON THE WAY

I do not know about you guys but I find the journeying part of any process, the most monotonic. The beginning is well, a little hard but after you begins and before you end   is the period which you may find boring, but is THE MOST IMPORTANT PART in a tendering process.

In my sales career, I have had the experience of excellent beginnings neutralized by poor follow up. And it is here that temperament and the confidence is necessary. People will try to sledge you so that you lose your concentration. There are no ground rules here. Everything is below the belt. And it is here that experience pays.

Therefore, it follows that it is here, in this stage, that you will be subjected to ridicule & challenges and as in cricket, it is necessary to keep your head straight. Think of all those runs you have scored against better attacks (if you have not, imagine you would have...forget about real life, if you cannot even DREAM about winning, you are suffering from acute loser blues! My friend, perhaps you should consider a different career and I'm not trying to be funny).

I think that before we move on to another block, maybe we should have a recap. And here goes

Tender Openings: What a specialist does

1. Be present when the tender is being opened, if it is a press tender.Do not be late.

2. Try to make a rolling-your-eyes.."young kids really" expression to the bossman.

3. Don't antagonize anyone but stand up to get the information you are entitled to.

4. If the indentor is known to you, do be in a hurry to end the process, so that the other guys know the least.

5. Judge the competition and you have the idea about their bids.

6. Do not be the first person to leave the room but don't be a pest either so that they can push you out.

7. Give interesting technical answers should you get a chance.

8. Keep your ears in the customer's room. No, I don't mean use the extendable ears invented by Fred and George in "the order of the Phoenix" but think about it and it is possible.

ANECDOTE

One of the biggest dealers of KBL once tried his best to get me out of the race. He could not do anything at the lower level and went up and met the GM of the IOCL refinery. His attempt flopped and I got that order for 2 nos HSC pumps with drives and accessories, i.e. M+P landed that supply order. I don't need to mention the dealer's name as the biggest dealers in  Assam and one of the biggest in India. The same company M+P  later became a little inedible. but life is like that. Moreover, I was lucky that by the time I quit, I had acquired the rudimentary basics of  capital goods marketing. Today M+P market in NE has gone down and the conditions exist which are only a little better then when I was there. It's become the wild west all again

Finally, I forgot to tell you how to ask for an extension. Irrespective as to whether you are organized or not, you'll always find that you are unable to complete in time. Send over a fax or an e-mail asking for an extension because of blah blah( the best excuse always is to the tender justice). Remember, always ask two times what you want and you will  get it. There is a way to do everything and everything is best done in that way. You should either do it or learn how the other man does it, and then try it your way. Its the runs which matter, not how they come

I guess that does it for today.

See you next time. 

Take care and have an awesome day

Bilbo

(I put in the Beatles photo ‘cos there is a similarity...we are on the road too but specially because I am a fan)

Dear Sir or Madam, will ya read my blog

it took me days to write it, I just slogged.

Its got a number of ads like a flick

Please why don't ya just click....
..Starving Blog writer...
Starving Blog writer...........

On Selling Capital Equipment and the Spinach Syndrome

 

Many Sales Managers and or Directors, have this strange idea that the potential clients a sales-person visits, the better. In Industrial Marketing, which comprises of high or medium value systems selling, “cold-calling prospects” is definitely not a good idea. 

Now folks, let me tell you a story. You know how your Maa used to say ‘don’t do that-it invites the evil eye”. and… if you asked why? The answer was invariably “.. That-does-not-concern-you" or “because –I-said-so”? My mother said that my gran had said 'spinach should not be eaten at night'.Now, I had a nice think on this one and I think I deduced the reason. Indian spinach has some green bugs, which in the night, are difficult to see and separate.A 100 years back everything was done by kerosene-lamp-illumination. 
Probably, an important man found a few bugs in his spinach at night. So, what did he do? The man of the house contemplated the question and said " Bingo! I'll just put this rule “no-spinach-at-night" and I won't tell them the reason too”. So most probably, that's the way it happened, with all old sayings too.

                                                                                       

Now, maybe you can appreciate the reason for the anecdote. Cold Calling in sales is something like the spinach and insect at night case. Decision makers in Industrial Plants have no time to entertain sales-people on fishing expeditions. Cold calling was never very popular with customers but it had to be done. This was the situation earlier as without cold calls; there was no way to collect authentic market information. Now as you are aware, information is power. The person with the greater power wins. 

Hence, the earlier Gurus of sales boasted of their cold calling prowess. Sales book even had chapters on how to get past the ogre which was always the tough secretary of the decision maker, chewing nails. What these guru’s don’t realize that times have changed. (Irrespective of how many copies of Spencer Johnson’s Who took my cheese? they may own-they don’t understand change) So, they continue to send new sales people into the market …” a sales person and working in the office…” No! that will never do. These people have sever affliction of what I call “ the spinach syndrome”.

  In Industrial Sales & Marketing of Capital Equipment, the internet has unseated the cold-call from its “ throne of indispensability" . Cold calling now  can be retired off and allowed to stay on for a few years more as an adviser. Information is power. Having information gives you an immense advantage over your competitors. This is all the more true in industrial marketing, where competition is limited but of the best quality and the value of a small order is not less than $25,000

But then comes the million dollar question, how can information be collected then. From the internet of course...this is evolution, you can't stop it so you do the next big thing, you join it. There are many people who will disagree but aren't there always?

How can one collect information from the web? Company web sites hardly give out that kind of  information. It is here that a little bit of creative thinking helps. I have listed out a few types of web-sites below where all information, industrial marketing managers require are available.

(1)B2B trading portals and Business Directories: These give out all the information and all you have to do is to know where the information is. (An example is http://www.processregister.com which has a section on projects. You are given the location, the value and the promoter. The website even has the projects classified sector wise. What else do you need?'

(2)Job Portals: These give out information in the form of “Project Managers required for…” or “We require for our new project…”

(3)Stock Market sites: Watch out for the analysis given in these sites. All new projects from the plan level may be found here.

(4)Websites of Consultants: Consultants often give out details of new consulting jobs they are working on.If you think that you will get full details of a project from tapping into the above or similar resources, you will be disappointed. What you will get is “leads”. Taking these leads, do some research. With practice, you will soon become adept and fast in the research. Industrial selling initiated by researching the web, is called SBR (Selling by Research).

Teach your sales people to research encourage them to do so and I can guarantee you that you will never be short of leads. In many companies, employees are not allowed to browse the net. This is a prime example of the spinach Syndrome. Here, the onus lies on the marketing manager to convince the management that this should not be applicable to the Sales & Marketing Department.

The next time your salesperson visits a potential customer, insist that he or she he knows what the prospect requires. Ask the prospect for a presentation permission. Ask them to tell the prospect how your products can help them save money. During the presentation, practice relationship selling. Show and prove that you know your product. Now, compare this to the competitor’s sales rep that pesters the customer with questions. No prizes for guessing who is more likely to be favored by the prospect for the order! Monetize your sales pitch. Don't say my equipment has 90% efficiency- say "with my equipment your energy costs will come down 20%, which means a savng of $10,000 p.a. (just a figure I plucked from the air)

Hope you liked the post. if you did, please bolster my spirits by clicking on the icons below. Have an awesome day

Love

Bilbo

Stage II : The Most Important Stage

Hello Friends,

We now come to the middle 

portion, and the events that take 

place here, are going to make or 

break, all the hard work done. 

Here the main job is to

“Follow –Up”. Yes –I know that

follow ups can be a bit of a bore

sometimes.

But dude, there is just no help for it. You want to sell, you have to develop enthusiasm for follow-up

"Follow up has to be done if you want to sell."

There was once this Sales Guru called Pup

Whose favorite dish was fish-heads in Ketchup’

“The three basic rules" he'd say

“in the science of sales any day"

“Is follow-up, follow-up and FOLLOW-UP”

In Public Sector Tendering, what happens now is that Materials Dept. sends your file back to person who indented for it. This means the department and the officer who required it in the first place. I am assuming that you have built a relationship with the him/her by now. After that post in relationship selling, I am assuming that you-my readers-are using it to the extent possible.A few things have to be kept in mind when you are participating in Public Sector selling through Tenders, of capital equipment.

1.The "Indenter" is interested to know whether the equipment that you are trying to sell will give him the service he requires or not. Even if there is a single iota of doubt, he won’t proceed ahead on your proposal. Therefore, what you need to have in dollops is confidence. Because trust me, very few people can let their inner confusion not show outside. (The indenter will be an experienced person and he will barely need to ask two or three questions to know that you have no idea of what you are speaking about.). So try to get rid of all your confusion if you have any.

2.If you are representing a foreign OEM, then your product may have done fabulous work in Brazil and Peru. Do not make the mistake of glorifying these achievements. Their presence on your experience list is enough. Maybe you are new in India and have sold only one or two units so far. Glorify that achievement. That will serve you in better steed then the South American glorious stories.

Now, what about service? Do you have service people in your company who are competent as well as presentable? Or,  is your management only thinking about recruiting people? Or, maybe you have already hired experienced engineers and you've sent them overseas for training? Please note that you should not tell lies and untruths. If your product is slightly technically inferior, tell the truth. Even a person who is not the champion intellect is more likely to buy a slightly technically inferior product but with good service rather then a sophisticated gizmo which requires four(4) days for someone to come over from Koln.

Always remember that “ what the customer is interested in knowing: is how your product can help his organization in the subject application. He is definitely not interested in knowing about anything else before that..not the strict QA policy you have..not the prize for CRM your Paris Office won..no, nor even your recent order from Mars. This may appear to be obvious but we sometimes fall victim to our ego's. Talk to the point.

 It maybe so that your competitor's equipment had failed somewhere. Maybe your accessory life is higher. Do not criticize your competitor. Do not bring these up. Sometimes you have to be a little unethical!. But  do keep a professional looking paper which lists everything...on a plain white paper with you where your competitor's evil record is exposed and your advantages are monetized to the extent possible. Use it discreetly only when required. (say customer says”I heard that your equipment caused problems in… from… You can then say its funny, look at this..maybe I’ve got something here..Aaah here it is..I’ve never told you anything because I don’t believe in negative marketing)

That's the end of Part II and the file goes back to the Materials department.

Looking forward to the next time,we sign off now

Your friendly blogger

Bilbo