Here's another heartwarming, uplifting story (in Washingtonian magazine) of a lawyer who left the field of First Class travel and lots of dollars in return for lots and lots of billable hours , then reinvented himself into a happier field. "… what I wanted to do all along was tell stories. and play rock n' roll.")
His name? Ron Liebman. His core point: if you're a practicing lawyer, ". . .to make it work you have to live the job. and if you live the job, there goes the rest of your life. It took me a while to get that."
It took me a while, too. Like him, I (also) was a Washington lawyer. And a New York lawyer. And a Virginia lawyer. And, to paraphrase the old saying about boats, "The second happiest day of my life was when I finished law school and got admitted to the bar (s), but the happiest day was when I walked away from law and lawyering."
Why am I including this story: because this blog is about (beyond sales) career reinvention, going off on your own, career change, and self-employment as a career opton.
When I was starting-up on this blog, I expected the main readership would be among new business start-ups, consultants, new free-lancers, people new to selling and sales. Why? Mainly because the economy was begining to slide down, and a lot of people were going off on their own— some as involuntary entrepreneurs, others as self- reinventors in advance of getting laid off.
It hasn't been that way, so far as I can tell: most of the readership seems to be professional sales people, folks who already know their way around a sales call, and were looking for fresh ideas.
Yes, that kind of info is here, but also here are a lot of the basics of getting started in sales, or starting up a new venture, finding prospects, and making a convincing case. There are also a lot of free sales training articles drawn from books (Selling 101, How to Sell Face-to-Face Survival Guide, Sales Training Tutorials, and Sales Presentations and Demonstrations.
In any case, for the "reinventors" out there, let me recommend the article, "pulling off the ultimate career makeover" in Fortune, issue of July 4, 2011. Case studies include,
An owner of franchises who sold them off and is setting up his own franchise operation, Yogurt Mountain. (Full disclosure: I have not, repeat not, received any free samples!)
A sales executive formerly with the likes of Intel, Dell, and NetApp who, after being down-sized, first became a free-agent, then was hired as director of marketing of a social media operation.
A lawyer, downsized after the media burst bubble burst in 2000, who turned around to become a contractor with the same firm. That led to a further reinvention as she set up what's best described as a legal firm of part-time lawyer contractors, many of them women juggling work and school-age kids.
A director of strategic development and communicaitons who got cut when that company was acquired. He then did what any good consultant and strategist does, develop his "brand" after an analysis (which makes very good reading) of his passions and skills. Now he's consulting full-time.
Another lawyer who left the practice (good for him!) to become an author of mystery novels. (First reinvention.) Then when the market for paper books started sliding, he moved into the e-book field and took on self-publishing his backlist for Kindle and the like. (Second reinvention.) By the way, as a "reformed" lawyer myself, I can't resist giving a plug to another lawyer who found "real work," hence this: his name is Paul Levine and you can read more about his mysteries at Website of Paul Levine
Sales tip: silence is one of the essential communication skills . . . and a powerful selling skill, as well.
Think of the questions you ask in a sales call as seeds. It's crucial to give the questions time to grow, and the power of silence gives that time. After you ask, be silent, even if it means letting the silence hang in the air. That gives the prospect time to think and respond.
Ask a question, then let it "grow" in the silence and listen closely to the response. In some cases, you'll need to rephrase the question so it's clearer, or to focus the Decision Maker's response so it's more on target.
But those are exceptions. As a rule, once you've asked the question, bite your tongue and let the prospect talk. Listening well is at least as important a communication skill as speaking confidently.
There are other good reasons to ask fewer questions and allow more silence: constant interruptions to ask new questions may irritate the prospect.
Besides, if you let the prospect go at her own pace, and in the general direction she thinks best, you may find other potential needs opening up in ways that you wouldn't have anticipated.
Above all, don't be so busy asking questions (and thinking of what your next questions will be) that you neglect to listen to the answers you do get. That's another benefit of the power of silence: silence gives you time not just to listen, but also time to think ahead.
Remember the old saying," Out of adversity comes prosperity?" Maybe losing the job, or getting serious about what to do IF the job disappears, may be the best thing yet.
I've seen it often enough with friends and co-workers, and here's an article with a case study of just that happening.
Of course, there is one other step, apart from inventing, developing, manufacturing, and so forth. That step? Marketing and selling it . . . which is where this blog fits in.
I've included the link to the USA Today archives below, but since I find anything of USA Today online to be extremely difficult and persnickety to use, the article was "Tough economic times provide fertile soil for inventors' creations," by Dan D'Ambrosio and Adam Silverman, in the issue of July 20, 2011, page 3B.
"That hobby you love could be a business. but it takes a a ton of work and a lot of help," headlines Lottie L. Joiner's special for USA Today, Monday July 17, 2011.
The focus was on a cosmetics hobby that grew into a small business at craft fairs, then into a much bigger business with nine stores and now products carried at Dillard's, Macy's and others.
Implicit was the need to be efffective at selling, not just at the early craft fairs, but even more so in attracting investors and partners.
Note that the link to USA Today's page also carries a link to a video on the same topic.
"Faced with bruised nest eggs and high unemployment rates, older Americans—ever resourceful—are becoming entrepreneurs, " begins this Smart Money article by Anne Tergesen.
The core of the article is a Q and A with Eric Ries, Entrepreneur in Residence at Harvard Business School, focusing on his forthcoming book, The Lean Startup.
Here is one sample, making a point that I think is very much on-target with what we speak of in this blog. Notice how there are elements of making cold calls, using a consultative selling model to find prospects' real needs, and then crafting a brief, focused message making the case of how he can best fill those needs expresssed:
Q: What if you are offering a service, such as carpentry work, and you know there is a market. How can you go about testing whether your business will succeed?
A: I know someone who started a home interior design company. He knew that people would spend money on home refurnishing, but would they want to buy it from him? He spoke to prospective customers, to find out why it was that they wanted to remodel. It turned out that many potential customers in the place where he was based were women. He had the realization that they were not just buying home remodeling, but the sense of control a designer could create for them over their environments. He tried out tag lines for his business until he found a hit—which enabled him to market himself as offering something they could not get elsewhere. The tag line he chose was “unlike your husband, we listen.”
A buying signal may come as any of a variety of types of often subtle cues that the mood has shifted, and the other person is now ready to agree . . . or at least to be open to what you propose.
The "Elevator Pitch," or "Elevator Speech," is not just a key tool in your selling activities, it's a must-have. Even if you never ride an elevator, you still need to be able to "net-out" who you are and what you or your product/service can do for prospects in a concise, intriguing way.
In this post, I'll be doing two things: First, citing an article bearing the Imprimatur of the Wall Street Journal on the need for a good elevator pitch.
Second, I'll be including an excerpt from one of my own sales books on how to develop an effective, to-the-point elevator speech.
(Actually, I don't really like either term, but they'll do until we come up with better. "Pitch" implies a hard-sell pitch right there, whereas it should be more of a brief, intriguing answer to an implied question,"Who are you and what can you do to brighten my life?" While"speech" implies standing and talking at the helpless, trapped subject. Beware.)
First, the article: "Why you need an elevator pitch" — an article by Sarah Needleman a couple of weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal blog section, "The Juggle"
Bonus tip: be sure to read the comments, particularly one by Ruth Schimel, who raises an alternate approach: using that "elevator" time to ask questions that give you a better sense of who that person is, and what they may need that you can offer. In a sense, this is a kind of precursor to a Consultative Selling approach.
Full disclosure: Ruth Schimel is a career consultant in, I believe, the Washington DC area,. If it's the same Ruth Schimel, we worked together for about five years: she as the very savvy contract coordinater for the US State Department on a series of management workshops I developed and presented. I'll be checking that out shortly.
Second, here's the excerpt from my book,How to SELL FACE-TO-FACE: SURVIVAL GUIDE . . .
6. In 30 seconds or less, how will I sum up the essence of what kind of needs my product or service fills? In other words, who does it help, and how does it help?
In sales jargon, this is The Elevator Pitch. It’s the short, smart, pithy, intriguing response you’d make if you’re riding the elevator at a convention, or standing around before a Movers and Shakers Luncheon, and somebody asks what you do.
But short, smart, pithy, intriguing responses don’t just happen: you need to invest time in advance thinking through and rehearsing so the words come out just right.
The key is to focus on what your product (or service) does for customers— that is, what needs it fills—rather than on what it is. Example: suppose you’re asked that question of what you do. Which of these responses do you find more powerful and compelling?
❏ “I design web-pages to meet the new HIWE standard.”
❏ “As a consultant, I help clients improve their internet marketing reach using new technologies just becoming available.”
It may take time, and several early drafts, before you have the perfect Elevator Speech, so begin thinking about it early. But don’t lock it into concrete too early. Be open to what the marketplace tells you as you are making your early sales calls.
You want to keep your options open so you can adapt to what opportunities open up, yet you do need to be able to speak of one or a few areas in which your experience is relevant as a way of setting the context of what you are capable of.
For example, you could say, “My experience has been in the general field of _____, and I'm adapting that expertise to problem-solving in related fields.”
Or you could respond, “I'm basically a problem solver, working in the general area of _____.”
If possible, immediately back up these general statements with a capsule summary of one or two relevant accomplishments: “For a large manufacturing company, we _____. We anticipate offering those kinds of services to smaller firms in this area.”
My article, "Prospecting by Telephone–Skills Self-Checklist", has been posted (with permission, of course) on SOLDLAB. I've mentioned SOLD MAGAZINE here before— in fact, they reprinted a couple of my articles. SOLD MAGAZINE and SOLDLAB are "sister publications." (Sorry, don't know of an equivalent "gender-unspecific" term!)
In any case, SOLD MAGAZINE is a free on-line monthly magazine for sales professionals around the world. It's very impressively done, with clean, attractive layout, and practical how-to info by knowledgeable experts (in a humble tone, I'm referring to their other writers, of course!)
SOLDLABis a blog, updated daily or thereabouts, as blogs are. Good stuff that's not in the main magazine.
Here's the link to my "Prospecting by Telephone–Skills Self-Checklist" When you go there, you'll find how to subscribe to both SOLD MAGAZINE and SOLDLAB: Go to article