It’s 8 a.m., a Thursday in mid-April, and Dennis Kolibab is
pounding the keys of his laptop computer. Wide-eyed, clean shaven and
smartly dressed, Kolibab has been at Nextel’s Solon headquarters for
nearly a half hour, catching up on paperwork and entering orders closed
earlier in the week.
“I missed a few days when I was on a four-day cruise and fell
behind,” explains Kolibab during a momentary break. Never mind that
the cruise was a reward for Kolibab’s sales efforts and that he was
joined by other sales reps who met or exceeded 150 percent of Nextel’s
sales quota last year.
The highlight of the cruise was a recognition ceremony at which the 15 top
sales reps received handheld DVD players and plaques honoring their
efforts. Kolibab, Nextel’s premier sales performer in the northeast
Ohio region, didn’t make the cut. “I just missed it,” he
says without any attempt to hide his disappointment. “I was really
bummed out about that.”
But Kolibab, who vows to breech the elite 15 this year, didn’t miss by
much. He clocked in at number 16 with 255 percent of last year’s quota
— 1,530 phones. He was edged out by the 15th best sales rep in the
country, who achieved 259 percent of quota selling just 24 more phones than
Kolibab.
Kolibab’s tenure at Nextel has been short — he was hired in 1997
— but he’s made good use of his time. Nearly two dozen awards,
achievement certificates and plaques adorn the walls of his office. “I
don’t like to lose,” he explains.
“But,” he adds, tapping a finger on the stack of orders he’s
processing, “this business is all about taking care of my customers.
It doesn’t matter whether they’re a one-unit deal or a 100-unit
deal, I treat them all the same.”
With that, Kolibab pauses, smiles, and quips, “Besides, you never know
when you’ll get a referral.”
Kolibab is just one of a special breed of sales person which SBN
scoured Northeast Ohio to find. What separates them from their peers is a
handful of uniquely defining traits. It’s been called attitude, but
that’s not sufficient. It’s a combination of the right
personality, discipline, a fierce competitive nature, and a strong
commitment to the customer.
You either have attitude or you don’t, and all great sales people
do.
Question: How do you know when a salesman is lying?
Answer: His lips are moving.
With jokes like this, it’s no wonder that personality is so important
in the sales world.
“A sales person has to be honest,” says Paul Hanna, president of
Meritech Blue, a Cleveland-based office equipment supplier. “Not just
because their customer has to trust them, but because they represent the
company.”
And there must be a comfort level established between the sales person and
the prospect before any business can be conducted efficiently.
“People work with people they like,” says Dennis Burnside, senior
vice president and general manager of real estate broker Colliers
International. “Typically, successful sales people are very genuine.
They’re real.”
Those that try to fake their way through usually fail, becoming nothing
more than tired caricatures of the old stereotypes.
Terry DeLap is the genuine article. He may also be the most laid-back sales
person you’ll ever meet. With graying hair, a matching mustache and a
pair of wire-rimmed glasses, DeLap looks more like a college professor than
a car salesman. You expect to see him waxing philosophic in a coffee shop,
not greeting you as you walk through the door of Motorcars Infiniti in
Bedford.
“People just buy things from me,” DeLap explains. “I’m
very low pressure. People tell me that all the time. They’re expecting
a car salesman to push all the features and try to make a sale today. I
just want to help them make the right decision, no matter how long it
takes.”
DeLap, says Motorcars Group human resource manager Scott Watters, combines
that easygoing demeanor with a natural ability to sell.
“His personality is what strikes you first,” says Watters.
“Then he sells you a car.”
But personality is more than being a nice guy. It’s also an ability to
keep a level head during the most chaotic of times. Sales is a business of
rejection. Ask any sales person and they’ll tell you that the waters
are choppy more often than they are calm.
“It’s an emotional roller coaster,” says Burnside. “Top
performers don’t let the downs get to them.”
Those who can keep a level head, shake off the bad sales calls and regroup
come back stronger the next time. Explains Tami Unaitis, senior sales
account manager at Meritech Blue and a two-time sales person of the year,
“There are times when your head’s not always on straight,
especially after something doesn’t go right. But if you want to
succeed, you need to be able to set your eyes forward and get in front of
the customer, drop off your information and talk to as many more people as
possible.”
Creativity is another piece of the personality equation. Those who can
think outside the box when every obvious solution fails tend to succeed
better than those who stick to tried-and-true methods.
“The best sales people I’ve ever managed were terrific problem
solvers,” says Ned Bergen, sales manager at Northcoast Business
Systems. “They looked at the bigger picture, such as the processes of
the company they were trying to sell to, and then came up with a better
proposal. They possessed an entrepreneurial spirit that was similar to the
business owners they were meeting with.”
And they had a willingness to learn new things, says Bill Lenhart III, vice
president of sales for Marsh Inc., the world’s leading risk management
firm.
“People work for years to learn our business without really learning
it,” he says. “We need people who are textbook smart and street
smart. The successful ones have both those traits.”
Tom Gustafson sold or bought eight office buildings last year. The largest deal
was for the 129,000-square-foot Enterprise Place in Beachwood, which sold
for $13.1 million. In that transaction, Gustafson represented the buyer.
“If you work extremely hard, you’ll be exposed to a lot of
business,” explains Gustafson, an account executive for Colliers
International’s office services group and a 1998 winner of the
company’s International Awards of Excellence. “Opportunities
present themselves because you’re there and you spend enough time to
put yourself in a position to do something.”
That takes enough discipline to keep abreast of what’s happening in
your market without waiting to read it on the front page of the newspaper.
“You have to talk with other brokers and clients,” he says.
“But more importantly, you have to listen to what they say about
what’s going on.”
And you have to know everything there is about the product you’re
selling. Says Doug Leary, first vice president of CB Richard Ellis and the
real estate company’s top earner for each of the last six years.
“If you know your client, but don’t know whether your product or
service meets their needs, you’re fighting only half the
battle.”
Leary, maintains his boss, CB managing director David Browning, is the
consummate preparation artist.
“He shows property better than anyone I’ve ever met,”
Browning says. “He’s been in the business for 13 years and knows
the brick and mortar of every building he shows. Not only that, he takes
the time and effort to know who he’s meeting with and their
needs.”
Exactly how imp
erative is that intimate knowledge and belief in the
product?
“Product knowledge is the most important thing,” maintains
Dave Klausner, a salesman for Motorcars Mercedes-Benz West. In 1998,
Klausner sold 142 Mercedes — the most in the state of Ohio.
“Especially when people are comparing your product to other cars. They
want to know why they should spend their money with you. If you can’t
answer that question, forget about the sale.”
Klausner is an ardent follower of his own advice. He devotes every spare
moment to studying every model, price and feature that his competition
offers. “You have to create your own competitive edge,” he
says.
Every time Shelby LoFaso passes out a business card, it generates $12. “It’s
a numbers game,” she explains. LoFaso, sales manager of OBM’s
copier products division, is on a daily mission to hold court with as many
decision makers as her busy schedule allows.
“I don’t allow myself to settle for only three or four
appointments a day,” she says.
Last year, LoFaso’s constant prospecting generated more than $1
million in sales from her territory — Beachwood and Mayfield —
and led to her recognition as OBM’s sales person of the year.
“Shelby’s fearless,” says Mari Sloan, the company’s
vice president of sales. “She does whatever it takes to make a
sale.”
Her brash, take-on-the-world demeanor is tempered by her warm smile and
charm.
“I’m relentless,” LoFaso explains. “You either hate me
or you love me. You’re either going to buy from me or say no.”
Those who say no don’t get off LoFaso’s hook easily. “If I
get a no, I take it to mean today,” she says. “But that
doesn’t mean that down the road, if I stick with that prospect, that
the no won’t turn into a yes tomorrow.”
For LoFaso, like so many other winners, the thrill of closing a deal ranks
a close second to the meaty paycheck accompanying it.
“You can tell whether a person has that winning attitude very
quickly,” explains Michael Faix, manager of sales and marketing for
Great Lakes Computer Corp. “They have a track record that’s
tangible and measurable. Either they’ve achieved their quotas or they
haven’t. Winners overcome natural objections to their sales pitches
and come back with solutions which present more value.”
Many of those competitive skills can be traced back to previous
achievements, such as academics and athletics. So it’s no wonder that
many top sales performers are former athletes. CB’s Leary, for
example, was an All-American long distance runner at Case Western Reserve
University. Leary says those skills were easily transferable to sales.
“The experience teaches you several things,” he says.
“Consistency is the main one. You give a consistent effort every
day.”
And when the spotlights are turned on, the game truly begins.
“Every great salesperson has a competitive ego,” says
Marsh’s Lenhart. “They’ve got something to prove to
everybody.”
But there’s also an inherent burden that such a competitive nature
brings, explains Joseph LaGuardia, regional vice president of Ohio sales
for Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield. The better a sales person does, the
more that is expected of them. That means that every day is production day
for Anthem senior account executive Scott Misischia, one of
LaGuardia’s top reps.
“Success is my number one motivation,” Misischia says. “I
look at the internal sales goals and then try to figure out how to beat
them. I aim for exceeding them by 30 or 40 percent, which seems
reasonable.”
Reasonable goals? For some, those goals are self-imposed. Just ask Chuck
Schiffhauer about Tony Haddad, his top sales rep at Sprint PCS.
“He was involved in a competition at his former company,”
explains Schiffhauer, district sales manager. “The prize wasn’t
great, maybe valued at $250 or so. Haddad kept track of where he was at in
the competition all month.”
When the awards dinner came around, Schiffhauer says, Haddad was in second
place. The dinner began at 8 p.m., but technically the contest ran through
just before the awards were announced. Explains Schiffhauer, “Tony
worked up until that last minute. He closed his last deal just after nine,
and then rushed over to the dinner, turned it in and accepted his
award.”
While a lot of different factors go into the makeup of top sales people, none is
more important than a commitment to the customer.
“If you build a relationship with your customer, they’ll trust
you,” explains Meritech Blue’s Unaitis. “When you have a
relationship, they’ll come back time after time because they know
you’ll take care of them.”
Unaitis invests as much time as is needed to determine what’s best for
her customers, even if the final sale falls through. “Don’t burn
bridges when that happens,” she warns.
“If you miss it the first time, chances are if you built a
relationship with that person, you’ll catch the sale the second, third
or fourth time around … and then keep it.”
The best people, says CB’s Browning, bring a long-range view to their
sales approach.
“They think of the process as proactive relationship
development,” he says. “It’s like what Wayne Gretzsky said,
‘I never skate to where the puck is, I skate to where the puck will
be.’ Those very best sales people are always looking that far
ahead.”
If you don’t take care of the customer, warns Faix, of Great Lakes
Computer, somebody else will. “A great sales person will go to bat for
a customer, even a prospect, and try to help them solve their
problems.”
“You know how to tell who the best performers are?” Northcoast
Business Systems’ Bergen asks. “They’re the ones who people
go out of their way to recommend to others as solutions for their business
problems. When the customer thanks you that way, you know you’ve been
looking out for them. There’s no question that top performers have a
very clear vision of how they’re going to serve their
customers.”
Gustafson agrees and says his biggest real estate deals didn’t happen
just because he had good timing.
“Those deals happened because of relationships,” he says.
“Once you get them, you work them hard. You treat them like one of
your family. Between 7:30 a.m. and 6 p.m., there is nobody else more
important.”
For top performers, few other things matter.