I received this e mail from a friend of mine today who just had this article published. Enjoy,
Anyone can sell a product to someone once, says Dave Thomas, a sales director at PepsiCo Inc. But it takes a true salesperson to establish a relationship and sell that product again and again.
In its annual honors roll for salespeople, Pepsi recently named Thomas, 37, as one of the company's top 220 sellers for the third year in a row. He joined the food company's Frito-Lay unit after graduating from University of Tennessee in 1998 and has made a steady climb to his current position supervising the team that sells Quaker, Gatorade and Tropicana products to wholesalers and retailers in the state of Texas.
Thomas established himself as a top salesperson at the company while at Frito-Lay, where he grew Dollar General into the company's second largest account in the central Gulf of Mexico region, which includes Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi.
I spoke with Thomas about why you need to know your customer's business as well as your own, his first break and the importance of luck.
How did you decide on a career in sales?
Like most kids, I had aspirations of playing ball. I wanted to play for the Atlanta Braves. By the time I was nine, I realized I needed to do something else.
[Around that time] I went to visit my aunt at work. She worked for a paper company, doing sales. I remember sitting with her in the break room and hearing about sales contests they had going and the excitement of making a sell. Since then, I knew that's what I wanted to do.
What was your first break?
I had to pay my way through school at University of Tennessee, so I worked part-time for Brown and Ferris Industries [a garbage collection and recycling services company]. I worked on their trucks during the summer and on their sales team during the winter. It set me up for my first job out of school, with Pepsi's Frito-Lay division.
I started out at Frito-Lay as a route representative. If you did a good job there, you got promoted to a district position. I started the job in 1999 and got promoted to a district position that I had from 2000 to 2003. I did well again, and they put me in charge of an emerging channel, the dollar-store accounts. I got to do more managing. There was no roadmap of how to be successful. I spent a lot of time traveling around, working with Frito, learning what the company's expectations were for the new position.
What was the most important lesson you learned about selling in your first job?
You have to make mistakes at that point in your career. In my first calls, I went in and I didn't know the customers' businesses. I knew ours and our directive, and they knew I did not know their store policies or store layouts. I was young and I was eager, but I did not take the time to learn anything about my customers and it showed.
Now, I never make a first sales call. It's always a discovery meeting. You can't sell to somebody when you don't know what they need or want. If I go in and I make a sales call the first time I meet you, I'm giving you a canned presentation. It has nothing to do with what your needs are.
Did you have a mentor?
When I was at Frito, I was 25 years old and thought I should be promoted after three months. I knew it all. I felt I wasn't being valued. But luckily enough, I had a mentor who I had directly reported to, Carlos Dominguez, [who] started at Frito two years before I did. He took me aside and said, "Give yourself time to grow. You don't want to leave this job until you feel you've perfected it."
He was right. I did have more to learn. I stayed another two years.
When Carlos would go on a sales call with me, he taught me to find the WIIFM for everyone. The "what's in it for me." I want to find the WIIFM, what's important to each customer.
Why is understanding the customer's needs so important in making a sale?
I've gone to meetings where buyers haven't shown up. People are busy. You have to make sure they know before the meeting even starts what the purpose of it is, and you have to build a sense of urgency. In the pretext of your email to them, you should never just write "meeting" in the subject. You say "meeting to discuss incentive program."
Then, when you have the meeting, you have to remind them. You communicate your proposal, and you tell them the benefit. You say, "In the next twenty minutes, we'll go over ways we can help you increase your profit margin by 2%." Then you've got their attention. You close by showing evidence of how this will work, using examples from the past.
How important is luck in being successful?
Sometimes it looks lucky. If you are doing the right thing and putting yourself in the right positions, luck will find you more often than not. You have to sell yourself as much as you sell your products. If you get the chance to present to your boss or your team, you have to be prepared. Sometimes you only get that one shot, and that may lead to an opportunity.
What advice do you have for people launching their careers in sales?
The first thing is know your business and your customer's business cold. Find that happy medium between your company's expectations for profit and what your customers need. You have to show your customers you're thinking about their best interests, as much through action as through conversation
Lorin
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