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michael cool is the vp of sales at avalon integration an integrator of mobile data collection thermal printing and rfid technologies primarily used in the supply chain he currently manages a team of 10 salespeople and is a big proponent of consultative selling he's been in sales since 1994 and lives in the philadelphia area on a personal note michael is getting married in 2021 stay tuned for mike mike it's really great having you with us today welcome to the show hey great to see you thanks mike for having me absolutely looking forward to mining some of that uh that sales wisdom that you have i hope i hope speaking of sales wisdom i want to ask you some good questions that are going to help our viewers to improve how they sell based on some of the ideas and tips that you have so first question right out of the gate you've been in sales for a long time mike just like me and it's changed over the years how do you think sales has changed since you entered the field i would say that customers are a lot more um aware of of what they're looking for due to the internet and and you know youtube and all these other types of things that are out there where you can go do your research kind of like in your daily life right you're gonna go you know i recently bought a refrigerator i think i knew more about the refrigerator than the sales guy did at home depot right because i researched it um so you know i would say what's probably changed is things move a lot faster um the um you know real important that your uh information on linkedin and and about your company and all that stuff is updated because people are doing their research before they're calling you certainly wasn't the case in 1997 right i don't i don't even know if i had a linkedin page in 1997. right so so a lot lots of change you just touched on something with your home depot refrigerator item there that leads me into my next question i've heard that some buyers will go as far as 70 through the buyer's journey before needing or wanting to talk to a salesperson has that been true in your experience um yeah i think so clients definitely are a lot more aware of the products that we sell in the solutions that we sell um and educated on that so you know where i used to maybe you know spend a lot of time early on about you know how does a barcode scanner work as an example you know people have pretty much figured that out what they're really looking for is is a lot more in-depth information and how it's going to work in their particular application so absolutely they're way more educated uh and aware of the solution uh before they ever pick up the phone and talk to me and do you think that it's possible that some customers don't even want to talk to a salesperson and if they just could do the whole thing online that they'd rather just skip the process and do so i would say yes generally not my customers i mean obviously with covit um you know i think i've had two meeting customer visits um in a year um right and i used to be on the road every day and traveling you know i i think i drove 35 000 miles a year i i haven't even driven 5 000 miles last year um so um you know i think people are definitely relying a lot more on technology right zoom google meet all those type of things so um there is certainly you know uh a sense of customer that um knows exactly what product they want and we'll go shop it online and just buy it but generally the solutions that we're selling um does require little consultation and a little discussion with the customer so we still get that little face-to-face uh interaction it just happens to be over a computer camera so a key part of your answer there is not my customers and that's because you believe in a consultative sales process and i get that but for those of us that don't necessarily understand exactly what that entails what do you think makes a salesperson consultative i think the the main thing is uh you got to be empathetic right um you got to understand and put yourself in the position of your customer understand what their challenges are every day you know as people you know we're kind of living in our world but it's hard to put myself in the position of someone that might be in a fortune 500 company or a mom and pop company and you know things are moving uh left and right um you know the one thing that i've kind of noticed is we can't create more time and people are being stretched thinner and thinner being asked to do things more so that consultative sales process really allows us to you know work with the customer convey to them that you know i understand what your what your problems are um i think we can be successful together and this is how we're going to do that so that that consultative sales process really allows you to establish that level of trust which is really critical almost on that first first interaction with the customer speaking of that first meeting with the customer that's usually a make or break moment either you establish a good initial impression start forming that relationship and building trust or you don't and i know a lot of people that watch my channel are newer to sales and when they have a big meeting they not might not be 100 sure how to prepare so share with us mike what are your tips to prepare well for a big meeting um well what i tell everyone on my team is research research research right try to understand everything about your customer what's going on in their in their organization what their role is in the company what their decision-making ability is um and then really try to again put yourself in their position and try to identify any obstacles that would prevent them from being successful um you know i always tell my folks you know you have to um have an answer to the question before it's ever raced right and if you do that um the process just seems to go a lot smoother so for example you know we sell mobile computing and for you know the vast majority of my career it was a windows mobile computer that really didn't change that much and customers kind of got used to that well you know those days are gone and now we're in android and um you know we really have a lot different level of conversation with the customer when we're talking about android because there's an expectation that it's gonna change and it's constantly changing so you know again i kind of look at a customer and and you know if they have an overburdened it staff then we're going to talk about well here are all these changes in android and here are the things that you're going to need to be aware of going forward and you know here's where we can help you be successful i want to go back to something that you said at the beginning of that last answer when you say research research research tell us what areas should they be researching is it the competition the industry the company they're potentially doing business with the person what is it exactly so a little bit of everything first thing is you know go get it go to the company's website right and understand what's going on in their organization understand what products they're selling understand where their locations are if they're publicly held look at their financials um so you get a sense of that obviously the next logical place is linkedin right and try to identify um you know number one i've always what's always been amazing to me is if i'm talking to someone many times there they may already be uh connected with one of my contacts right so i can then leverage that uh relationship that i may have or that contact that they may have to try to you know broach that with the customer a little bit further um but generally you know it's linkedin it's it's the website um you know you may look at youtube as well to see if there's any videos with that person up on youtube just to get a sense of what's going on um in their environment interesting okay so it's really the company and the individual that they should be researching i was on a call you know on a phone call a couple weeks ago it's first time i met this person he was a pretty senior person in the organization and you know it was helpful to say hey i understand that you've been with that company 24 years right which is kind of unusual for you know today's realm so a lot of people a lot of people jump jobs and uh to you know the only way i would have ever known that was to see that on linkedin right and and say and see what his what his background was and where he was before he joined the company that he was at so it's those type of little things i think that make a big difference and and really allow you to connect with someone um when you have you know they know you did your homework right you're just not out there to sell them something uh because you picked up the phone i share in my videos and blog posts so often that doing your homework gives you the edge of showing that you're more concerned about coming across as being interested in knowing the other person's situation and who they are that if you ask a question like so how long have you been with the company and the guy's been there for 24 years and it's plain as day on his linkedin profile and you didn't even know that well that's a big strike right away yeah yeah it's a lot easier to say so i see you've been with the company for 24 years right exactly what what's that been like what what changes have you seen um that that generates a whole different level of conversation with that person right let's shift gears a bit how do you get a prospect enthusiastic about doing business with you so they aren't agreeing to a meeting yet right in this scenario you're hitting them up for the first time they are pre-qualified and you've established that they would be a good fit how do you get them to be enthusiastic for the meeting that's a that's a tough question um you know i think obviously you know the hardest thing is to um uh get someone to connect with you on the phone especially in the in the world that we're living in today most people are still working out of their home offices um no one's really picking up their phone if they don't know the number on it any longer um so you know i rely a lot on email i rely a lot on um a technology tool called calenday where i say hey i really want to talk to you about this if you click on this link um you know book a time on my calendar that's convenient for you i find that that happens a lot you know more than you think um or at least more than i thought when i first started using it i was like who's really gonna click on that link and um i would say every week i probably have an average of you know five to eight people that use that link and book time on my calendar um because that's just showing you know i'm respectful of their time right everyone's got things that that are going on in their lives but i think the the the biggest thing that i do is when i do have an opportunity to talk to someone um i listen um i let them do a lot more talking than i do i ask lots of questions i'm really trying to understand uh where they're coming from and and what they're trying to solve you know i i put myself again in their position right yeah when i used to when i was in the market for buying a car if a sales guy said what do we have to do to make a deal today was just a giant turn off for me right because i'm not ready to make that deal today um what i'm really interested in is tell me more about the car so i could think about that and and make a decision um and and you know that's how i buy products in my own life and i try to you know do the similar type thing with um with people that i'm trying to sell to and that kind of goes back to what you were saying earlier about how sales has changed it moves faster but people are doing more research on their own and when they do approach a salesperson it may be for more research not necessarily to buy yet yeah it just it generally is you're right right there there are information they're gathering information they're trying to formulate a strategy again you know a lot of these folks are are working remotely as well like like i am right now uh so it's not like they could just go pull you know someone down the hallway and say hey what do you think right there they're out getting information and then they're meeting with them to have that discussion to kind of get to the next step so one of the issues in the sales process mike is objections right people people put up objections and one of the most difficult is the price objection you've had a lot of experience over the years dealing with the price objection how do you how do you approach that when someone says oh that's just too expensive um well what i've learned over time is you talk budget early on in the process usually in that that first initial meeting right because it's important that that a potential customer understands what the cost implications are of of the solution um you know generally i don't get a lot of pushback because again i have to do my research if i'm selling a solution i can go price that out on the internet that's the first place that the customer is going to go to go look for that um as well so i have to make sure that whatever we're pricing at is competitive um i always tell our customers you know i may not be the cheapest because someone that has no sales expo expense or um or or service expense like we do um may be willing to come in and take that at a lower uh a greater discount at lower margins but will definitely be competitive uh for the value that we're adding so um if pricing still becomes kind of a gating factor um then i know we're out of alignment somewhere right and i kind of gotta go at that point i either gotta back up and let's let's understand what our bill of materials is um or let's work on a solution that's acceptable to both sides so you know an example we had a pretty large client um or very large client i should say um wanted additional discounting um on the stuff that we were on the equipment that we were selling them and they're already getting a really good discount um you know the initial reaction was no right you're already getting a big enough discount but um but you know we worked with our manufacturing rep we worked with our distributor and we were able to go back to the customer and say okay we could save you money on this and give you additional discount but we're going to want you to buy five years of maintenance instead of three years of maintenance um because that was important to us um and the client ended up doing that and we were able to show them that if you bought three years of maintenance now and then bought the two-year maintenance you know in year three what his cost would have been versus what we were charging him now it made a lot more sense for him to buy that today and the client has has done that and you know he's been buying three-year maintenance for the last 10 years right this is the first year that he's gone to five year maintenance which is a big win-win for for all of us right so um you know so i guess the focus is really uh trying to make sure that economically we're all in a position that we can support the client for the lifetime of solution i had a customer tell me that once he's like i know you need to make money um otherwise you wouldn't be in business and i want you to be around for the long term to help us so you know again it's it's making sure that everyone is under the same expectations you know i share with customers the discount levels they're getting so for example you know if you have a customer that's getting a 40 discount off the list price it's important to say that a lot of salespeople in my experience don't want to tell them that right they just want to say here's your price and i think it's important to say here's your price and oh by the way it's 40 off of list price that's the discount you're getting and customers look at that and say okay they're being reasonable with me um and i think generally that's what people are looking for they just wanted someone to be reasonable yeah yeah i agree with that and uh you reminded me of one of my earlier bosses who taught me to respect vendors and their need to uh make a good living as well because you want them around a good vendor relationship that you can rely on and go back to makes your life easier you know that's a that's a really good point that you bring up you know a lot of things that we implement for our customers we buy from a manufacturer and you know we really put a lot of effort into our manufacturing relationships because if i need to ask them for a favor because we need a lower price for whatever requirement it's a lot easier to do that when we have a a positive relationship that we interact with versus me you know constantly beating on them to do a better job so i think that that at the end of the day really really helps us for for a lot of the opportunities that we have where where price objections do come up yeah yeah yeah and i like your point about bringing up the uh the budget earlier on in just establishing that that there is appropriate budget because why go far down the road only to be hit with the price objection so it really is your error for not having had some conversation around that early on and that's where a lot of newer sales people uh get scared like they that they don't want to talk about budget early on because they think it'll be a turn off yeah i just don't think that's the way to go yeah no i i agree with you they're they're they're nervous about that right and um you know i i have a a sales person that in our company that every year for his top customers you know in january he kind of puts together a summary here are all the things that you purchased from me last year thank you very much right and then i have he has a counterpart that never wants to do that with his customers right and he you know i don't want to tell the customer that he spent you know a half a million dollars with us i'm like guess what he already knows that right so so you might just get out out in front and tell them that but i think you know pricing is a hard discussion right and um customers you know they're not having discussion thinking they're going to get it for free right no one no one's expecting that but i think if you say hey you can go take my price and you can go shop that on the internet because a lot of components that we sell you can find pieces of that on the internet you're going to get a price on that and all of a sudden you're going to look at that and say yeah they're avalon's given us a good deal right we're going to go with them yeah yeah that's good so uh we talk about newer sales people a couple of times here and then those are often people that are watching these videos to try and try and learn how they can not make mistakes and do more of the right things what are mistakes that newer sales people often make good question because i have two brand new sales people that came to us without any experience in our industry are in fact sales right and and and the reason i hired them is because they had all the qualities that um i couldn't teach them right they were they were well organized they were good communicators they were competitive um you know those things i can't teach right and that's hard for anyone to teach someone those skills when when you know certainly at our at our age but but even if you're in your 20s or 30s right you're either organized or you're not um so the the common mistakes that i i do see is uh lack of preparation right they don't spend enough time on it and they kind of wink it um and it shows and you know what's been interesting is um you know my salespeople these these newer people have been on phone calls with me with customers and maybe a a vendor rep from another organization and that vendor rep is really pushing hard and you know when we hang up the phone i call my sales people i'm like what did you learn they're like don't ever act like that you know because they weren't listening all they wanted to know was when were you gonna buy um because they were just narrowly focused on that so um i think it's important that uh you know sales people really spend the time to listen to the customer be prepared for it um a lot of times they fail to comprehend what the customer is saying you know i've been in meetings where um you know we're co-selling with someone and the and the person that we're there with is like well let me show you this powerpoint and all our solutions and the customer's like yeah i'm not really interested in that and they go off they show that powerpoint all right and take them right down the road anyway right and i'm just like oh my gosh um so you know in in our company now in our organization um you know let's take the android mobile computing again you know there could be hundreds of configuration options so if you don't listen to a customer and what they might need or what they may need in the future right chances are you're not going to sell them the right item so asking that those questions taking a little time um listening to them generally will come out to be you know a better better overall experience for the customer as well as as a better long-term relationship for yourself uh in the sales role yeah yeah because then you you were in the respect of of this customer because they they know you're new and they expect you to make some mistakes but when you make fewer mistakes than they expect they're impressed well that's it that's it i mean we um for years we sold the device um from zebra it was a mobile computer and when they came out with the new model they put a camera in it and when i first saw that i was like who is going to want a camera in that they're just trying to get extra money and lo and behold when i started talking to the customers they all want cameras because they're like oh i could run this application here now i don't need to have this camera that i have separately i could take it with my mobile computer take the picture of my mobile computer and i was like oh never thought of that right but but i had to make sure that i you know i didn't just get a job predisposed to just say uh or judgment on that just say you know who would want a camera right it was more of hey they have this camera option and here's where we've seen clients using that is that of interest to you if the client says yes okay that's an extra 200 option right you're just as long as you're aware of it um but you know not asking the question and then all of a sudden you know selling something selling a piece of equipment to a customer and then for them to find out later um you know really hurts um i think the other thing that's important is um uh being able to call an audible is what i call it right so we've we've we've prepared we have a plan we're trying to think of all the answers to the questions before they're answered and then you're in the meeting and then something else comes up right and something you didn't know so you got to call an audible right um and generally you know i think that's that's really important you know when i'm preparing with my sales people i will try to throw out questions to them to see how they're going to react right so like as an example you might be sitting in front of a sales uh a customer and all of a sudden he says i need a better price what are you going to say and generally a lot of the sales people are like well let me see what i can do let me go talk to my boss i was like you can't do that i said because that that's a you know you don't have a good answer for that you have to be prepared to say well mr customer you're getting 40 off it's a very fair price it's very competitive i might be able to do something if you were to do this right as an example so um you know so i think that's that's really important um i think it's also important to understand again through listening to the customer what options there are so you know we had a customer a number of years ago one of my sales people was laser focused on selling them this one solution and then i asked the question about you know was the barcode terminal how many times are you going to scan something during the shift and he's like 10 barcodes in a shift right it was very low scanning volume um and my sales person was focused on selling them this one unit that happened to be a pretty expensive unit and i was like well you got to talk to him about the other option there's a unit out there for half the price the scanner's not as good but it only you know he's only got to use it 10 times a shift and my sales person initially was like well i don't know if i want to do that i was like he's going to find it they're going to go do an internet search they're going to find it and then they're going to ask you a question how come you didn't tell me about that so you know since that point um you know i've seen like with my team it's kind of interesting to watch right we're where we've made mistakes we've learned and we've done a better job next time um and and i see that across you know my whole organization so it's it's it's actually exciting right right yeah and and an important point that you just just made right at the end there is uh be authentic and put yourself in the customer's shoes if the lower volume solution which you're going to make a lower commission on is the better solution for them offer it absolutely because you know when you know we had this discussion um you know when this was going on i was like they're gonna find it and you're gonna have a better long-term experience right this is a sales is a long game right it's not a short trans at least in our organization it's not a short transactional thing our customers generally buy from us year in and year out um or when you know if they got to refresh their hardware in three years or five years right they're bringing us right back in so you know that that expertise and and making sure that you're giving the very best solution is is important um i think the other big mistake that sales people make is you have to make it easier for the client and you know big example of that is like um a quote right a lot of times you'll get a customer that says give me a quote for this i'll give it to me with this option give it to me with that option give it to me that option now before you know it they have five different pieces of paper um that you know you understand what they are but can generally get a little confusing for them so you know i always recommend go to that little extra effort right put it on a spreadsheet really clearly explain to the customer what that is here's option one here's option two here's option three um you know the biggest thing on a spreadsheet is do the math form right don't sum it all up put a total on it right a lot of people will say well here's your cost for this here's your cost for that i'm like sum it up and and you know really try to make it easier for them again put yourself in their position if you got a document from someone you just want to get to the answer they got a zillion things going on so make it easy for them yeah brilliant yeah frictionless well mike that has been a really good set of ideas and techniques that you've shared here today i appreciate you being so willing to be forthcoming and essentially act as the sales manager to the audience that's watching this video absolutely no i i appreciate it and it's uh you know i never thought i was gonna be a salesperson when i got out of college um and i kind of fell into it but i enjoyed every day and you know i'm a people person i love to talk to people um so it's it's uh it's been a great career yeah yeah interesting because uh my name is mike and i have the same experience graduated from college and i didn't think that was going into sales but better yes it certainly did yeah yeah my my college degree certainly i did not put that to use but um uh but yeah it's been a great it's been a great run and and and i'm excited i'm excited for you know all the new people coming into sales now and uh and the things that are happening in our industry excellent well they're going to be a little better prepared because of uh the video that we made today mike thank you very much i hope excellent good to see you yeah you too you take care all right see ya you