By Mark I LaRosa on January 30th, 2009
Think about a typical conversation with a two year old:
Tina: “Daddy, can I have some candy?”
Daddy: “not now”
Tina: “Daddy, can I have a cookie?”
Daddy: “Its two hours until dinner, not now”
Tina: “PLEASE!”
Daddy: “I said no”
Tina: “Can I have an apple?”
Daddy: “Oh, alright. Fine – have an apple.”
While some may read this conversation and determine that I am a pushover, I want you to read into the persistence of the two year old. Not once, did Tina think that she wouldn’t eventually get something to eat – she just needed to figure out the right words, the right win-win solution so that she could get what she wanted. And – she did!
She didn’t give up once she heard the first “no”. She thought about it, and changed her pitch until she ultimately got what she wanted. Now – perhaps it wasn’t 100% what she wanted in the beginning, but in the end, she got a snack.
Is my daughter a born salesperson? Perhaps… but I think this is the nature of every two year old. Somewhere along the way, many of forget this lesson of persistance. Read more...
By Mark I LaRosa on January 25th, 2009
Recently, I negotiated and closed an account on behalf of one of my clients. The deal had the potential to be very large, yet the ultimate deal came through at a significantly lower cost than I originally proposed.
The main reason for this was that they had a price in their head.. this price was revealed to them by the CEO of the company. He didn’t do it in a bad way. They asked him a direct question as to what the software typically costs – and he answered it honestly. The problem is, the solution we ultimately proposed was significantly larger in scope than any other customer had experienced and this customer was going to need a lot more resources than other customers had ever needed. But, they had a price now in their head, and the negotiations were very difficult to move them off of that number. I was able to negotiate what I feel was fair terms for what they are getting and we are providing – but what we would have preferred was a much broader scoped contract. Read more...
By Mark I LaRosa on January 6th, 2009
With all this talk about tax breaks and tax credits going on, I want it on record that I want to pay MORE taxes in 2009 than I did in 2008.
I don’t want to pay more taxes because I’m super patriotic (although I am). I’m want to do it for one reason… because I want to make a sick amount of money. One of my first posts at QuotaCrush was on this topic: Why I’m happy about my Tax Bill I’m not going to comment on relative tax rates or what constitutes rich or not. I’m not commenting on what should get a tax credit or not. What I’m saying is that as a salesperson, if you are paying a high tax bill, it is probably because you sold a lot of stuff and got rewarded for it.
Therefore, as salespeople, and as entrepreneurs, lets all try to pay a lot of taxes in 2009 – meaning lets all strive to make a lot of money and bring our companies a lot of revenue so THEY can pay a lot of taxes too!
By Mark I LaRosa on January 5th, 2009
This morning I went to buy a cup of coffee. This coffee shop charged $1.95 for a cup of coffee – after tax it was $2.11 per cup. I watched as the line built up and built up while the cashiers made change for each person that tried to buy a simple cup of coffee. I even saw people walking away because the line was getting too long. I wondered why this shop didn’t change the price just to make the act of buying a cup of coffee that much easier. There is a LOT of margin in a $2 cup of coffee – and by simply lowing the price (even a penny) they could have made buying the coffee that much easier and I would argue, made more money in the long run.
One of my clients was suffering a very similar problem recently. The way they were selling the product, was not aligned with how the companies could buy the software. They were attempting to charge a “per-use” or rather a “per-user” fee, when in fact, the only money the departments had to spend was capital improvement budgets – meaning pay once a year and that’s it. So, we are trying a new pricing scheme which is a single price per year for all-you-can-eat. We will see whether or not it works in the coming weeks. Read more...
By Mark I LaRosa on January 2nd, 2009
Its been too long since I’ve blogged. Lots of good things going on with QuotaCrush, plus the holidays have kept me away, but I have several topics on which I want to write about and I am goign to be more diligent with sitting down to write.
In the mean-time, an interesting question has come up recently with two different clients about what should be the basis for commission on which I thought I would write a mini-post. Should you pay based on the amount of profit that the sales produces – or should you pay based on the amount of revenue that the project produces.
In general, I always advocate that the goals of the compensation plan must match the goals of the company. When these two objectives are in alignment, then the salesteam can be very productive, and everyone wins. When these items are mis-matched, frustrations on both parts are likely to happen. Read more...
