sales | Greg Lawlor

I left teaching 25 years ago to take a position selling fitness equipment to gyms and commercial settings. 100% commission at the time, 30 years old, mortgage, hoping to start a family. 2^nd career. Never did sales.

Since that time, I have sold in a small territory in 2 languages, sold in a big one in 1 language.

Managed a small team while selling and managed a big team.

Worked on very small transactions, been a part of some very large ones.

I have met many very interesting people, travelled to many interesting places.

I have been disappointed and lost many times, however, my wins overshadow those losses.

I have lost money but overall made a good living.

The bottom line is that I have had the privilege of supplying lots and lots of exercise equipment to organizations that focus on creating healthy communities.

I don’t think there has been 1 day when I have not learned a lesson, and maybe that is why I have survived 25 years. 25 years x approx. 300 working days a year = 7500 lessons!! (on the low end!! )

For you, I have narrowed it down to my top 25 .

These are the 25 lessons from 25 years in sales.

Have a passion, or at least an interest in the product you are representing. There is a reason most sales business cards say “sales representative”. We are being paid to represent the company for whom we work. Being passionate about exercise, it was a good fit to represent companies that created tools to help exercisers.

Believe in your organization and the people who run it. Without that belief, it is very difficult to speak confidently about the equipment you represent.

As a former team sport athlete growing up, I was always more comfortable in a team. That worked out because to be efficient and productive in sales, you need a supporting team. In our industry, that team included administration, logistics, technical support and finance. Without that support, you risk becoming a jack of many trades, and master of none.

Understand the business you are in. How does your organization compete, be profitable, win and lose. While working with a team, and specializing in 1 aspect of the sale (the front end), understanding the business side became a massive asset. My first organization were stickler for inventory control. In big pieces of exercise equipment, 1 mistake around inventory costs a lot. Getting on an installation and being a part of the last touch point to a customer was also a valuable perspective.

Understand the customer. The customer is not always right, but putting yourself in the customer position is a good start to making a connection and getting towards a sale. What are their concerns, fears, challenges and worries? Without understanding this, you are playing roulette instead of establishing a starting point to enter the conversation. The entire point of sales is to knowledgeably offer a product that solves a problem for the customer.

Many customers have been disappointed before ever meeting you!

Have a USP. Early on I learned that having pieces of the puzzle others could not compete with was critical. Being unique. Unique selling proposition. USP. What makes what is being offered unique? Different? Worth a 2^nd look by your customer. A unique selling proposition is taught by every business school from here to the north pole. Being able to transfer that to traction for your offer and your customer is a direct link to your sales success.

Be of “service” mindset. Sales is another term to be of service. To get someone to write a cheque for something you offer and be excited to do so, comes from creating something of value for someone else.

Study and master lead generation. This has changed a ton over 25 years. Social media, email marketing did not exist when I started. However, the phone did and so did the standard mail. These are still so valuable. What’s working and how is a big part finding those interested in what you offer, or perhaps more relevantly in an information age, have them find you! If consistency is the goal, then lead generation is the skill that sets you on your away to achieving the goal.

Understand your industry: growth trends, top players, best practices. You can learn a lot from what the best are doing. How can you learn from top performers. When I say industry, I refer to sales, not just your product category. I have been in business to business sales for most of my career, so this is the industry I study.

Understanding how your competitors sell and market is a good idea. (Your customer options) Most important lesson here, to do something different. For sure, important to know best practices, and integrate into some of your offering.

Professional development. Never stop learning. 25 years ago it was reading. Still is. Today, podcasts, webinars and seminars. Focusing on getting better everyday. As John wooden said “it is what your learn after you know it all that counts”.

Use the products you sell. This is linked to a passion for what you represent. Also, Use the products you compete against. This is especially relevant for me over the years, in fitness equipment. But this applies to many products. If you don’t use your products, you are not the advocate you claim to be for your customer.

Get good at listening. Really listening. The more I listened and observed, the more consistent I got. Simple. Not easy.

Practice communication skills. A good doctor can communicate medical speak into terms the average person understands. They do so with compassion and with humility. Same with a financial advisor taking complex financial information and converting it into terms we can understand. A good salesperson does the same. The communication of message needs to be customized to the person being addressed. This is a skill that can only be developed through practice. Just like an actor with a script.

Don’t let numbers scare you and don’t be a slave to them. Numbers in business and sales are how we keep score. It is how we get paid. They scare many. However, they are a guide on performance and validation of your skills. They don’t lie. I always loved the picture numbers can provide. In my business, B2B sales, numbers paint the picture for the customer as well. Best embrace them and use them to your benefit.

The work expands to the time you have : if you are good, you will be in demand : don’t let that take you away from what’s important to you. I have not always been good at this. Many years, I worked long hours to learn a craft that was foreign to me. Very few people are good at a skill early on. As I started I got some advice, don’t let the company and their interests take you away from what’s important in your life. You only have 1 chance to raise your kids and be home for important events.

I don’t mind admitting that I struggled with this for some time, because the ego stroke that comes from being in demand is gratifying. In hindsight, it is not all that important. The work is there. Especially if you are good. If you are good, you can develop your own terms of work.

Master Sales Skills. Have a process. A musician knows what skills to practice to get better. Many salespeople don’t. The theory of sales and the practice of sales often get lost in translation. There are skills that you need to be good at to be better at sales. They include many of what is shared here. Knowledge of your customer, and market. Listening and asking relevant questions. Focus and follow up. Communication in various forms, from writing to presenting. Most importantly problem solving. The most important skills come from practice. But sales success starts with knowing the skills that work.

Positioning. This is a big one. Thanks Dan Kennedy! This is connected to lead generation. If you can position yourself as being valuable to your customer, sales consistency will follow.

Collect money. Early on in my sales career, I was at a conference and someone I struck up a conversation with started bragging about all the quotes he had out in the field. Being new to sales, I had to question whether this was important in performance. It is. But not as important as getting orders and collecting money. Collecting money is the most important skill. Get good at it.

Understand & leverage finance. This is connected to knowing and understand numbers. In B2B sales, finance plays a big role. The largest sales I have been involved in were over $1M in equipment. The role of exchange rates, depreciation, interest rates, cash flow and other aspects of finance are critical in putting together a winning proposal.

Don’t try to please everyone. It was definitely a process to understand that I was not going to please everyone. Problems happen. Deliverables sometimes don’t meet expectations. All opportunities are not created equal. Being able to say no, or deal with disappointment or negative reviews is part of the job. Especially if you experience some success, many negative naysayers will target you and try to knock you down. Don’t let it deter you from what is important.

Learn from your mistakes. Oh, the mistakes. I think it was Michael Jordan who said, that he succeeded with game winning shots because he failed so many times. Not many sales trainings will talk of the journey of mistakes and losses. But they are valuable. Learn from them. I did.

Create goals you can be excited about. The self-help industry will talk of goal setting. Which is fine and good. However, having goals that you can get excited about is most often connected to your why.

Focus. The more success one has, the more distractions come your way. Stay focused on what’s important to you while striking a balance with what’s going on around you. At times during my career I think I suffered from tunnel vision, and that hurt just as much as getting distracted.

Stand for something. How do you want to be known by coworkers and customers?

Last, but not least, have fun. This won’t happen all the time. But if you represent products and organizations you like, work with people you enjoy, it won’t always seem like a job. This is very high on the list. The equipment industry gave me outlet to determine my income while being part of an industry that I love. I worked hard, filled up my library and applied what could. I had some great wins, but also some devastating losses.

The more I worked in sales, the more l realized that the people were the most important thing.

It is not about product or quotas or margins or goals.

It is about helping people.

That was and is fun!

There are many things that sales management and business coaching books won’t teach you. 1 of them is training an employee, who does well then decides to jump ship to compete with you.

Any business owner or senior manager will tell you that grooming young talent comes with its pitfalls. It requires an investment of time and money, expert guidance and patience.

In business to business sales (B2B), the sales cycles can be as long as 1-2 years. There are lots of skills to master.

From lead generation & prospecting, to product, customer and competitor knowledge. There is also administration of the sale and management of customer relationship management software (CRM) to increase efficiency. Managing a pipeline, relationships, working with support personnel, leveraging finance, negotiation and follow up skills are also required for consistent success. In addition, our top performers also understand and manage priorities, understand how to create value, are good with numbers, hold margins, have good follow up skills, and present well in various situations. In our fitness equipment business, knowledge of exercise science is a valued skill of our top performers.

These skills lead to an experience bank. This experience bank allows you to use the above skills for maximum performance. Most importantly, all of this is wrapped up into a unique selling proposition, an approach that positions our solution better than the others available to the customer.

The learning curve is steep, and often takes 6 months to 1 year or more for a successful representative to hit their stride.

Performance is always the #1 objective. Results. Sales. Generating revenue.

Therefore, supporting the new representative in these skills becomes a priority for the manager, because time is always of the essence.

With this training, performance and overall investment by the organization, 1 of 2 things tend to occur:

It is not a good fit for the representative. The activities required are not performed well and results are not there, and the contract needs to end.

It is a good fit and the representative builds some momentum, enough to keep going and find a rhythm. From here 2 things can happen.
- They settle in and have some success and nice long-term relationship gets established. This benefits the representative, the organization and, most importantly the customer. In many cases, these are the next wave of senior representatives and some start move into management.

The success becomes so strong that the representative starts to feel that they can get to a better opportunity. The perspective is that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence and will lead to more money and freedom. Perhaps this opportunity is one that they can run with more control and answer to less people. The feedback has been that the new opportunity won’t have as much structure and guidelines. Sometimes, they want an ownership stake or don’t feel the mother ship is supporting them as well, so they decide to leave.

In almost 20 years of sales team management, the most frequent result is #1 above. In my experience, I have found 2 reasons for this.

The profiling and interviewing process was not deliberate enough. Hire slow and let go quickly applies here and is very true.
The expectations out of the gate were not realistic for the skill level of the new representative.

Both are on the hiring organization.

The 2^nd most frequent result is 2a, they settle in, do well and are long term productive representatives. This is the most rewarding part of the work, as I have been on both sides. Representative and management.

A close 3^rd to the above is 2B. This is where the successful representative packs up and leaves for a better offer or start their own shop.

2B is every employer’s worst case scenario.

Investment into the representative, they get up and running and do well, and they leave.

In my experience, there are not many situations departing representative had as much success with the new organization.

Why would this be?

Not a clear understanding of all aspects of the business is the most logical answer. In the industry where I have the most experience, the selling of commercial fitness equipment, the capital requirements and support expertise to prop up a representative are significant. This would be akin to a top performing car salesperson starting their own dealership. But they could start their own brokerage could they not?

Of interest here is that yours truly departed a company in 2010 to start out on my own. That would be option 2B. That’s right, I was one of those people. I learned a lot with my first organization for 15 years and then felt I had reached an impasse and had to leave.

The change, at that time, propelled me into business ownership and took my career to another level. But that other level brought increased investment and exposure financially along with the eventual strong results. (We eventually sold our business in 2015 to the company I work for now.)

The ironic aspect of this, was that I never wanted to leave. I understood all that my first organization had taught me. The competitive advantage it provided me so I could focus on serving customers. That organization, however, stopped doing those things to support me and our customers suffered. Products started taking too long and other aspects required to be supported were stopped. In fact, I tried for 3 years to help the first organization get back on track, without success.

In my case, I had no choice. I had to leave. Either the company and/or the industry.

I knew going into the new venture, what the requirements in running a business run much wider and deeper than simply sales. I also partnered with 2 people who were very good at aspects of the business that I was not.

Conclusion:

I don’t think I would change a thing. I think people leaving are part of the process of running a business and/or managing a team. The key is developing a process that increases the chances of a good hiring fit and shortens the learning curve to performance.

I have been on both ends. The employee and employer. The sales representative being managed, and the manager.

I am teaching my son to find an organization within an area he is of interest, that has a great onboarding program. Regardless of where you go from there, you can not lose!

Greg Lawlor is a former schoolteacher and 25 year veteran of sales, management and business ownership. He continues to learn something new every day!

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