Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times Robert Waks: “This is very common with business leaders.”
Staying Alive
The struggles of a business trying to survive.
We’ve just published a condensed version of Paul Downs’s series about his sales problems last year. As you may recall, sales of Mr. Downs’s custom conference tables took a catastrophic fall in the spring. Things were so bad that he even considered laying off employees.
Instead, he took two actions. First, he reworked his Google AdWords campaign, a process he wrote about last fall. And then he hired a sales consultant, Robert Waks, to review the company’s sales processes and see what could be improved. You can read Mr. Downs’s article to learn more about how that worked out, but we also thought it would be interesting to get Mr. Waks’s perspective on the experience, especially Mr. Downs’s decision not to renew Mr. Waks’s contract.
In business for more than 20 years, Mr. Waks, 51, runs a sales consulting firm based outside of Philadelphia that has eight employees. It specializes in working with small and midsize businesses. The following conversation has been condensed and edited.
In his posts, Paul was open about his discomfort with the whole notion of selling. He even made reference to sensing “snake oil” in the room when he first met with you. What did you make of that?
So, I would say to him that, No. 1, listen, he’s dealing with the best when he’s dealing with me. I would say this comfortably and confidently, that he’s dealing with a sales killer, someone who is extremely skilled at converting opportunities into closure. What I would disagree with him on is the snake oil — I don’t even know what he meant by that. But to me, snake oil is pitching product at you, and that’s not at all what happened. I was focused on his issues, his concerns, his problems, his pain. There wasn’t even a sale that occurred in the first meeting. In fact, I told Paul why he might not be a good candidate for me.
Why did you say that?
One of the reasons is because Paul is the guru there, the expert. Even in our initial meeting, he was trying to impress me with some of what he was doing even though some of it didn’t make sense. I told Paul, maybe you don’t even want a coach.
Do you find that small-business owners can be stubborn?
There were more than a couple of times where I would make a suggestion to Paul or his team and Paul would too quickly shut it down and say that doesn’t work in our world, even though I know it does. Once again, this is very common with business leaders.
Were Paul’s issues unusual?
It’s something I see all of the time — small- to midsized business owners are our sweet spot. A lot of times we work with a business owner who started the business, who has lived the business and who is passionate about it. Man, when Paul gets on that phone and talks to a client, he can close that sale. The problem is, he doesn’t really know how he does it. He can’t teach or coach someone how to do it. When companies start to grow, they have a hard time replicating that success.
What do you suggest?
Being a sales manager is a tough job. Most business owners fall into that position by default. At a company of Paul’s size, you don’t really need a full-time sales manager. Paul has significantly enhanced his skills, and he knows what he has to do, but his commitment and his passion is not to be a sales manager.
We tested his whole sales team — his sales team really are not sales people. He hired guys that were really good in the wood-working area and have some decent people skills and brought them into sales. When we assessed them, they assessed lower than what I would hope for. But we still had good results. In the heat of battle, people don’t always do what they are supposed to do. When I stay involved in the relationship, they continue to execute much more consistently than if I go away.
Were you surprised he didn’t renew your contract?
Yes. I can’t tell you how many times he said to me, “Man, I owe you. You helped turn the business around.” I got him the results he was looking for, and he did not renew. Welcome to the life of a consultant. But who knows, that may still happen. Paul and I had a very comfortable, warm relationship.
Article source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/17/was-the-sales-consultant-surprised-to-not-be-renewed/?partner=rss&emc=rss
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