Skakum School of Selling

06/08/2021

As the name SKAKUM SCHOOL OF SELLING becomes widely known in the marketplace I am being asked with greater frequency my intention for starting the School.

My answer: To help BOSSES be and stay prosperous. We teach from the TOP down.

For decades we, as business owners, have socialized our salespeople to see prospects and customers as commissions, tips, sales quotas, cash flow, quarterly targets and bottom lines. In simpler times, guileless target audiences were willing to put up with manipulative salesmen ... the relentless ‘closers’. Selling icons like the used car salesman and the man who could sell ice cubes to the Eskimos were celebrated and emulated throughout North America.

Today, even though business card titles for salespeople have evolved from Sales Representative to Business Development Executive, the predatory image and methodologies of selling have not. Today’s buyers still avoid salespeople at every opportunity.

Post secondary educators are still uncertain what to do with selling as a course option and largely choose to ignore it. Business and Marketing curriculums that do address selling, deliver only minimal instruction. As a result when today’s sophisticated buyers search the eyes of today’s salespeople they still find predators looking back at them ... not allies.

The SKAKUM SCHOOL OF SELLING curriculum is exclusive to Business Owners, Presidents, CEO’s and Postsecondary Deans, teaching them how to hire and retain ... educate and motivate the most talented selling professionals. Then we teach BOSSES the selling principles and disciplines buyers welcome and can say yes to most often.

SKAKUM SCHOOL OF SELLING welcomes all BOSSES, from self employed, small business owners to Fortune 500 CEO’s.

SKAKUM SCHOOL OF SELLING is ... Selling School for BOSSES.

05/21/2021

BUSINESS NETWORKING

Networking is one of the most pleasant ways to meet new customers. Networking, usually a business event, makes it easy for human beings to engage in business conversations, obligation-free. Unfortunately many reluctant business people have to push themselves to attend a networking event. Why? The common excuse is, "I'm just not good at small-talk."

That's ok because networking is not about small-talk, it's about learning if the networkers we meet are qualified to be our clients. The good news is that everyone at a networking event is there for the same reason, so they don't mind if you approach them and introduce yourself. In fact they want you to, so they don't have to do it.

My networking style is to interview the folks I meet. I can't learn anything about them if I'm TELLING them about me. So I ask about them. I ask questions about their businesses and carefully listening to their answers. I ask them about their products, services and about themselves. And I am sincerely interested. Even if they turn out not to be a qualified prospect for my company I always come away having learned something new. Many salespeople have asked me, "But when do I get a chance to tell them about my company if I'm busy interviewing?" I reply, "You don't, at least not until they ask you a question. And when they do, you answer it and then get right back to interviewing. If they want to learn more about you they will ask another question. The more questions they ask the more interested they are."

If my interview determines that they are qualified to be my client, but they are not interested in my company right now, I ask permission to stay in touch. Then I make darn sure that I do ... once a quarter. I've learned that over time, nothing stays the same. One day my qualified but disinterested prospect will need my services, and when that happens I want to be TOP-OR-MIND.

However, everything I've just told you is moot if you don't get out there and network. Become an eager student of your fellow man and you will look forward to networking.

06/10/2016

Tangent Strategies shares its insights as to hiring the most loyal, talented and long-term selling professionals.
http://tangentstrategies.com/2016/06/selling-hiring-for-fit/

Tangent Strategies is a selling 'educator' who leaves nothing to chance. Tangent Strategies not only teaches corporate executives and their salespeople to sell, it guides the actual hiring of salespeople. It objectively assesses candidate behaviors and motives and carefully evaluates the qualities r...

03/09/2016

March is International HUG a Salesperson Month.
http://tangentstrategies.com/2012/02/march-is-international-hug-a-salesperson-month/

12/01/2015

http://tangentstrategies.com/?p=746&preview=true

… salespeople whose business cards describe them as Business Development Managers … Business Planning Directors … Account Managers. You will meet owners of modestly sized companies and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, each of whom employ salespeople to do a critical job they would prefer not to do the…

01/13/2015

SALES TRAINING or SELLING EDUCATION?

Your intention is to increase your company's market share. To that end you've decided your salespeople should become more adept at selling. You Google sales trainers. STOP; ask yourself these questions:

1. Do you want your salespeople trained or educated? ('Training', associated with repetitive actions as in dog-training and potty-training, may not be the your best choice for the men and women upon whom you depend to increase your company's market share.) Education, on the other hand, introduces and develops skill sets and encourages free and creative thinking, so critical in the field.

2. Are you, as the boss, planning to take part in the selling education in which you are investing?
(Too often bosses enroll their salespeople in selling courses that they choose not to attend themselves.) Bosses, unfamiliar with the fine-points taught in selling courses, find it extremely difficult to encourage and support the enlightened selling disciplines with which their newly motivated salespeople return. They may even reject many of the new selling ideas. The results: injured morale, de-motivation and little or no measurable upturn in market share. These salespeople eventually resign.

01/09/2015

Give your salespeople reasons not to sell selfishly and watch their (and your) productivity soar.

01/02/2015

Promise and Predictions for 2015

The arrival of a new year carries with it so much promise. I believe 2015 will prove a pivotal year for so many of your companies, for Halifax, for Canada, for our planet and for the profession of selling. Here are my predictions for 2015.

First I see an implosion of ISIS. They will not be defeated militarily, they will defeat themselves. Mankind has evolved from a self aware species to a spiritually aware species that will no longer tolerate the barbarism of the few, who have not taken the evolutionary step with their brothers and sisters. They will be exiled by their own people.

Canada will witness a governmental evolution in our next federal election and as a result shake off its economic lethargy on the world stage. That is all I will say, as this is an economic platform not political.

Halifax will enjoy the beginning of what I call a renaissance ... a cultural and entrepreneurial rebirth. Governments, but primarily the private sector, your company and my company, will cast our nets further for newer and more profitable business opportunities. We will welcome more immigrants, retain more of our postsecondary graduates and hire more Nova Scotians.

Finally, companies in Halifax and across Canada seeking real growth and new cost and equity efficiencies will realize the competitive advantages of filling their selling positions with salaried professionals. This evolved state replaces the costly transience, inefficiencies and the questionable brand associated with commissioned sellers. The results: long-term employment of dedicated men and women able to build powerful equity within their territories with customers and prospective customers alike; helping their employers reach beyond their traditional increases in market share to attain the growth and resulting prosperity Ivany mandates.

http://tangentstrategies.com/2015/01/the-promise-and-predictions-for-2015/

HAPPY 2015 !

The arrival of a new year carries with it so much promise. I believe 2015 will prove a pivotal year for so many of your companies, for Halifax, for Canada, for our planet and for the profession of selling. Here are my predictions for 2015.

12/29/2014

'Selling is about building relationships.'

This vacuous, five-word cliché floats nicely off the tongue at most sales training seminars, networking events and cocktail parties. The harsh reality is that North America's selling model does little to ingratiate seller to buyer. It incites salesperson avoidance.

While avoiding salespeople may seem as logical as locking our doors at night, avoidance squanders precious business time, good will, profits and opportunities for buyer and seller alike and it weakens our economy. Selling, as we practice it today, places hurdles in the way of selling relationships.

Were selling truly about building relationships it would be characterized by professional objectivity, impartiality and a healthy measure of selflessness. Sellers would not selfishly invade the time and space of their prospects with cold, off-the-street walk-ins and interruptive telephone calls. They would not waste time making unqualified, mind-numbing sales presentations, or inflict pointless rationales upon their prospects in order to overcome their objections. If selling were truly about building relationships salespeople would, instead, invest their time helping their prospects make timely, well-thought-through buying decisions. Traditional sell-cycles would plummet. Sell-closures would spike.

If selling were about building relationships employers would compensate their salespeople for their valuable skills as they would any respected professional ... with a dignified salary, benefits and bonus options. Employers making such investments in their salespeople become very discriminating when hiring. Salespeople, for their part, would no longer amble from one selling position to the next abandoning their client and prospect equity', selling's most valuable relationship-building resources. Instead, the relationships they initiate would have time to mature and prosper.

As you decide how your company will sell this year ... remember, March 2015 is International Hug a Salesperson Month.

11/11/2014

Are You Perpetuating 'Traditional' Selling?

I am looking down at a book cover sticker marking down the price of the book from $24.95 to $6.99.
Does the retailer actually believe the book will sell faster at $6.99 than it would at $7.00?

The other day a sales manager employed by an international security company casually spoke of one of their sales trainers. He is regularly hired to teach their salespeople sales tactics. One tactic she described called 'mirroring' teaches salespeople to subtly adjust their body language to mirror the posture of the person they are selling to. This classic sales maneuver is used to enhance the buyer's feelings of trust for the seller.

Traditional selling has for decades been characterized by its proud history of tactic deception.

Today's savvy buyers prefer to do business with a new generation of seller. These salespeople are taught to triage and diagnose buyer needs, but MORE importantly, to impartially and objectively assess whether what they sell can effectively and affordably satisfy the buyer's needs. Tactics replaced with objective and impartial advice and guidance earn new generation sellers the trust, respect and admiration that ultimately close far more sales in the long-term.