CREATIVE SELLING!

CREATIVE SELLING!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 13, 2010


CONFIDENT IS SELF-CONTROL

I have had the good fortune to look back on a long and productive life in which many things have gone my way. I do this without conceit but with a sense of sharing what is possible if you believe in yourself in a self-aware, self-reliant, self-accepting, and self-directing way, a way in which what you do is to your benefit rather than detriment. After all, you are all you have in the final analysis, as you come in alone and you leave alone. No one, absolutely no one has a right to disrespect you, including yourself.

It has been my experience that there are two motors operating within our consciousness. One is self-creation and the other is self-destruction.

Chances are we are always somewhere between these two extremes, vacillating back and forth, often losing precious energy going nowhere. You cannot be in control and confident if you are always trying to please others at the expense of pleasing yourself, or doing what others think is best for you finding little time to pursue what you would prefer. If you don’t know whether you are afoot or horseback, coming or going, between a rock and a hard place, or on the horns of dilemma, someone else is managing your life, you surely aren’t.

Confidence is a self-control mechanism that comes into play to put the mind in concert with the will so that self-creation triumphs over self-destruction. No stage more dramatically presents this conflict than in selling.

THE THEATRE OF COOPERATION

The “theatre of cooperation” is the theatre of life, not only those with selling careers, but for everyone. All of us are dedicated to giving value added status to whatever our endeavors might be. This theatre is a special place. That is why this book has been prepared for a twenty-first century audience.

In this theatre, you determine whether you are the buyer or the seller, whether you have something to share as the seller or something you need as the buyer. It is this theatre that determines whether you are going to give or receive something worthwhile, or are going to be imprisoned in a second-hand, second-rate life in which someone else does all the buying and selling for you. I am thinking of the media for one and the Internet for another. There is no substitute for selling and buying in the flesh on a first-hand, first-rate basis. Then the opinions you have are self-generated and not manufactured for your consumption. In any case, it is a quid pro quo theatre.

Now, in the theatre of selling, you are going to encounter a certain number of people who are bent on seeing you fail rather than succeed. They believe there is not enough room for everyone to be successful when there is always more than enough room.

A person needs to define the situation clearly and manage its nuances sensibly to cope in this theatre.

I learned this the hard way. Married, with a young family, working as a chemist in research and development with Standard Brands, Inc., a food processing company, operating in my hometown of Clinton, Iowa, the prospects were not good with a bachelor’s degree. So, I considered graduate school, being granted a fellowship to an eastern university. One has weaknesses as well as strengths. I was good at manipulating chemical symbols, but a bust in the laboratory. My quest for further training in chemistry had to be away from the laboratory and toward teaching or theoretical research. Knowing this was not a problem because the better we know ourselves the better we tend to know and understand others, and the less likely they can manipulate us away from our strengths.

An examination of my finances made it clear that I had to supplement this stipend in order to assume the fellowship. I checked CHEMICAL & ENGINEERING NEWS for job opportunities, and one stuck out. It pictured a field test kit with positions for chemical sales engineers. I interviewed and was hired by Nalco Chemical Company. It seemed not too far a jump from the lab into the field.

Not knowing anything about selling or fieldwork, I discovered quickly that my natural tendency to be direct was a handicap. I also learned that it was not my nature to be devious, or political. Nor was I concerned about collateral damage to sensitive egos.

After extensive technical training in Chicago at the company’s headquarters, I was shipped off to Indianapolis, Indiana. There, I traveled the first month with the area manager. At the end of this period, he asked me what I had learned. Like the chemist I had been, and having had an analytical disposition, I answered him bluntly.

In my critique, I referenced the fact he never asked for a single order; that calls appeared social calls with us mainly spinning our wheels. Looking at my notes, I mentioned that he never inquired about what problems they were having, or how we could help. Instead, he had a set spiel about the company’s technical leadership and its commitment to research and development, even including the self-congratulations of our having the best-trained field engineers in the business. This, I added, made some of our contacts squirm uncomfortably.

The following Monday I came to the office with only the area and district manager present. They sat there behind adjoining desks with stone faces as if high priests of the Inquisition. I shivered as I entered knowing this was not good.

With somber nods, they motioned for me to sit, which I did on a chair in front of them. Then they proceeded to tell me I was not cut out for fieldwork, not temperamentally suited to sales, too insensitive to other people’s feelings. It was clearly a shock because I had passed the psychiatric interview, psychology tests, and executive interviews without sounding alarm bells. “Do you know we hire only one of every two hundred interviewed?” I failed to see the point, sat there passively, and didn’t even shrug my shoulders.

The district manager said I should look for another job, taking a long drag on his cigarette, adding magnanimously, “We are giving you some marginal accounts to service; you can upgrade them if so inclined, and call on competitor accounts in the area.” Then waxing serious again, laid down the gauntlet. “After two months, if you’ve not acquired another position, we’ll have no other option but to let you go.”

This put me in something of a swoon. I collected the service accounts, a map designating my area of operation, samples of literature, and expense account report forms. Then the stone faces told me without a word I should exit immediately.

I had a wife and two small children, with another on the way; cut off from the security of the laboratory with no job prospects on the horizon, and little chance of supplementing my fellowship with sufficient funds to assume it. I was in survival mode.

My first thought was masochistic, as I felt somehow relieved. Failure was a new experience. I went to a bar, and I don’t drink. It was ten o’clock in the morning, and the bar was full of customers, which I found curious. I ordered a Seven-Up, and got a look from the bartender that resembled the stone faces I had just left. I nursed the drink with my eyes downcast, which must have telegraphed understanding for no one disturbed me.

Once outside the bar, I didn’t return to my car, but went for a walk that must have been four or five miles because I didn’t return for nearly an hour and a half. I was trying to decide what I was going to tell my wife when I got home. And as is my nature, I chose to tell her nothing.

Instead, I went about scheduling my service calls, and studying the product literature. These were not very profitable accounts, and had been neglected. Not surprisingly, they were glad to see me. It also proved possible to service them from early in the morning until late at night across the state, as many operated around the clock, seven days a week. Twelve hour days became routine, and unexpectedly, enjoyable.

Engineers were anxious to discuss problems they were having, and how our products performed or failed to perform. They proved able teachers as they familiarized me with complex mechanical systems from a practical operational point of view. My training was strong on theory but weak on application, so this proved invaluable.

I would sit with operators in the power plant, the control room of the air conditioning system, or stand with them on the deck of a cooling tower and discuss operating problems. We were partners. I found I had a facility to explain chemical technology simply and to draw meaningful schematics of systems that made my customers attentive students.

This mutual enrichment made each call an anticipated event. Chronic problems were located and dealt with as we found some of my products improved and others worsened conditions because they were poorly applied. One of the early findings was that dosage control was poor.

Chemicals were being fed through bypass feeders that resulted in mechanical surges of chemical dosage, which made control difficult. Needed were electrical positive displacement pumps that could feed chemicals at the prescribed dosage on a continuous basis. Once the equipment was installed, operations improved dramatically.

My first real selling experience was selling a product we didn’t produce, positive displacement pumps. I surveyed the literature on pumps, and came to recommend a certain company’s product, showing my customers how this would improve their operations, reduce downtime, save costs of chemicals, and advance overall efficiency.

So successful was I in selling these pumps that I got a call one day from a manufacturer’s representative. He wanted to know how much commission I expected from the selling of the pumps. This floored me, as this never entered my mind. I answered my concern was for controlled chemical feed, and nothing more. He thought I was putting him on, but I insisted. Thus a colleague in another company came to complement my work. He was the first of many through the years.

My very first sales calls sticks in memory, largely because it wasn’t a prospect, but a milk distribution center. I noted the large semis coming in, and thought they must have scale and corrosion problems, not thinking of my chemicals being contaminants; actually, not thinking at all. I wanted to get beyond my nervousness.

I gave a hurried sales presentation to the manager of this center. Afterward, he explained he could not use me, and then added, “Can I make a suggestion?” I said yes, confessing I was new to selling. “Don’t ever lose your openness. It is refreshing. I’m telling you this as someone who just met you. You’re not here to barrel me over, but to help me. That is clear, but as I explained, that is not possible.”

My lack of selling sophistication was common in a company that had a three-year technical sales training program in which no one was expected to sell before the end of that period. Here I was out making sales calls after a month on the job. I was out of my depth on that proverbial plank about to have it sawed off behind me. I had no choice but to find my own way.

FORCED ON A FAST TRACK FOR SURVIVAL

It may seem strange but during those first two months on my own I never turned on the television in my motel, never did anything but prepare for the next day. I came to develop matrixes in an attempt to understand the nuances of the sales calls. I commenced to notice that there was a consistency between the way I was greeted and treated at the reception desk, and beyond.

I also noted that everyone carries their geography with them no matter who they are. Work areas were not even subtle in reflection of this geography; nor were the manners, language and thought processes of those contacted. It was as if everyone was trying to tell me who and what they were if I would only listen. This was taken in and recalled later, often with surprising insight.

No matter how insignificant or troubling the call had been I would write down briefly what I had experienced after the call. I created notebook after notebook about these observations, which I would review periodically to glean some insight into my approach.

Another thing, I became a student of my competitors’ products and services. I gained a sense of competitors’ strengths and weaknesses as I learned of the strengths and weaknesses of my company’s products and services.

In that first two-month period, I devised a plan of minor and major objectives for each call, feeling that I was not ready for the major objective, or the order, but that I should diagram it as if I were.

A routine was established in which I planned two calls each day on competitor accounts during business hours because I could make two or three calls after business hours on my own accounts.

A schematic was developed of competitors: how long with the account; frequency of service; and sense of satisfaction. I even checked to see how often my company called on these competitor accounts. To my surprise, I found companies that had been with competitors for up to ten years hadn’t seen someone from my company in a year; more than ten years, no calls at all, not even courtesy calls. As much as that astonished me, I knew there was little point in sharing it with my management.

Increasingly, it became apparent: selling was the most natural of enterprises, but sellers and buyers often had a low opinion of the process. I wondered why. I had never done anything that was more refreshing and satisfying, nor had I ever experienced such freedom or invigorating contact.

One day, after a terrible call in which I felt insulted by a customer, I got my dander up and walked out of his office in a huff. It was an ill-advised move as the person contacted my company and I nearly lost my two-month cushion before being terminated.

Fortunately for me, it blew over and I learned a great deal. I learned: “the sales call was not all about me, but the problem of selling was.” A light turned on that would ultimately lead to CONFIDENT SELLING, as I became a student of the profession, not only of the how, but the why of selling as well, which is all about CONFIDENT THINKING.

During that first two-month period until the time of my first retirement ten years later, I learned from my mistakes. That learning can be reduced to a statement:

“I (seller) must accept myself as I am, and others as I find them.” And a corollary to that statement: “If I am capable of doing this, I will be self-aware, self-reliant, self-directed and self-assertive because there will be no false gods in my path.”

Once I came to that realization, I saw the problem was not selling to another, but my selling myself on my value to another.

I saw I was the only barrier to my success, not someone else. It wasn’t the resistance of another that I had to overcome but my own resistance to my worthiness to be the vehicle to someone else’s success, and thus to my own.

From that epiphany, things started to break for me.

I called on accounts that had been with competitors from anywhere from ten to twenty-five years and amazing things started to happen. Before the two-months were up, I was the leading seller in a seven-man district sales force of veteran sales engineers. I had sold the largest account that had been sold in the district in the last ten years. It was an account that had been with a competitor longer than that period. I continued to sell, so much so that the formula of compensation had to be changed, or I would be making more than the veterans.

Within a year on the job, word spread about my success, and I was invited to speak at regional sales meetings to share my “magic” formula. There was no magic formula. I wasn’t quite sure what it was because I lacked a sales vocabulary to describe my success. It was in reading selling books that I found they had it all wrong, leastwise in my case.

This presented another problem. My approach was intuitive and conceptual rather than mechanical and manipulative. I was reading the buyer and his needs and not riding shotgun hoping to hit something with a blitzkrieg approach.

There was psychology and sociology to my approach, yet, at that time, I had not been a student of either discipline. I was a reader of novels, and novels are about people in human situations attempting to cope with life’s complexities. Novelist Somerset Maugham claims novels are only for entertainment not edification. Yet novels did help me gain insight into real people in real situations.

Typically, engineers scoff at the idea of reading fiction, preferring nonfiction technical books. As my methodology came clearer to me, knowing this, I put it in a format that would match as much as possible the way my colleagues preferred to think.

SERENDIPITY

This did not escape senior management. Nalco was a small chemical company in an ambitious international growth mode. They were looking for ways to be more effective sellers throughout the world. The word spread of my work first in Indiana and then Kentucky. People were sent to travel with me to observe my selling approach, which was to take technical selling problems and reduce them to people perception problems.

As a seller, I saw myself as a problem solver with the buyer as my partner. This unique orientation led to confident selling and thinking. The serendipity of this approach found me rising from a field technical sales manager to a line executive in international operations for Nalco Chemical Company, working in South America, Europe and South Africa. It was after South Africa, only in my mid-thirties, that I retired and wrote CONFIDENT SELLING (1970). Forty years later, CREATIVE SELLING and CONFIDENT THINKING now follow, two highly original works, which are testimony to what can be accomplished when we (1) are our own best friend; (2) accept ourselves as we are, and (3) deal with others as we find them. It has worked wonders for me. To that end I wish you well, and hope that this helps change not only your career, but your perspective on life as well.

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