August 1, 2003
There is a phrase amongst sales & marketing people known as "churn & burn". What it means is go find as many prospects as you can, tell them whatever you have to tell them to get the sale (the churn part) -- and then the customers are "burned" when they realize that the product or service will never do what the salesman said it would.
Many salespeople are proud of their ability to do that. Many sales coaches actually teach or recommend it.
In our humble opinion, anyone can be a "super salesperson" if they lie, cheat, and steal. Unfortunately, too many salespeople are so busy trying not to work -- that they have to rely on lying, cheating, and stealing to get their sales.
In other words -- because they are lazy -- they have to steal hard working people's money. This has gone on for thousands of years in every profession.
We all want that "magic carpet". Think about how great it will be to soar like an eagle and avoid rush hour traffic! And with the new and improved, combination rain & snow deflector, heater, and air conditioner -- it works year-round and in all kinds of weather! You can machine wash it. There is even a setting for scenic or fastest route.
Psssst. Let me let you in on a secret. Even though we all want one -- there are no "magic carpets". We've all tried to buy one and salesmen will keep trying to sell them to our kids and grandkids.
We actually had one customer begging us to do a project. We told the customer that the project could not be reliably done so we were not going to quote it. But the customer kept begging us to do the project! Talk about wanting a "magic carpet".
No wonder so many projects fail in this business!
There are problems with salespeople. There are problems with incompetent integrators. There are problems with customers not listening. Sometimes you think it is amazing that any projects are successful. Estimates of failed projects range from 30 to 70 percent.
Unfortunately, we see a lot of "churn and burn" in our industry. We have seen both salesmen and companies have to leave town because once you've burned everyone -- everyone knows and won't talk to you.
We had to fire one of our salesman for doing this ten years ago. He tried for two years to sell something honestly and could not. As soon as he started lying, his sales jumped to about $250,000. He knew he was going to be fired so he planned to do whatever he had to do to generate sales, collect his commissions, and then quit before being fired. That salesman went on to one other sales job before being black listed in North Carolina. We can give you a list of many other salesmen in the area that would prefer to lie, cheat, and steal.
At High Tech Services we stop during many bidding processes when we see the customer expecting us to tell them whatever it is they want to hear.
Sorry. Custom projects are not like that. We are not like that.
We tell the customer what they need to hear -- not what they want to hear. That is probably the #1 reason for our high project success rate and why we have been in business for almost 20 years. It's also the reason for our lower overall sales rate. If we "churned & burned" like the others -- our project success rate would go down, our short term sales would go up, and unless we could go national (churn and burn all over the country -- an endless supply of customers) -- we would not be in business for another 10 years.
Not all salesmen are crooks. Just as there are bad people in every profession, every profession also has their competent and hard working people. We admire the hard working salesmen that know their products and put their customers first. Customers will actually seek out and find these sales people.
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