Starting a New Career

It has been six weeks since I have been let go from my last job. I was serving a senior director of marketing and product for a tech company in the video surveillance market.

I liked my job. A lot.

I liked the people I worked with. I liked doing my job and I found it interesting a challenging.

I even think I did a pretty good job, but...

My company had to cut 30% of its employees due to the downturn and I guess I was a little too expensive.

So after moping around for a week and watching everything recorded on my Tivo, I am back on track. I have had several job interviews but right now I am pretty excited about starting my own enterprise. I am not going to reject a good offer if it comes along (I have a wife two little girls who love to spend) but what I really want to do is work for myself.

I have several ideas I am currently working on and I intend to share my progress or lack of.

I also intend to improve my "post once every two years" record - but I am not making any promises (;

The power of SMS

I have recently been converted. No, I am not joining the church of Scientology or any other faith, I am talking about SMS. Until recently, I was cought in the misconception that SMS messages are for teenage kids who send silly text messages to amuse themselves. I could not be more wrong.

Here is the deal. Everyone has a cell phone. People carry it all the time. People will screen calls, junk or neglect to read e-mail but everyone will read text messages on his phone.

An SMS message can serve the following:

• Get information to someone in a meeting
• Communicate a critical point to a peer who is on a conf call
• Reach a person on a flight or who has his phone off (yes, he will get it when he lands)
• Reach a person in a different time zone who you do not want to bother with a potential wake up call (:
• Reach a person who is not reading his mail, or is buried under a ton of mail (first day back in the office syndrome)
• An alternative to e-mail when you are away from your PC
• Get a message to someone you really don't want to talk to right now
• Provide an unexpected thank you note alternative
• Send a photo or chart to a person away from their PC (using picture message)

I personally use a QWERTY enabled phone (I may review it later on as part of my concept to review tools of the trade). I highly recommend this option if you do not have the skill of a 13 year old at texting and you don't want your customers to have to disyphere messages like:

i m srry bt i do nt hv th tim to typ vwls

Free is Good !!!

Working in a small company, our sales CRM has been based on a sophisticated system namely Outlook and several long Excel sheets. I have had a long on and off affair with ACT! which I could no longer really get to work for me.

I have recently decided to change our system and after reviewing several expensive software solutions including SalesForce(tm) I have decided to go with a pure online (web based) system.

Basically, we are always connected. Why should our CRM reside anywhere but the web?

After looking at several system I have decided to test run a website called www.freecrm.com

This San Francisco based service has a free (limited) version but more importantly has an excellent feature set - everything I want without too much junk I can't understand and use.

The "Pro" version is only $15/m per user.

I am still not completely sold (some early problems are occasional lag when working with the system as well as some bugs I already found). Still, the upside of this system is high and I intend to call the company and see how the problems can be addressed. I will keep you guys posted on the up and downside of the system.

The Greatest Product For Long Flights

Over the last two month I logged a little over 100 hours of flight time on my various work trips. I would like to recommend a little item that makes my flights productive and fun. Well, maybe not fun, but bearable. The external universal battery allows my tired old laptop to log up to 6 hours of extra operation. With my internal battery maxing out at 2 hours, this allows me to catch up on all my e-mail, rehearse my presentations and catch a DVD movie (a real power drain) without worrying or working with a dim screen to save on juice. I recently purchased a second battery for a trip I had to Europe. You can get a really nice universal battery for $150 online with free shipping at this website:

http://www.laptopbattery.net/universalbatteries.html

Oh, I must warn you, if you travel like me, with a laptop, two external batteries, and IPOD, noise canceling headphones and a PSP, be ready to have the screeners look through your bag. Still, highly worth it....

Back In The Saddle

Hello Readers

It has been a while since my last post, in the interim I was able to squeeze the following:

1. My second daughter, Leah Rose Rotem was born.
2. I somehow found the time and energy to close a major deal with a fortune 100 company
3. I have managed to travel several trade shows and in Europe

I am back and committed to more regular posts. I have several articles on the back burner, but I would love to get your inputs on what subjects you would find most useful.

Happy trails.

The Price Is Right

A lot of focus is given to product pricing and price negotiation as part of closing sales. I have stated this before, and I will state it again - price is one of the less important aspects of selling technology.

Product is linked directly to value. It is much easier (not to mention profitable) to work on increasing your value rather than cutting your price. Since value is almost always perceived rather than measured, you the talented salesperson can increase your product value by taking the steps I preach.

Even when the product you are selling is 100% identical one can increase his price be making the sales process and post sale service more appealing. A good example is shopping with Amazon. Using price comparison engines I can almost always find identical products at a lower cost than Amazon. Still, the comfort of shopping on Amazon's excellent site, the guarantee they provide for shipping and returns and the knowledge that my credit card information resides in the safest place are worth 10%-15% more at times.

Here are a 10 steps I would like you to try:

1. Start by telling your customer that you are NOT the cheapest product out there.

2. Explain that the quality/service/support etc. cannot be delivered at the lowest cost.

3. Explain the differentiators you provide and ask the customer if they are worth money to him

4. If the customer tells you that you are too expensive, consider that you did not explain the benefits/value correctly to the customer.

5. If the customer does not see the benefits, offer a lower cost alternative, with less features.

6. If the customer states that even your stripped down proposal is still too expensive, consider waling away.

7. If you are still interested, ask the customer what price he believes could make the deal happen.

8. Don't hesitate to counter offer

9. If you are still far away, consider waling away. There are plenty of opportunities out there and not all of them fit your product/service. Trying to fit a square peg into a round hole is not a good idea.

10. Other tricks to move negotiation closer is asking the customer to make some modifications to his purchase. Can he order a larger quantity? Can he provide a long term commitment to buy? Can you get great terms?

REMEMBER - NEVER EVER DROP PRICE WITHOUT A CONCESSION FROM THE CUSTOMER - this only weakens your position and makes your proposal look inflated thus ruining your credibility.

I can write 50 more pages about price negotiation, but there have been many great books on the subject (I intend to list a few in a future post) . Again, it all comes down to establishing value.

I will revisit this subject in future posts.

Now go and sell.......

Nice Guys Come First

The first time I seriously thought about sales as a career was after watching Glengarry Glen Ross, a great film based on a great play. If you haven't seen it - do it now. If you have, you cannot forget the sales "training" Alec Baldwin provides the hapless real estate sales people in the film.

It is a macho world of killer sales people. Real "sharks" who use every trick in the book to sell worthless real estate investments to naive marks.

Since working in sales, I have learned that:

A. I will never be as cool as Alec Baldwin or Al Pacino in this movie.
B. I cannot sell crappy product
C. I cannot scam people into buying anything
D. Nice guys actually do better in this field than "sharks"

Still, there is a lot to learn from the following clip. Get your popcorn and click the window below.