5 Business Lessons I Learned By Digging A Hole At The Beach

by Jim Roddy, President, Jameson Publishing

I try to read as much as I can about customer service because that's the core of any business. And I learned a ton about that subject over the weekend at the beach -- despite not having any reading material on my blanket. My 5-year-old daughter reminded me of several fundamental business lessons when she dug a hole in the sand at the beach. Let me tell you the story and share the lessons:

Lesson #1: Do something you enjoy.
Every day, some people follow this pattern: go to work, come home, and gripe about work. That's no way to live. Do what makes you happy -- not the job that pays the most money or has the most status. My daughter was happy to dig a hole and fill it with water over and over. You might be happy with an outside sales job even if your neighbors say they couldn't take the windshield time. You might enjoy the challenge of generating new business even if most of your buddies can't take the rejection. Do something you enjoy.

Lesson #2: Provide service that thrills your customers.
During one of my daughter's water runs, she came back to find a 1-year-old sitting in the pool she had created. The kid was having a blast splashing about in the shallow water. So, back to the water my daughter went to get more water to cool the kid off.

Lesson #3: Partner with the right people.
My daughter wasn't the only one lugging buckets of water from the lake. Another girl, who was about 4 years old, started helping out. But her only qualification was that she had her own bucket. One of her buckets was 6 parts water and 1 part sand ... and she promptly dumped that sand on the head of the 1-year-old, displeasing the baby and her mother. Fortunately a clean bucket of water soon followed, and the 1-year-old was back to laughing.

Lesson #4: Keep an eye on the competition.
If you have a good product or service, you'd expect all your customers to stay and your company to attract new customers, right? In reality, your competition is continually evolving, so don't rest on your laurels. My daughter's "bathing pool" was a couple feet in diameter, but just down the shore a couple older boys had built giant pools that were quickly being filled by the lapping waves. They were offering a better product that didn't require bucket lugging to keep it fresh.

Lesson #5: Continue innovating.
My daughter wanted the attention of the other kids at the beach, so she adjusted to provide something the "competition" couldn't: she began cooling off kids who were standing near her pool by dumping buckets of water on their head. The new idea led to more happy customers.

We're often running so fast trying to arrive at every meeting on time, finishing reports that are due, and putting out fires. But take a minute now to compare your business or sales territory against the 5 lessons listed above to see how well you're doing with each. You might just learn something where you least expected.

The Erie Sales Club is a joint effort of three leading local businesses: Jameson Publishing, Marsha Marsh Real Estate Services, and VertMarkets.

How To Spend Your Time Wisely

The amount of time in your life and your sales career is finite. Once it's spent, you can't get it back. To quote time management guru Alan Lakein, "Time is life. It is irreversible and irreplaceable. To waste your time is to waste your life, but to master your time is to master your life and make the most of it."

In terms of spending your time at work, each of us has a responsibility to achieve the desired outcome of every activity as effectively as possible. Most activities can be categorized into one of two types -- performance-based and process-based. Both types of activities require you to gauge the level of accuracy/completeness that is needed for the task while completing the task as quickly as possible.

Performance-Based Activities
Performance-based activities are ones which:
1. You should err more on the side of speed and achieving the desired outcome rather than being perfectly accurate and absolutely complete.
2. Have no specific right or wrong answer.
3. Have no finite end, but rather the person performing the activity defines the end.

Examples of performance-based activities include:
Pre-call planning: Theoretically, a sales rep could pre-call plan indefinitely, gathering every bit of data they can on the prospect company, their market, and the Decision Maker.
Probing to understand: A rep could ask questions indefinitely without ever delivering value to the prospect.
Skepticism: Being skeptical on any subject can be infinite. You must determine when you have enough specific information to make a judgment.

Process-Based Activities
Process-based activities are ones which:
1. Are expected to be error free. As a result, you should err more on the side of being accurate and complete vs. completing the activity quickly.
2. Have a clear right or wrong answer.
3. Have a finite end that is predetermined by someone or something rather than the person performing the activity. Once you have completed each of the steps of the job with accuracy, you can be confident the activity is complete.

Examples of process-based activities include: writing up a customer order, entering customer contact information into your CRM system, and invoicing a customer.

Your sales career will be harmed if your performance-based activities move too slowly or your process-based activities move too fast to be accurate and complete. This is not to say performance-based activities can or should be done inaccurate or incomplete, or to say process-based activities should be done slowly. The opposite is true. The more accurate/complete performance-based activities are completed, the more effective you will be. Likewise, the faster process-based activities are completed, the less overhead your business has because you'll complete more work in a day, and have time to make more sales.

Understanding the difference between performance- and process-based activities will help you become a more effective sales rep.

The Erie Sales Club is a joint effort of three leading local businesses: Jameson Publishing, Marsha Marsh Real Estate Services, and VertMarkets.

Are You A Sales Juggernaut?

A juggernaut is a sustained massive unstoppable force, campaign, movement, or object that crushes whatever is in its path. (Side note: If you want to learn more about the origin of the term "juggernaut," just click here. It's not pretty.)

Here's how being a juggernaut applies to sales: Think about pushing a Humvee with your bare hands. You have to push it hard to get started, and, at first push, it barely moves. You keep pushing and each time it moves a little more. Eventually, it's rolling on its own and can't be stopped. But, if you stopped pushing before it rolled on its own, the Humvee wouldn't have traveled much distance at all.

Sales reps must be a juggernaut in order to achieve their goals and initiatives. You must be consistent in your desire for continual self-improvement, continued satisfaction from your customers, and continued new customer acquisition. If you stop being a juggernaut in these areas, you will:
1. Have to start all over again with intense, time-consuming effort and
2. Create damage that you're not aware of while the juggernaut has stopped. Most likely, you'll become aware that the juggernaut has stopped when you're blindsided by the problem recurring. (e.g. customers leave you, you miss your sales goal, your income declines)

Let's say you've been unable to set an appointment with a prospect who you strongly believe is an excellent fit for your products and services. You've made a half-dozen phone calls to no avail. An ordinary sales rep could quit, but you know a juggernaut would apply a consistent (and creative) effort to win the customer. So you find out some personal information about the Decision Maker (DM) at the prospect company -- he loves jellybeans. So you drop off a gift of jellybeans with a personal note that you'd like to meet with him and provide products and services that are even better than jellybeans. When you finally get the appointment, it will be difficult to convince the DM to leave his current supplier. But, knowing consistent effort can win the day, you seek to understand the key metrics the DM cares about and prepare a detailed comparison of your products/services vs. those of the competition. Long story short, when you finally get the business, it will require consistent effort to set up the customer but in time you will be earning commission with less then the Herculean effort than was initially required. If at any point along the way you would have stopped acting like a juggernaut, you wouldn't be enjoying your current success.

The Erie Sales Club is a joint effort of three leading local businesses: Jameson Publishing, Marsha Marsh Real Estate Services, and VertMarkets.