Kate Kingston
It’s a good bet the old adage, ‘Those who can’t do teach’ doesn’t apply to your average document imaging industry sales consultant. Sales consulting and training has become a cottage industry as folks who were once out in the field selling day in and day out or running dealerships are now enjoying second careers offering training and consulting to dealer principals, sales managers, and other sales professionals.
With that in mind we’re going to examine the value proposition that these consultants provide to the dealer community, focusing on why there’s a need for these services even in a successful dealership and what’s being taught with an emphasis on new sales strategies.
Why, Why, Why?
“Dealers call me because they want to increase market share, because they want their sales executives to be hunters not farmers, and they don’t necessarily know how to do it on their own or have the time,” says Kate Kingston, president and founder of the Kingston Training Group.
Kingston is a familiar face at industry conferences and events and for the past 14 years has been training office technology dealerships to prospect effectively at the C-level.
“If we can get them in front of the customer more often, more proposals will be written, which means they’ve increased not only the number of new clients they have, but also the size because we’re hitting the C-level and working on larger opportunities,” states Kingston. “That’s what builds a dealership.”
One often hears there aren’t any guarantees in life, but Kingston would disagree, especially since the Kingston Training Group guarantees results.
“I have a track record of delivering over a 50 percent increase in new meetings across any sales force I train or my training is free,” she says. “You bring me in because there is an ROI that’s guaranteed, because you may not have time to do it, and because my entire life’s work is making sure business technology sales executives can get in front of their customers successfully at a decision maker level.”
Tom Callinan
Dealers who hire Strategy Development are some of the most successful dealerships in the industry.
Why do they need help if they’re already successful?
“The most successful companies are always looking to improve,” contends Tom Callinan, principal of Strategy Development. “A successful entrepreneur can never be an expert in every area. I bring sales management expertise and put a stronger process in place.”
In a $10 million dealership the owner might be considered the process [for sales management], but once a dealership grows to $30 or $40 million with multiple branches, Callinan says the process the smaller entrepreneur originally had isn’t scalable or repeatable.
“I can eliminate the mistakes, and over time they’ll be able to do it as well as I do it,” says Callinan.
Strategy Development offers training and consulting. With its consulting business Strategy Development helps the dealership implement these new management or sales processes discussed during their training sessions in a step-by-step fashion.
“If you attend one of our training sessions we’d lay all the processes out for you from A-Z,” explains Callinan. “If [you only attend the training session but don’t become] a client, my expectation would be you’d go back and implement it, but I’d have no way of knowing if you did.”
Andy Slawetsky
Industry Analysts has been offering sales training since the 1990’s, much of it originally focused on product and how to sell one brand against another. Now much of its training is brand agnostic and geared towards the new rep, or as a refresher for a senior rep who needs to learn new tricks of the sales trade.
“It’s basic sales training,” explains Andy Slawetsky, president of Industry Analysts. “How to get to the decision maker, for example.”
He maintains that many dealers are looking for training beyond what’s available from their manufacturers. “Not that the manufacturers aren’t providing good training, but sometimes they provide the same thing over and over and dealers just want something a little different,” states Slawetsky.
Dealers who contact Slawetsky for training either read the Industry Analysts newsletter or see a Tweet that strikes a nerve when he comments on what a sales rep might experience while closing a deal, something that Slawetsky experienced back when he was selling copiers.
As to why dealers can’t do this themselves, Slawetsky says, “They don’t want to deal with it; they don’t have a curriculum, they want turnkey.”
He acknowledges that some of the bigger dealerships have their own training departments, but many don’t have the bandwidth. He also acknowledges that it’s not unusual for new reps to spend a lot of time in the field with an experienced rep, which can be a great learning experience, but at the same time also exposes them to bad habits.
Larry Levine
Larry Levine, social sales strategist for Dealer Marketing Systems, has one of those trendy sounding job titles, but it accurately describes his expertise and what he provides.
Levine has put in his time in the document imaging industry in various sales positions with various dealerships and OEMs for well over two decades. He describes himself as a copier guy that understands personal branding and how to build relationships.
“I’ve figured out how to grab net new business by doing that,” says Levine.
He enjoys sharing LinkedIn stories and describes LinkedIn as the “game-changer” in the highly competitive copier world. He coaches and transforms copier sales professionals to grow their net new business by helping them tell their story and communicate on LinkedIn. He can also help sales reps build their relationship funnel.
“You can’t have a sales funnel if you don’t have any relationships,” maintains Levine. “The copier industry is sorely lacking in teaching and training sales reps how to market themselves.”
Evolving with the Industry
As the industry has changed, sales consultants have had to roll with the flow.
Levine pulls no punches about the necessity of disrupting the status quo in a changing world. “Sales reps today have gotten fat and lazy, and the dealer principals don’t want to rock the boat with the tenured rep and lose the rep, so they just sweep it under the rug.”
He adds that cold calling has changed and sales reps today need to figure out how to take a cold call and turn it into a warm call.
“If you ask any sales rep what they hate most, it’s doing paper work or cold calling,” states Levine. “They have to do paper work if they want a commission check, but everyone’s forgotten how to cold call. A lot of sales people are petrified, so they don’t make calls anymore and try to drive everything through e-mail. If you think about it, C-level people are getting 100+ e-mails a day so those messages are getting lost. Sales reps need to take modern sales techniques and incorporate that into the sales process. The copier sales process hasn’t changed—you still need meetings, you still need to solve problems, and you still need to create your unique value—but the pre-part of this has really changed.”
That’s why Levine touts LinkedIn as a way to reach the C-level suite to start building those relationships.
“LinkedIn is where the B2B buyer goes when they want to find out more about you,” he says. “Thus what is your digital first impression?”
The way Industry Analysts’ sales training has changed and evolved are the tools Slawetsky recommends for reaching the decision maker, i.e. social media including LinkedIn, Facebook, and the Internet in general to get past that gatekeeper.
“It’s common sense if you think about it,” observes Slawetsky.
Some of the heaviest participation in his training sessions comes from the older reps who often agree with what he’s saying while also seeing the value of the social media sales strategies he’s touting.
“Fifteen years ago the technology solution was the copier, now it’s an on ramp to the network,” notes Kingston about how the industry has changed. “Dealerships are obviously getting involved in 3D, so how do you verticalize that? How you talk to a manufacturer is different than a large dental practice. Managed Services, MPS? How do you explain that and pitch it to the layman?”
All these technological changes keep Kingston busy because she has to know what’s going on.
“I need to know how to pitch it better than the dealership themselves, otherwise why would they hire me,” she says.
Kingston, who is an avid reader, keeps up with these changes by reading at least one business book a week and two to three trade journals a week.
“Just like some people are good at writing songs, I’m a wordsmith and understand you have to be able to speak in the customer’s language about how a technology solution fits in,” she says. “I’ve evolved from phone calling and foot canvassing training to being able to smartly use LinkedIn, social media, and Twitter to get meetings, not just to get connected.”
Even though the industry continues to change and evolve, Callinan compares a strong sales process to fundamental math.
“Addition is still addition, multiplication is still multiplication and distributed properties of math are still distributed properties of math,” he says. “Maybe as you go further through complexities of math, calculus becomes different.”
The Dealer Perspective
John Konyenbelt
John Konyenbelt, vice president of sales at Applied Imaging in Grand Rapids, MI is a Strategy Development client and was originally introduced to the company via referrals from his peers in CDA (Copier Dealers Association). He actually started by attending one of Strategy Development’s first seminars on Managed Print.
“It really resonated with me and felt like a great fit for our company,” recalls Konyenbelt.
From there, he attended the company’s sales management training. “Managed Print was one thing, but sales management was the big thing for me,” he says. “The approach to management, especially in our industry, was laser focused on what’s important in the duties of a sales manager.”
Further validation came from one of Konyenbelt’s sales managers who had been in that position for six months after being promoted from a sales rep.
After the training, the sales manager revealed that he never understood what he was supposed to do as a manager, but after the training, now he knew.
Applied Imaging has also called on Strategy Development to help them train managers and their Managed Print reps.
“They helped us make sure we were efficiently managing our investment in time with prospects and customers,” notes Konyenbelt.
Strategy Development also helped Applied Imaging develop metrics and benchmarks that its sales managers need to hold their teams to in order to be successful. Those include validating the pipeline, understanding how the pipeline should be set up, benchmarks of the pipeline in terms of dollars as compared to the rep’s monthly quota or monthly plan, and how to manage people to those numbers.
“We had a fair amount of ‘aha’ moments,” recalls Konyenbelt. “It’s strong stuff.”
Ray Belanger
Ray Belanger with Bay Copy has used a couple of sales consultants over the years, primarily for polishing sales management skills and bringing more process and structure to his dealership. The outcome, he says, was “a mixed bag.”
“I learned some things and it helped with development of more processes and structure,” acknowledges Belanger. “It’s good to do from time to time to get a different perspective, but it’s not a panacea. Sometimes we all get lulled into thinking you write a check and someone is going to come in and make everything better. At the end of the day you’re still left to implement it and manage it. It’s not just the information, but what you do with the information.”
Vision Office Systems in Charlotte, NC brought in Kate Kingston after hearing lots of success from other CDA (Copier Dealers Association) dealers.
Jason Habbal
“The methodology she uses does work and it put us in front of a lot of decision makers that we weren’t able to get in front of from the traditional cold calling and follow up methods,” says Jason Habbal, vice president of sales.
Art Post may be best known these days for his Print4Pay Hotel blog, but he’s worked in the industry in various capacities over the years, including service tech, sales rep, and even as the owner of a dealership. And in the interest of full disclosure, he’s even done some sales training on the side. When he does attend an industry event and sits through one of these sales consultant presentations his goal is gaining more knowledge that will increase his closing skills and his appointment setting skills. He recalls one helpful trick he learned from a sales consultant.
“He enlightened me on the use of Google,” recalls Post. “The trick was to search the DM, see what comes up, and then try to develop a rapport using the content that I found.”
Afterwards
There are certain expectations from bringing in a sales consultant, both from the dealer side and the consultant side. Once the sales training is complete, in an ideal situation what happens next?
“A sustainable and measurable increase in net new meetings that result in funnel selling opportunities,” states Kingston. “I can’t guarantee which deal will close, but if you have five deals out there and you close one in five the goal is to get 10 out there and then you’ll close two.”
“The sales rep goes back to their territory, revisits every account and goes through and fills out the CRM like we did in the training and harvesting information on his or her territory more thoroughly,” adds Slawetsky.
For Levine, the ideal outcome is that the sales rep will use LinkedIn as a tool to help grow their business, build their personal brand, and promote their story. LinkedIn provides the outlet to market themselves while growing and nurturing their network.
“Social selling isn’t a buzz-word,” he says. “It has now become a crucial part of how sales people communicate with their prospects and clients. We now have to hang out on the same field where our buyers and clients are and this is online,” emphasizes Levine.
What kind of outcome do dealers expect?
“The outcome was great for us, but we also learned that you have to have management understand that it is a very different method than the traditional cold call all day and follow up the next day,” says Habbal. “With that misunderstanding, at the time, we did not follow through with using the program. Kingston sets aside certain periods of time for phone calling sessions, and our management at the time couldn’t see why that was necessary so the concept slowly went away. I still use her concepts today to get into tough accounts and the talk tracks and methods she teaches work great.”
Art Post
“I’d equate it to golf,” states Applied Imaging’s Konyenbelt. “If I am bad at putting on the green, it’s not the putting on the green that’s the problem or part of the problem, it’s the approach shot to the green. I’m not hitting good approaches to the green so I’m leaving myself 30-foot putts all the time. If I look at three or four different benchmarks inside of Strategy Development’s approach to sales management for a person not producing at the right level, I can tell exactly what the problem is and diagnose and fix the problem pretty quick.”
“The outcome afterwards is always a renewed interest to schedule more appointments. Except for the one Google search, I’ve not seen anything new in years,” concludes Post.
