I’m a firm believer of challenger sale. I think I’ve followed it and was taught on it from when it first came out so I consider myself a challenger. I mean teach tailor take control. My style within challenger is I see myself kind of as a facilitator as a consultant. I don’t even necessarily call myself a sales person all the time anymore. I feel like my job is to speak to executives or speak to people about the business challenges that they’re having. Try to understand the implications of those business challenges on their bottom line. And then align my company solution to them. And if it’s a fit, great. If it’s not that’s ok too. Let’s walk away as fast as possible because we’re both busy people and we have other things to do.

You said that you won’t travel basically on spec. So at what point would you typically go on site to see a client and how much green… what are you using to determine whether or not that’s qualified. So what I’m looking for is it’s often right around the demo stage and what I’m looking for is economic buyer what I’m looking for is metrics and what I’m looking for is clear pain. If we can solve a problem there’s a business case for it and I have a conversation about the problem that we can solve and the implications on it with a VITO,CXO what have you. The person that could actually sign or the the person making the ultimate decision. I will get in the car, I will get on a plane, I will travel to the other side of the world at that point. But if we don’t know the problem solving and if we don’t have a business case to solve it and we don’t have this person making the decision that were actually presented to. I often won’t travel. I’ll do it virtually until we’re at that stage.

Next stage is demo. So presenting the solution, and to me this is it starts with presenting the business case. Here’s what I’ve learned. Here’s the financial implications I believe I can have for your business here’s how my solution aligns to what you’re trying to achieve. And Scott I’ll tell you this is the stage where I walk away if there isn’t that level of alignment. And that’s actually the next step is alignment. So once we do the demo. Once we review all of that information. And we show how our solution can map to their pain and the implications of it if we’re not walking away with the client at that stage saying we agree let’s explore this more. We’re pretty close if we don’t have alignments. That’s where I will often walk away from an opportunity or just let the client know hey you know my job as a consultant I have gone in we’ve evaluated we’ve presented what we think we can help and we’re not aligned with the end result here. So let’s not spend any more time on it together because I’m sure there are other people out there who can help you with this and I frankly believe they we’re not the best fit. And that saves… I get a lot of respect from clients from that and it saves me a lot of time and frankly it’s a win win for the client and my organization.

I manage myself to getting it all done. And at the end of the week if it’s not all done then I’m not stopping that week or that day until the things I said needed to get done are done. I hold myself accountable to the end result. I don’t necessarily hold myself accountable to the individual hour or the individual day when it comes to that level of repeatability. If it’s on my calendar it’s going to get done at that time. That’s the accountability factor and if it doesn’t then it needs to get done.

One of the things I focus on every single week is prospecting and I task manage myself like you wouldn’t believe. I currently work from home if I didn’t a task manage myself I’d probably be out golfing. So I’ll put my prospecting time my client follow up time all my meeting times everything I’m going to do. I have in my Outlook calendar so I treat all of those things and I think this has been important. I treat all of them like they are client meetings. So if I have on there prospect from noon to 1 on Monday. I am prospecting noon to 1 on Monday. Everything else is not important at that time no matter what it is just like if I was in a client meeting I can’t just stop my client meeting to respond to an email or do something else. I treat the things on my calendar and I take them seriously and I block those times off accordingly.

If you were going to be a chemist or you are going to learn to play the game of golf. Well let’s use that as an easy example. You know you’d be constantly practicing your swing you’d be constantly breaking down each mechanic and piece of your swing and you would be finding you know great coaches to work with you’d be playing the game constantly. There would be so many things that you would do to become a good golfer and you’d dedicate your life to it. I view sales the same way. It’s something I take seriously. So I practice it. I treat it like a sport I want to be amazing at or like a science that I want to learn to be great at it. It’s that type of dedication and will to be the best.