Conversations with Ray Taylor - a Sales 2.0 manager, a biker, a digital native Part II

As a Regional Sales Manager at Standard Register, Ray Taylor leverages Sales 2.0 tools and social media to give the best value proposition to his customers. He is a biker, a marathon runner, and a digital native. This conversation with Ray is the third in our series about learning, games, social media, crowd-sourcing, user-adoption and work performance.

... Continued from Part I

RD> Do you see more of a training need for how to maximize the use of a tool, or is there more need for training where you say, here is a bag full of tools, and teach them which tool to use when?
RT> There is a tactical part and strategic part in the training content. For example, Live Meeting: teach people how to use it and tailor sales presentations within Live Meeting. That is the tactical content. Then what you do with that becomes the strategic part, where peers or managers can deliver that training by sharing best practices. For example, on the fly, showing the ability to share an ROI tool with the client once and close the deal, without getting on the road to meet with the client. The sales reps who were with me then became inspired to try something similar.

It is very hard for training events to teach the strategic part. Not because they can’t do it but because it’s too much too fast. It’s about finding the coachable moment, one person at a time.

RD> I use the example about teaching phone etiquette as opposed to training sales reps to manage the interaction. Corporate trainers typically teach the phone etiquette. What do you think about the value of old methodologies in current times? Do think there is some time-invariance to the content?
RT> Exactly, and that’s where we need different ways to train. Having said that, there is one area where corporate trainers truly add value, and that is in creating a common language across the organization. This makes it faster to spread the cultural change as long as the content that they deliver are not restrictive. But, just as the shelf life of products is getting shorter and shorter, the same goes for training content; it cannot be sustained for long.

Our sales training can no longer be focused on products and services. We cannot be walking and talking brochures. Training content that can’t ??? stays the same forever. Trainers and managers who have failed to see that they, too, can innovate are not as valuable. It is like the analogy with colleges: a few years ago, a university banned its professors from putting their lectures on YouTube because that would make education free. A professor went against the policy and posted his riveting lecture on YouTube. It spread virally and actually brought in more college applications for that professor’s department. The University lifted the ban.

Corporate training as well needs to become more innovative and less protective. For example, trainers can embrace the blended model. Their survival doesn’t depend on the classroom-only model.

RD> Tell me about your findings regarding the blended model?
RT> The blended model makes perfect sense. The reps start to learn those minimum skills and common languages online, on their timeline, and then come prepared to the classroom. Classroom interactions are used for practicing and being creative under facilitation, but they move faster because the pre-work is done.

RD> Are you seeing more games being used in sales training?
RT> Not yet—none other than yours!

RD> Well, that’s good news for us. (Just kidding.)
RT> The games are a great way to address this. I have seen e-learning—a PowerPoint with multiple choices—but games are so much more interactive and competitive and fun.

RD> On social selling: what does it mean to you?
RT> Selling using social media is very powerful for lead generation. Before, sales was all about cold calls based on paid research. Now the rep can find good reasons to connect and determine the best timing for getting in front of the buyer. The better understanding of the information they gather from social media they have, the more likely they are to win the competition for the buyer’s time and attention. Social media really facilitates that discussion.

It helps grow the network for future calls. It is a great tool for maintaining the trusted advisor status. Social media allows you to communicate with someone the way they want to be communicated with. Social media has limited capability for the rest of the sales process in qualifying, understanding business needs, and negotiations. The face-to-face meeting is still the goal in many complex sales environments.

RD> What does Sales 2.0 mean to you?
RT> I think it is the second wave of using sales skills in the Internet era. Twenty years ago, to get information about someone’s products the buyer would call the sales rep in the local region and inquire. Now most people research before they reach out to sellers. The skills for salespeople have to be different now. I remember only a few years ago, I heard sales people saying, “Oh! I am not technology-oriented. I do not know how to turn on the computer.” They thought the prospect of using technology was funny. I would ask them if they realized that “what you just told the buyer is that you are stupid… you might want to stop doing that.”

Now, a similar thing happens when salespeople tell prospects, “I think Twitter is just a joke,” or “Facebook is for my kids.” I give them the same coaching: “Did you realize Facebook is a huge marketing initiative for this customer?”

Just as the customer is researching you on-line, they expect you to do your homework. You can no longer get appointments to just learn about the prospect’s business—they expect that you know about their business when you call, and that you can move quickly to how you can help them grow it.

Sales 2.0 fundamentally changed the idea of loading up the salespeople with product knowledge. Now salespeople have to know about the prospect’s company, their problems, their strategy.

At Standard Register, as part of our Lean Six Sigma initiative, we had the customers come to our sales leadership meetings—very different for us. One came to tell us that they wanted us to participate in their Six Sigma project, as we were part of their supply chain.

It is no longer about the typical qualifying closing questions: Are you ready to close? What information do you need to understand the ROI? Now it is more about: What is the problem you are facing? What solutions have you tried?

RD> For somebody taking up a new sales job, what advice would you give as to what they should do the first 60 days?
RT> Be social and be intellectually curious. Own your own career. It is less likely a company today will invest in you. One cannot rely on that any more. Find all the opportunities to learn and don’t sit there and wait for it to happen. Take the initiative.


RD> Thank you, Ray. It has been really interesting chatting with you.
RT> Let’s keep the conversation going.

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