Who needs a Coach?!

One of the best questions I ever asked in nearly 30 years in sales . . .

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Was possibly one of my first !

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We have all heard the importance of having a mentor and/or a coach; I have found sometimes these relationships don’t have to be formal, but can simply be mutually valuable friendships. I will go so far as to say, if you haven’t leveraged the advice of a good coach or mentor, you haven’t met your full potential.

Many of you know, I spent the first 7.5 years of my career as an US Army Armor Officer. In fact, when I first got into sales I used to declare “I was just a dumb ex-Army Officer.”. I created a few breaks and got lucky enough to be hired by GE Healthcare (GE Medical Systems at that time).

One of my first official meetings was a regional Sales Meeting in New York City.

Now we get to that question I felt was most valuable.

I walked up to 3 or 4 people that I had met and asked: “Who is the best Salesperson in this meeting?”

Every one of them pointed to a small Italian American I will call John M. John was a basic clinical level Ultrasound salesperson. We all had a Ford Taurus for company cars, and John had a white Ford Van where he traveled around with his ultrasound demo units. Our average sales sizes were a few hundred thousand to a million dollars, and John’s was closer to $ 40-50 thousand dollars. He far out-earned all of us.

I made it my point to get to know John. I walked up and introduced myself, and after some small talk, I said “I had heard he was very successful at what he did, and as someone new to sales, could I understand why he felt he was so successful? “

He said he felt it was a pretty simple, repeatable process;

1.?????? He worked very hard to understand what a customer needed in their words, and to build a trusting relationship.

2.?????? He felt as soon as he had “earned” the right, he asked for their business. Once they agreed, he asked for them to consider doing business with him on his terms.

This piqued my curiosity, and I interrupted and asked what he meant by “his terms?”

He shared that, over time, he had learned that the best way for a customer to buy their ultrasound system from him was via a short term (typically 12-24 month) lease agreement, with a consistent monthly payment to pay for equipment and service. This allowed for many benefits to the customer (and also John M I would add).

His customer had a consistent payment they could budget for, and it freed up capital for other pursuits. John could sell them upgrades and/or swap out their equipment mid-term and get them newer clinical capabilities. In doing so, he could keep the payment the same or increase it slightly, and/or adjust the lease term to cover the new investment.? A win-win.

I asked John, there had to be more he did that made him so successful.

He thought about it for a second, and he opened his briefcase and showed me a thick computer printout. I asked what this was? He said these are my customers and this is my call plan; this is a chronological list, by lease expiration date, of all my customers and what they own. It has gotten very large over the last 8-10 years and I haven’t had to prospect for new customers in a long time.

I simply plan my selling off this list and improving the clinical capabilities and relationships with my customers.

So what is the “so what” of this story? What are the top 3 things I learned from John M?

1.?????? John M learned to create business processes to take care of his customers, and leverage what we all know, it is much easier and takes less time to sell to a satisfied, repeat customer, than it does to sell to a new customer.

2.?????? John M was organized with his customers, and had a plan to create predictable, growing results. He had the data and used it successfully.

3.?????? John M was fiercely protective of his customer facing, selling time. He knew early on to leverage his time to get better financial results. He didn’t waste any time. For him his sales calls were like a Dr. meeting with a patient. 15-20 mins to diagnose issues and recommend solutions.

John M didn’t tell me this but at that time, selling $ 40-50K ultrasound machines, and sometimes upgrades for $ 10-20 thousand, John M was consistently making well over $ 600 to 700 thousand a year. At that same time, ?GE Healthcare had most of us at target annual incomes $ 200-225 thousand per year. John M learned to do a lot right, and he was having a lot if fun, and his customer’s loved and trusted him.

And I also was reminded of the importance of a mentor or role model.

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