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It’s Time You Knew Jack! Q & A for Successful Sales with Jack Daly

By Barry Pruitt

dateFri, May 15, 2015 @ 09:00 AM

You’ve heard it – you don’t know Jack. You can’t really measure what I do. This is different from booksmanufacturing numbers, usual metrics, bean counters, etc., so it just can’t be measured. I welcome comments like this when working with key leaders in organizations. My standard reply goes like this, “So I guess when you’re no longer here we won’t see any measurable loss, right?” This will usually refocus the conversation and help clarify what can be measured, and specifically, what can be measured early – before the sales numbers are recorded. This gives you a chance to correct direction before the end of your 13-week race™.

Sales teams often shy away from sales metrics and measures, yet, ‘I need help with sales’ is a constant cry of company leaders as they hit revenue growth ceilings. “Sales” is often on the agenda for client meetings, and deals closed (stalled or flat) and sales leadership are consistent items. My experience is that companies need three things regarding selling: sales, sales management, and company culture.

Those three needs lead me to look for an expert… someone that has proven that he can sell (and lead sales teams) while creating a culture of getting results. These criteria led me directly to Jack Daly, the author of Hyper Sales Growth. Jack brings 30+ years of field proven experience ranging from working at CPA firm Arthur Andersen to becoming the CEO of multiple companies. Jack has built six companies into national firms, two of which he subsequently sold to the Wall Street firms of Solomon Brothers and First Boston. In 1985, Jack started a mortgage company with 3 colleagues and led the company through robust growth in its initial 18 months growing to 750 employees and 22 offices nationwide with the first 3 years’ profits hitting $42 million.

I prepared a few questions for Jack, and you’ll find his proven, winning ideas and answers below.

  • What is the difference between a good salesperson and a great salesperson?

One difference is this: GRIT. Fifty percent or more of success in sales has nothing to do with product, price, service, strategy, or tactics. Fifty percent of success has to do with getting up in the morning and saying, “God bless the competition, I’m going to kick their butt.” I can teach someone all the other fundamentals, but I have never been able to figure out how to teach somebody to get up in the morning and want to chew raw meat off the bone. But, if you give me that guy, we can take them all the way to the end zone. So I believe a great salesperson must have grit.

There are two additional attributes that are significant. One is systems and processes  - the best are canned. Great sales people figure out what works, and they consistently follow those systems and processes. Take a person with grit and add the correct systems and processes, and they are simply unstoppable. The second additional attribute is that great sales people come prepared. They don’t wing it.

  • When it comes to grit, are you born with grit? Do you develop grit because of your life circumstances?
I don’t know the answer to how you attain grit. My son has a business he has built, and in the last two years, has become a huge success. Yet, prior to this success and the grit necessary to attain it, he was floating through life like a piece of garbage at sea. He didn’t have the grit or the stomach, and didn’t have what it took to get to the finish line. Now he has it. What I don’t know is how he learned it.  
  • Jack, you mentioned systems and processes. Tell us more about that.
There are a variety of things great sales people can put into place that are not mysterious, for example, pro-active pipeline management. You need a way to inspect the basket of prospects (those who have never done business with you), the basket of customers (those who occasionally do business with you), and the basket of clients (those who regularly do business with you). Each basket should be inspected at least once a month. Who are your top prospects, when did you last touch them, and in what ways are you touching them? What’s standing in the way of each becoming a client? That rigor, that process, should be institutionalized within a salesperson’s discipline. A second system and process would be goal focus. I call it backward thinking. Define success and chart back to the present. Goals must be in writing and you need a written plan for achieving those goals, a system of measurement to track your goal progress, and a system of accountability to help in raising the performance bar.
  • So, it’s not all about getting product in their face because today a lot of sales is content marketing, educating your client, and providing information to solve their problems.
You’re right on the money, and here’s the definition: Help your customers with their needs, opportunities, and problems in the best way you can, even if it means not you. When it is your turn, they will come in droves. I will tell you that thirty percent of the calls that come into our company, inquiring whether I will do the work they are seeking, we put into a trusted resource that can deliver the goods better than me. With some services, I know people or companies that will deliver quicker, cheaper, and better than I will, so why would I not do that and give it to you? The interesting part of this process is when you care more about the customer than you do about the sale, you end up selling more than anyone else out there.
  • Jack, talk about corporate culture and how important that is. What is the correlation between culture and thriving sales?
There is a direct link. People do business with people, and they tend to do business with people they like. If you create an environment in your business where the employees actually like what they are doing and like working at the company they are in, that manifests itself over to the customer, and people will buy more, and more frequently from people that enjoy what they are doing. Creating an environment like that is incumbent on every business leader.
  • In your book, Hyper Sales Growth, you mention the role of a Sales Manager. Share some thoughts on the sales manager position.

It’s a very simple process for me. No matter how good I am at sales, there are only so many calls I can make, only so many calls I can take, and so many sales I can write up. And so sales is an important function, but it’s limited to the individual. But what would it be like if I hired 10 people, put them in that right culture we talked about, and train them on the things I know? No matter what, those 10 people will outperform me. And if I changed it from 10 to 20, or from 20 to 100 people, there is no chance for a single salesperson to compete with that number. So the key to hyper growth in your company is to grow your sales force in quantity and quality.

 

It would be impossible to learn all that Jack knows in one article, so, Jack has agreed to share more in future blogs. Be watching for more of his insights and experience in sales. Meanwhile, now you do know Jack, so go sell.

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Barry Pruitt

 

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