Garth's World

Don’ts for a Sales Call

Last week I somewhat lazily posted Fowler’s pep talk for writing a concise and effective prospecting email to an executive. Who knew that during the same week that this was posted, I would become the target of one of the lamest sales outreaches I have ever had the pleasure to ignore and ultimately stifle.

As it says in my contact instructions on Jigsaw--which a sales guy should ignore at his own peril- I am open to receiving contact from most salespeople out of professional courtesy. I simply ask that people note my job responsibilities and direct their enquiries about technology, marketing software, or financial advice to the appropriate person (VP engineering, VP Marketing or some other founder guy- I spend my leftover pennies at the track- respectively). What I failed to include is that Jigsaw is a data company, so list rental companies also need not apply. Duh.

So who starts in on me last week?

Monday at around 10AM (wrong #1- I’m groggy from weekend and way too busy then) some guy with the title National Sales Director from Data Company X (#2) leaves me a message with just his first name (#3) saying that it is urgent (HUGE #4) that I call him back. That’s it.

I run the Community for Jigsaw and my contact data is splashed all over the site. A message like this could potentially be from:

- one of our 485,000 registered members

- some friend- of- a -friend on Linked In

- an old lady that doesn’t quite get the web and wants to report a fight she witnessed at Denny’s (I get those calls, too)

- a wayward in-law travelling from the East Coast

- ANYBODY.

But I had a feeling this was a sales call so I looked up the person in our member directory and he was not a Jigsaw member (#5). Data Company X was in Jigsaw, so I noted the general number and the fact that some rookie sales guy was trying to sell me data and forgot about it.

Later that day I get a one line email with no mention of a connection to the vmail (#6) and no description of what this guy is offering( #3 x 2)- only that it is “urgent that I call him back “(#4 x2). Tuesday another voicemail (#1-6), although this time he mentions that “Jigsaw’s marketing will see immediate results.” (#7 vague) So at least I know he isn’t a relative. Thursday I get a voicemail from another name from that company (#8) with the same message (#1-6).After seeing my phone light up with this number maybe 5 more times on Friday (#9- don’t short call me unless you have at least talked with me before and we have established who you are and what you want- otherwise I am liable to pick up the phone and TEAR YOU A NEW ONE) that week, I finally call them back out of curiosity to see if this might be a joke.

The next wave of idiocy I need to bullet point or this will be 5 pages long:

10.  I get put on hold for 5 minutes (like he works for my bank)

11. When he does answer he doesn’t remember who I am (I’m almost laughing now)

12. He fumbles over my question about the other name calling me, first saying it was his “helper” and then affirming my statement that he is the Director so maybe that was a sales guy on his team

13. I have to interrupt a diatribe about his office setup to ask what the call is for

14. He tells me that his company “has produced great marketing results for Jigsaw’s competitors"

15. He lists 4 companies of which only one is even in the same business as Jigsaw

16. He attempts to argue with me as to what Jigsaw does (OK knucklehead, experiment over)

17. After I rip him for leaving “urgent” messages, tell him to email any future sales correspondence and hang up on him, he sends me an email that says “here is my contact information, its (sic) your move.” 

I am so glad Jigsaw is in the data business. With sales guys like this as our competition, the industry’s lunch is ours!

A Sales Email that doesn’t Suck

My first post on Garth’s World talks generally how to construct an introductory client communication that won’t get machine gunned into the junk file by a busy executive. Here is a specific example that caught Jim’s (Fowler, Jigsaw CEO) eye and his response. It’s from a search consultant, too, which I think qualifies as a miracle- I get an hourly spam cannonball from the same knucklehead using a Gmail address telling me how he can triple my SEM…

Read from the top:

---

From: [Search marketing sales guy]
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 12:57 PM
To: Jim Fowler
Subject: Short bullet point email

Jim,

I talked to one of your guys at Ad:Tech. I like love your service.

Your Google search advertising leaves much to be desired. Here's why:

• You're paying too much per click (by 21% to 39%)
• Your ads are buried below your competition (screenshot enclosed)
• You're missing many of the latest optimization techniques

If you're open to a new progressive search marketing agency, when can we talk?

[First Name and signature file]

---

From: Jim Fowler
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 1:15 PM
To:Sales Guy, Jigsaw Marketing folks
Subject: RE: Short bullet point email

[Sales guy],

I’m thinking about using your email as a model for how to communicate with me.  Way to listen and get my attention at the same time.  Please forward this to your boss and tell him I suggest you get a raise.  I’ve also cc’d our VP of Global Sales/BizDev, as we’re always looking for great sales people.

The person who has complete budget and responsibility for SEM/SEO is [Jigsaw marketing director] (she’s on Jigsaw).  I’ve cc’d her here. 

Note: we are coming off a nasty experience with [your competitor].  [our director] will likely be gun shy.

Best of luck.

Fowler

---

From: Jim Fowler
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 1:50 PM
To: Biz Dev; Sales (All); Marketing; Garth Moulton
Subject: FW: Short bullet point email

Team,

This is one of the finest examples of a sales outreach email I’ve ever seen:

• He read and listened to my contact preferences/instructions
• Used the fact that he read the instructions to get my attention
• VERY crisp communication throughout the email – no extra blah, blah, blah.
• He complimented Jigsaw, which is like complimenting my kid.  Makes me feel good.
• The bullet points have numbers (yes, they’re probably BS, but who cares – got my attention)
• Attached an actual real-life example of what we can do to improve
• Provided a call to action at the end
• Notice the response I gave him.  I provided extremely valuable data – something that will happen to you too, if you do it right like [sales guy].

REALLY impressive.  I would be very pleased to see the quality of our outbound 1to1 emails from our sales team be of this quality.  Please make it happen!

Fowler

Jigsaw is the new Gold Club

A couple of weeks ago I received an email from a young sales guy who wrote:

if you get the chance, could you possibly write about tactics that you have used to get into a companies face? (What do you do as the sales guy with the Jigsaw Info? type post).

I know we all have our secret tactics, but I guess me being in my mid 20's and working with some older sales men, they do seem to go about sales the old fashioned way (Knocking on doors etc). They would most likely ridicule me for using a site like Jigsaw/Linkedin.

My approach has been email/phone/mail, and of course Jigsaw helps me with this. If what I'm asking goes against salesman code 101, just ignore my request!

As much as I like ranting about sales topics that are somewhat tangential to Jigsaw, please allow me a week to try and tackle these questions. Jigsaw does pay the bills, after all. (Well, sort of pays my bills- I do live in Silicon Valley.)

First of all I like how the emailer above says “get into a companies face.” Even though his English is questionable (like most sales people I know), he is correct in targeting a company first. If you asked me how to get into a CEO’s face I would refer you to a dentist. Even though you can get a CEO’s email and direct dial telephone number from Jigsaw, don’t be “that guy” that war dials at the highest level possible without preparation. Pick a more reasonable entry point, or several (Jigsaw usually has many), that are at the director, manager or even individual contributor level and find someone in the organization that will answer some strategic questions for you as to what the ultimate decisionmaker is trying to accomplish.  Because you’re not necessarily trying to sell them, they are more likely to open up and help you match your widget with their needs, which is the whole ballgame. Then you use what you learned to arrange a carefully scripted call with the CEO, who will listen to you because you are spot on target with your 15 minutes.

As far as the “old fashioned salespeople” that would “mock you for using Jigsaw/Linked In,” these people are your job security. A recession is coming and grandpa will get the pink slip donkey punch first. The key elements of the sales revolution taking place are all the new communication techniques and information sources that are available to a salesperson (and the customer). You need to be an expert in all of them. Use whatever combination, order and cadence of telephone, email, text, online contact or in–person introduction that works the best for you- try them all. We have salespeople “knocking on our door” at Jigsaw- they sell office supplies and our Admin sends ‘em packing. The days of the silverback (like the gorilla) salesguy doing deals on the golf course and the strip joint are over.

People tell me all the time that “even if I can’t get to the exact person I’m looking for on Jigsaw, I get by the gatekeepers and into the right floor or building.” This is really the whole point of the service- to get you to the starting line. How you run the race from there is up to you.

Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy

As I mentioned last week, all customer facing people at Jigsaw were pressure tested after some technical problems with a release. As I often do in these times, I picked one communication from a particularly unreasonable person and wrote a response without my filter on, which I then shared with our company for a laugh but DID NOT SEND. The correspondence below is between me and a CIO of a medium sized financial services firm who wants his information removed from Jigsaw. Please note that his company has at least 10 people that are Jigsaw members!

---------------------------------------------

From: CIO Financial Services Company [mailto:someguy@sanctimonious.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2008 11:36 AM
To: Garth Moulton
Subject: Contact Information

Garth,

Please provide me with the contact information for [Jigsaw Screen Name].  I am interested in posting his/her information online so that they too can receive annoying cold calls from vendors that they would never do business with.  It is only appropriate that I share the experience, especially since are clearly benefiting from selling my information.

[CIO’s First Name]

---

From: Garth Moulton [mailto:garth@jigsaw.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2008 4:38 PM
To: CIO guy
Cc: Kristine Rogers
Subject: RE: Contact Information

Hi ______,

I am sorry to hear that you don’t approve of Jigsaw. Please understand that you do have some options, neither of which is possible with other data companies that no doubt have your info as a CIO of a company with a public website.

1. You can post a free form note to anyone who views your contact profile on Jigsaw. Tell them you hate cold calls, hate Jigsaw, whatever you like. Simply click the “Am I in Jigsaw” link and follow instructions for Setting Contact Preferences.

2. You can have your contact removed from Jigsaw by contacting Kristine Rogers and following a few procedures. I have copied her above.

Jigsaw does not provide the contact information of its members.

Thanks.

Garth

PS- We subject ourselves to the same scrutiny as the contacts in our database, as you probably found my contact information on the site…

---

From: CIO Guy
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2008 2:40 PM
To: Garth Moulton
Cc: Kristine Rogers
Subject: RE: Contact Information

Garth – you are on your blog pimping your product – which is how I got your address.  And I do mean pimping.

Kristin – please start the process of removing me from your site.

---

Mr. [CIO Last Name],

Thank you for providing me with a clarification as to where you obtained my email address and for your unblinking assessment of my blog. I was under the impression that the majority of my audience was sales people, but it is good to see that crotchety old technology types are accessing it as well. I assume you have a director of IT that keeps the computers running at 15 locations while you engage with lowly blog pimps like me?

Since we created Jigsaw in 2003 we have received approximately 500 requests for removal of information (out of 8.5 million), and the irony never escapes me that it is almost without fail top executives from companies that make their living by using the very information that we provide. How do the sales people at the high and mighty [medium sized financial services company] obtain the contact information (as well as highly private info about net wealth, etc)? Divine intervention? I think not. More likely your company purchases this information or obtains through a “partnership” with some other financial institution. Probably the same place that sends my 18 month old daughter credit card offers.

And since we are calling each other names (sticks and stones, dill bag), let’s look at your company’s relationship to the world’s oldest profession. On your website your PR department brags of “creating innovative mortgage backed security solutions” as late as April of last year. Aren’t you guys just the pimp for the mortgage broker whores selling subprime loans? Maybe ‘money launderer’ is a better analogy.

Either way, Pot, this is Kettle, and guess what- you’re black.

Sincerely,

Garth Moulton

PS Pimpin’ ain’t easy.

Go Hug your Customer Support People

Recently Jigsaw experienced an engineering hiccup (felt more like a gastric bypass) that caused interruptions in service for our most important members- the ones that use Jigsaw every day. To make matters worse, we had to bring down the system that we use to support our customers in order to keep the main database working, so all of our customer facing people were flying blind while attempting to fix account mistakes, help customers register, search for data, etc. All this happened during the last week of the quarter, when inside sales people in particular are trying to make their appt and calling goals- definitely not time to play “Where’s Waldo?” with our website.

It was during this time that I renewed my amazement with our customer support team and everyone that jumped in to help triage- including many of our loyal members.

I think the internal abilities necessary to do customer support and hunter type sales are completely opposite, like the autonomous nervous system (or whatever it is) that doesn’t allow you to sneeze with your eyes open. Sales people that are trying to get a deal that are forced to answer product problems react with symptoms that include “pupil dilation, increased sweating, rapid heart rate, occasional vomiting” and become apt to shed their clothes run out the building like Benny Hill.  I personally am the escalation point for many of the issues- and was forced to write out a scathing response to one of our members that had I sent it would most likely have sparked (another) lawsuit. (Look for a copy of that email in next week’s blog.)

Anyway, now that the quarter is done and you have submitted that great work of fiction known as your personal taxes, go hug your customer support people. They will be cleaning up on all the promises you made to get that deal to drop in March, and if they are like the Jigsaw support team, they’ll be doing it with a smile.

*quote taken from Wikipedia’s article on fight or flight response.

Quarter End Madness- 5 Tips for Non-Sales people

Like every company that lives and dies by the quarterly performance of their direct sales team (what I’ll safely call “everyone”), Jigsaw goes into a state of hyperactivity bordering on complete pandemonium  in the last days and hours of the fiscal quarter. We order in lunch for sales, get execs on planes, curse the fact that March 31 is a Sunday, collectively storm the finance and legal department to process contracts and generally pull our pants down for anyone that can potentially spend money. It’s not pretty, but it’s the American Way.

Tips and tactics for salespeople at quarter end you can find just about anywhere, and they all seem to be written by people that never carried a bag or have crossed over to the fairyland world of the customer (note- For the most part I’m there now and it is sweet- may I never have to format another discount schedule into Word at 4:50 PM on New Year’s Eve again!). Salespeople would love to spread their deals evenly over the year, but the world won’t let them. Even the freak of nature that prospects daily, buys all his Christmas presents by Halloween and follows every Miller Heiman step to the letter gets forced into the salmon spawn fracas that is the last day of the selling period.

What I’m going to list today is 5 tips for all non-sales people (what I’ll call “overhead”) for the quarter end.

5- Marketing people: Now is not the time to ask salespeople for references or what they think about the latest webinar.  We don’t even have time to check out the new intern. How about a well placed Public Relations moment (like our company just named “master of the universe” by Gartner) that I can share with my prospect?

4- If you are an engineer, unless you are working on a product that I’m going to deliver as part of the big deal, there is “nothing you can do.” Thank you; please keep up the good work. But we don’t log in and peer over your shoulder in between World of Warcraft sessions while you code- so back to your hole.

3- Sales managers: sales people need you to ride them on Feb. 15^th about their pipeline. By March 31^st you just need to be giving a united front to the CFO as to why we should be selling our product for pennies on the dollar. Any other communication from you at this time is completely useless- which should feel normal.

2- Sales VP: If you are as big a rainmaker as you originally sold to the CEO and board then you should be parked in the office of the executive buyer of every big deal with knee pads and a massage chair. Otherwise see number 3.

1- Everyone else: The only requests being fulfilled from salespeople originate from the customers at the top of the commit line with today’s date on it. You want to do something? Get me a sandwich and another diet coke.

Two Guys in a Hot Tub

One of the most colorful guys I know worked with me on a technology sales team back in Boston. Whenever he sat through a particularly useless or unproductive sales meeting he would describe it as “ just anuthah hawt tub meetin with the boys.” Now before you call the politically correct police and have me Don Imused off the dorkospere, let me quickly describe that this is in no way a homosexual slight. What my friend is talking about is the pointless chatter that occurs between two single guys in a hot tub. They might be drinking wine, talking up the night’s prospects, checking out the view, barely clothed if at all, but when it comes down to brass tacks they’re just passing time until the girls show up.

Having worked in mostly early stage technology companies, I have always extended this analogy to Business Development.  All those guys talk the talk, have “deals,” take up tons of support resources and executive time, but in the end all you have is a bunch of hot air to show for it. Sales guys without a quota. Two guys in a hot tub.

I understand the basic math behind the advantages of having partners sell your product. The problem is that in early stage technology companies, they usually haven’t really figured out to sell their own product directly, never mind train some other companies’ sales guys how to spin their crap. The biggest waste of time occurs when a small company is trying to partner with a huge company. Usually the BD guy pushing the deal from the small company is a former big company sales guy (or better yet “Channel Sales”) trying to push what he knows on an unsuspecting group of entrepreneurs who are intoxicated by the size of the potential channel.  $250K in “Co-

Marketing and Training Fees” and thousands of hours later the small company takes a dive into the chasm.

Jigsaw is the first company where I have seen the partner strategy work, and it isn’t because I started the business development department (gasp). It is because Jigsaw sells a simple product in very high demand and there is well established reseller channel for lists. Our biz dev guys still struggle to get the data dinosaur folks to speak our specific, community driven language, but the product stands for itself.

Billy’s First Sales Meeting

While I’m no expert presenter, I do have a ton of experience on both sides of the pre-cursor to the sales presentation, a little one act play that I will call the in-person introduction meeting.   Important distinction: This is not the big show-up-and-throw-up, mega demo with your rock star (in his own mind) founder that the customer has come to expect as your first meeting.  Real salespeople don’t volunteer to perform these vendor cattle calls, which I think are as useful to the sales cycle as the magician in your booth at the trade show.  What I’m talking about is a carefully scripted meeting where you (the sales guy that doesn’t suck) lay the foundation for your deal by 1) confirming a need/budget and 2) nailing down your champion.  (A “coach” is someone who wears Russell Athletic poly pant shorts and tries to get your kid to stop picking his nose on the mound.  A “champion” is your eyes, ears and mouthpiece in the target company, the one that is going to ultimately get you your deal.) If you are diligent about setting up this critical step, let me relate a few pieces of advice for how to proceed.

First off, I’m assuming a baseline knowledge level here- so if I have to tell you to prepare with stuff like learn what the company does, know what your company does, know at least the title of everyone that will be present, listen to the customer, don’t let your tech guy argue with anyone, be on time, don’t reek of alcohol, cologne or cigarette smoke, shut your damn cell phone off -then you’re too stupid, next patient please…

Empathy is key. Really try to get what is going on behind the eyes of each person in the room. Try to understand what each person has to gain by being there and watch their reactions to your big points. See how they interact with each other. For god’s sake shut up when anyone in the room is talking and treat everyone equally. Everyone hates that guy who only sucks up to the VP and besides, you never know who really wears the pants.

Lose your context. I don’t mean “use the force, Luke,” just get over whatever is going on with you for the moment. It doesn’t matter if you shotgunned 12 beers at your buddy’s lake house on Saturday, stayed up all night with your kid’s mad case of whooping cough, or walked away from a ten car pile-up on the freeway before the meeting. You the person is just a distraction in the 20 minutes you have to get your point across, so save it for drinks after the formal meeting is over.

Conversation-not presentation. Use very little, or better yet, no PowerPoint. Just like TV is passive learning (notice your kid’s jaw go slack after 15 minutes of watching any program- even the learning channel), slides keep your customer from really taking in what you are saying.  And it is a plexi-glass shield that inhibits your ability to understand what your customer is thinking- so learn how to have a conversation and leave the white board kung fu to the guy taking second.

Repetition is your friend. This is the most counterintuitive point for a thinking person, but just ask George Bush, it works. Pick a few points that you have to get across and say them slightly differently over and over. You win when the customer repeats them back to you using his own language. Now whenever your company or product comes up in meetings that you can’t attend (otherwise known as the point of sale), you have your own Manchurian Candidate spitting out your selling points.

Be positive. About everything. Even if you think everyone is with you while you bash Windows, the Alternative Minimum Tax, or Cartman’s favorite- hippies, you don’t want your first impression to be associated with anything negative. Don’t smack talk your competition at this meeting- or ever, for that matter. There are so much more evolved ways to belittle them (maybe next week I’ll tell them).

That’s it. Please don’t take this as an invitation to call me and set up a similar meeting. Jigsaw is a community of 400,000 sales people- I have seen more pitches than the 2007 Boston Red Sox.

Jigsaw the Political Movement

Back when Jigsaw was first getting started, I handled all things customer facing. This included sales, data acquisition, business development and by far the most humbling, customer support. Luckily I had developed an outlet for my pent up frustration after turning the other cheek in the face of moronic customers for year as a sales person- I simply would write them an email response and send it to my friends and co-workers for fun. Here is one I sent last year:

---

From: LankyFranky

Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007

To: info@jigsaw.com
Subject: Re: Jigsaw Administrative Action in Your Favor

Your data sucks. Perhaps you should spend some money fixing it instead of relying on a socialist approach which, history shows us, never works.

Dear LankyFranky,

Thank you for your constructive feedback and rarely seen socio-economic/governmental criticism of Jigsaw. I was actually a history major from Brown University; I would love to hear the historical analogies that each and every one of our 235,000 members could come up with about our business.

But since, sadly, I will live not enough lifetimes to process all these complaints, maybe I can make some guesses as to how our competitors would stack up using this form of criticism:

Dunn and Bradstreet: around since 1850, known to be jerks to small companies: English monarchy

InfoUsa: Got their start by copying phonebooks, ate up lots of smaller co’s, CEO accused of creating sub companies to employ his relatives: Feudalism

Harte Hankes: charges exorbitant rates for managing company data, no one knows anyone who works there: Dictatorship

ZoomInfo: Sends crawlers out on the Internet to aggregate profile data: Terminator Technoligopy

Maybe you could think of some more examples and put them on a T-shirt to sell at the medieval festivals that you no doubt attend monthly. In the meantime, we will take the money that we make from our “socialist” idea and invest it in more ideas that take advantage of the power of the network.

Sincerely,

Che Guevara

Do you mind if I multi-task?

This morning I was affected by an all too common menace of our times. While backing out of a parking spot, I was boxed in by a Suburban (was there ever a car more perfectly named?) that was moving directly into my path, causing me to actually have to pull forward into the spot in front of me to avoid an accident. At first I was struck by the fact that driving that dump truck should require a Class C license, but when the driver came into view I saw the root of the problem. Passing by without even a courtesy glare to show that I existed was a women juggling her cell phone, a hot Starbucks, and what appeared to be at least one kid in the back, on her way to get on the freeway where she could potentially wipe out several hundred other people.

If this happened to my dad, everyone in the car would be hearing about the breakdown in common decency for the next 30 minutes. But I live in Silicon Valley, and I just chalked it up to the scourge of the modern era: multi-tasking.

Salespeople are not only forced to multi-task every day, but they are victimized by it constantly. What better time to catch up on email than when a sales guy is on the line? “Do you mind if I multi-task” asks the CIO as he opens up another chat window during your presentation that was shortened to 15 minutes when his admin showed you in late. Hey, no- not at all! Mind if I whistle? Smoke a cigarette? Call my wife and catch daily heat for not having a new suggestion for dinner? I’m a busy sales guy and I got stuff to do!

Human beings are not wired to do more than one thing at a time. Multi-tasking just means half doing (at best) multiple activities at once. When it involves communicating to another person being it is the ultimate (although most common) form of disrespect.  If you are talking with someone and your eyes and hands wander to your email, you have stopped having a conversation and are now in “ugh huh, yuht, duh, um, what did you just say?” land. And admit it; your stress level is rising because you can’t really process the emails, either. You’ll just have to work overtime because you accidentally attached the wrong file to your developers and now the whole project has to be redone. I’m no Dr. Phil, but I bet this speeds your journey to a sunny window down the hall with Depends and applesauce.

My CEO and co-founder will undoubtedly disagree with this post, as will many of you out there being the “top baller, shot caller” business folks that you are. But the next time you give in to that Crackberry urge while speaking with someone, think of the Suburban lady, a role now played by you.