Susan Wilson Solovic: Hello and welcome to SBTV.com. I’m Susan Wilson Solovic. Joining us today is Jaynie Smith. She is the author of Creating Competitive Advantage. She’s also the President of Smart Advantage, a marketing and management consulting firm. Her clients include mid-sized and Fortune 500 companies and she works with CEOs all around the world. Jaynie thank you so much for being here today.
Jaynie Smith: Thank you for having me.
Susan Wilson Solovic: One of the biggest challenges I think small businesses have is finding qualified salespeople who can really get out there and sell their products and services. What advice would you share with us?
Jaynie Smith: I have an interesting experienced recently that made me really focused on this. I’m going to talk about a big company first in my experience, and I’m going to relay back to small companies. I bought one of this new tangled telephones and I say that because it has more features on it. Then I’ll ever use in this lifetime.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Oh, they’re smarter than we are.
Jaynie Smith: It’s unbelievable.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Yeah, absolutely.
Jaynie Smith: But I couldn’t get the thing to work and I thought well, I know I’m not really smart about this, so less be me so I took it into the place I bought it. I have to the spent probably 12 to 14 hours with this young man behind the counter trying to get this thing working. First thing was a lemon, second one; he didn’t have to set up anymore than I did. And there were all kinds of glitches on it, and it was so interesting to me because he said to me, “I’ve got in trouble 1:21 time you were in here by my manager. She doesn’t want me helping customers.” And I said, “Really?” He said, “Yeah, so come in when she is not here so I can finish helping you.” And I thought, that’s very interesting. He said, “You know my brother I have a twin brother. My brother works for a competitor of this company, and he gets in trouble if he doesn’t help the customers.”
I mean he clearly has one and you don’t. He said, “Yeah, tell me about it.” I said, “So, let me ask you something. How long ago have you written your resume? For be looking for another job?” He says, “Well, how did you know?” I said, “Because I know you’re good.” I said to this young you’re bright. You’re good. You know what needs to be done for the customer, but you won’t stay in an organization that doesn’t support doing the right thing and the right thing is helping the customer. He said, “Of course it is if I don’t help you. You turn the phone back in. I don’t win. The company doesn’t win, and the customer doesn’t win. How silly is that.” And I said, “I’ve got it.”
So I thought about this and I thought smart salespeople can smell a company that supports them in the sales process. Supporting in the sales process means having competitive advantages, supporting the salespeople, doing what’s right for the customer, and having enough competitive advantages that makes the company sound because smart salespeople don’t want to work for a company in a nosedive. They want to work for healthy company.
What keeps the company healthy? Good margins. What keeps good margins? The ability to sell not based on price, and so all of those things when you can do that and you can articulate it to candidates coming in the door if you’re trying to hire for sales. The more you can build the case. A were sound company here’s our competitive advantages. Be here’s what will do to support you. So you can do your job right. They’ll come and they’ll stay, but they don’t stay when your eyes not on the ball both delivery and competitive advantages that end in the customer.
Susan Wilson Solovic: That’s very interesting. Another thing I’m curious about though is salespeople who seem to be good out work quickly. They can develop those relationships. I think you talk about Jack Lemon in your book, but they just can’t seem to close the deal. Why is that and what can they do.
Jaynie Smith: Because there’s a slick sells in who are really good at that.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Take away our salesman that’s what I call them.
Jaynie Smith: Wait, they depend way too much on the smooching and guess what? The smooching is not working anymore. I mean there just some people into some extent you know I take you to play golf. I’ll take you out to dinner. We do that with all our clients. Take you on my boat and all that’s great until what? Until the competitor offers me a lower price, and then it’s sorry. You’re a business person. And a businessperson you don’t understand you do the same thing, right?
Susan Wilson Solovic: It’s just business.
Jaynie Smith: It’s just business. So I say you’re salespeople are knocking on the competitor’s store everyday. The competitor salespeople are knocking on your customer’s door everyday. When you can answer why us in the compelling way, and that’s my tea for every company. You must be able to answer why us that has nothing to do with price.
What are the reasons I should do business with you and not the competition and when sales people are arm with that. They will do much better then they slick salesperson who will get away with that for a while.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Sure.
Jaynie Smith: But don’t we see through that in a very short time.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Absolutely. Well, you also talk about an example in your book about a restaurant that was very, very busy but had a long waiting schedule and people would walk out the door, and that was actually the importance for and inventions.
Jaynie Smith: Yeah.
Susan Wilson Solovic: How do that worked? What happened?
Jaynie Smith: That was a wonderful. It was one of my early clients. The company is called JTech. These guys had a restaurant and on the Intercostals in Florida. People were walking away and they couldn’t stand watching customers walked away. So they were also techno junkies and they created the first pager. You’re going to the restaurant here’s your coaster pager. It will beep and light up when your table is ready. We’ve all have them.
Well, anyway JTech invented this many years ago to keep their customers from walking away. Much to their surprised other restaurant wanted it, hospitals wanted it. All kinds of organizations wanted it. Churches wanted it for the nursery to beat the person when the child was acting and so on. So then all of the sudden they’re out of the restaurant business and went into the manufacturing business. They started to manufacture these wonderful beepers. What was so interesting was in those days Motorola was one of the companies that was the original beeper people.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Right.
Jaynie Smith: Remember, when we don’t have cell phones we have beepers all the time.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Absolutely, right. I don’t really remember, but not as you think.
Jaynie Smith: I’ve heard about it.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Yeah, all right, exactly.
Jaynie Smith: Anyway, they saw that Motorola sell themselves as the beeper people and they came into the market and they said, “Hey, we should be manufacturing that.” So JTech called my company and then said, “What are we going to do?” So we did one of these drills down sessions I do, and we came up with the most interesting competitive advantage in the form of a competitive business statement. It turns out they could say their salespeople were then armed with the statement of the 50 major restaurant chains in America. 100% used JTech pagers.
Susan Wilson Solovic: That’s right.
Jaynie Smith: Very simple, it was true. It was measurable. It positioned as leaders. And it says, “Hey, you want to go try that one just roll enough the manufacturing floor or hours spent out there, and endorse by all these major restaurant chains. And it kept the competitor a day and allowed them to keep their margins and keep helping that company since it’s been sold twice to venture catalyst you’ve just brought to a next level and the next level has been very exciting.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Well, that’s a great story. What about there’s the old proverbial question, our salespeople borne or made? How would you answer that?
Jaynie Smith: You know that’s a tough one. I think that they’re made, and I tell you why I think that. In my book I gave three anecdotal stories of companies that I worked with. One case they’re CPAs and forgive me for the CPAs out there, but they’re not notoriously the best salesman. Interior designers who are great at designs, but they don’t selling in fact, the CEO called us in because they wouldn’t sell. And the third one was nurses for a home health care agency.
In all three cases, none of whom are slick salespeople not of whom are borne to be salesman. We simply armed them with competitive advantage statements. Were out there and said, “Here, just leave this on a card. Leave behind discuss it point by point. You don’t need to be slick and go on through all the motions and just tell them what differentiates you. Answer the question why ask, and in each case the nurses 40% increase in revenue that company, the home health care agency. Thirty percent, for the interior designers and the CPAs I forget what the percentages but it was a staggering increased in assets under management for money management business.
And in every case they weren’t borne salesmen we just armed them, so I don’t know how to answer the question. I think you can make them by giving them the right tools.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Interesting. Actually, my husband and I were in Mexico. And we went on a time share tour, and before we went my husband says, “Susan there’s no way were buying a time share.” But the salesperson was so knowledgeable and well equipped with presenting a picture that shows the real advantage and benefits to us. Then guess what? We bought a time share.
Jaynie Smith: You’ve got to be careful on those.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Yes, absolutely, but we love it.
Jaynie Smith: But that’s the thing.
Susan Wilson Solovic: And that’s great. Yes absolutely.
Jaynie Smith: I mean if they can make the case.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Right.
Jaynie Smith: I just see so many companies where salespeople are not making the case. They’re relying too much on clichés and they’re letting price be the differentiator. I owe the CEOs I worked with the constantly they are telling me, “If one more salesperson comes to me and says lower the price I’m going to scream.” And they hear it all the time.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Well, and another you’re making about the sales process is it there’s a CEO that says, “I’ve never heard of you. I don’t know anything about you. Why should I bother to see you?” It’s so important that you’re able to establish that awareness in the marketplace.
Jaynie Smith: Yeah, and another thing around the communication on that if you have a website in my mind that first page it shouldn’t be products and services. It should definitely not be the about us story. Nobody cares I hate to tell you.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Right.
Jaynie Smith: It should be why us, bullet point, bullet point, bullet point.
Susan Wilson Solovic: I see that a lot with real estate agents. They want to tell you all about themselves where I’m interested in what’s your closure rate.
Jaynie Smith: Yeah.
Susan Wilson Solovic: How long does it take you to sell?
Jaynie Smith: Exactly.
Susan Wilson Solovic: So that’s a good example.
Jaynie Smith: This is the why ask. Those are the quantified. I actually had a real estate client in an audience that I still do, and she said, “I changed here in the stock change the nature of her business because she’s got real crystal clear on that, tripled her business in that kind of a soft market and she got very focused on that just instead.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Very interesting. Well, these are some great tips and I’m sure that everybody wants to increase their sales ratio on hit, so it’s all in here Creating Competitive Advantage and Jaynie I appreciate you being here.
Jaynie Smith: Thank you for having me.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Thanks and thanks to all of you for watching us here on SBTV.com. Remember, small business is our only business.
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