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Help me BFC! By a serious of bad life decisions and a corporate bankruptcy, I've found myself with a sales position for a B2B chemical company. We handle botanical extracts, vitamins, and things like that. I have no idea how to even start finding my client base and the company's guidance has been very vague. How do I even start? How do I do sales?
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Aug 4, 2020 15:04
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So they hired you and gave you the instruction of go sell what we have? I am not sure accepting this position isn't a bad life decision. In general terms you need to find the people that buy what you sell, make a list of them and get them to have meetings with you by creating a list of actions you will take to get them to meet and follow through with those actions. There are some nifty software programs that will help you create a database of this crap. I think GNC just went bankrupt so yeah.
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Aug 5, 2020 02:15
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Elephanthead posted:So they hired you and gave you the instruction of go sell what we have? Yes. I have a list of in-stock inventory that they would like to move and a list of products that we can bring in. Elephanthead posted:I am not sure accepting this position isn't a bad life decision. I know that feeling. Elephanthead posted:In general terms you need to find the people that buy what you sell, make a list of them and get them to have meetings with you by creating a list of actions you will take to get them to meet and follow through with those actions. There are some nifty software programs that will help you create a database of this crap. I think GNC just went bankrupt so yeah. I understand the general point of what I am trying to do, I guess, but my problem is trying to find the potential clients in the first place. I am having difficulty making contacts with the co-manufacturers and the other potential avenues for our products. Where do I start looking? bedpan fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Aug 6, 2020 |
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Aug 6, 2020 19:32
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if the sales team at my company is any indication, you gently caress around for a few months until they figure out you are not productive and fire you
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Aug 6, 2020 20:59
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Presumably you have existing customers? If so, first step is to work those. Make them happier with you. Introduce them to your entire product range and sell new poo poo to them. I'll bet that the majority of your customers aren't even aware of half your products - let alone why they should buy from you.
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Aug 6, 2020 23:15
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DELETE CASCADE posted:if the sales team at my company is any indication, you gently caress around for a few months until they figure out you are not productive and fire you It has already been a few months so naturally I am nervous. Moo the cow posted:Presumably you have existing customers? I have a single existing client in my area. They are going through lots of changes that prevent that account from being viable at least for a few months more. Aside from that I have nothing. I know I need to prospect and look for new business but I am baffled as to how to go about this.
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Aug 7, 2020 03:07
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bedpan posted:Aside from that I have nothing. I know I need to prospect and look for new business but I am baffled as to how to go about this. I think sales may not be for you.
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Aug 7, 2020 05:41
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Buy/steal 3 books called 'how to be a salesman' or similar. It doesn't matter which exact title as they all rehash the same basic principles anyway. You'll be surprised how much useful stuff you can get from them.
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Aug 8, 2020 00:18
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steal office supplies while you can ?
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Aug 9, 2020 03:35
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Moo the cow posted:Buy/steal 3 books called 'how to be a salesman' or similar. This is going to be what I end up doing. Thesaurus posted:steal office supplies while you can A downside to working from home is that the office supplies I steal are my own to begin with
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Aug 9, 2020 17:39
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Do your best Ricky Roma impression.
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Aug 10, 2020 03:00
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In my industry we generally buy/maintain lists of leads, who are in theory the person at an organization that might be a fit for us that is responsible for buying our services. We cold call and email the poo poo out of them and occasionally sign one. Your company is dumb if they do not have a lead/sales management platform in place already. Hubspot is a big one. Check out zoominfo if you have an idea of the type of company your potential customer might be and need contact info.
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Aug 11, 2020 17:25
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bedpan posted:I understand the general point of what I am trying to do, I guess, but my problem is trying to find the potential clients in the first place. I am having difficulty making contacts with the co-manufacturers and the other potential avenues for our products. Where do I start looking? Commonly in B2B sales you'll have someone, often called a Sales Development Rep or Business Development Rep, whose jobs it is to generate leads/prospects and to get those leads/prospects into meetings with an Account Executive. Sales jobs that have you do both roles, one being the grind of banging phones and the other being relationship building, tend to not be great. They're pretty different skill sets. bedpan posted:It has already been a few months so naturally I am nervous. Some basic questions to orient the type of place youre in: -How many sales people? Do they have this SDR/AE split? -What is the current average lifetime value of customers? If the average customer LTV is <$2K, customers probably dont generate enough money to have sales people. You're selling cutco steak knives. Get out. If its in the roughly $2.5K~$25K range, that tends to be a decent spot for inside sales. You should be landing them through calls/emails. Sales cycles usually need to be short. If the average is $>25K, that can usually support outside sales. -Whats the ideal customer profile for the company? -Do potential clients need your item at a certain time (e.g. time of year or in response to an event)? -How does your company track manage leads/sales/prospects (e.g. what CRM, what are the primary tools etc.) sanchez posted:In my industry we generally buy/maintain lists of leads, who are in theory the person at an organization that might be a fit for us that is responsible for buying our services. We cold call and email the poo poo out of them and occasionally sign one. Your company is dumb if they do not have a lead/sales management platform in place already. Hubspot is a big one. Check out zoominfo if you have an idea of the type of company your potential customer might be and need contact info. I fukkkkken hate purchased lead lists but our customers need us in response to an event happening so we scrape the web to find those events. Thats not true generally so ces la vie. Also whatever you do dont start cold emailing a bunch of people from lead lists. CarForumPoster fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Aug 12, 2020 |
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Aug 12, 2020 01:50
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I’ve been selling for years and basically just do this without talking about your balls https://youtu.be/B2SopWQTTYE
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Aug 16, 2020 03:44
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If they’re not giving you leads then they expect you to sell to your family and friends until you run out of people you know well enough to tolerate you selling poo poo to them, at which point they’ll move on from you to the next sucker. You’re effectively still unemployed and should keep working at getting a job. Might pop into the resume/interview thread for help with that. e: oh, you said B2B? Then I haven’t the faintest clue what the gently caress their business model even is, if they’re hiring people with no sales background and no industry contacts for sales roles and giving them no guidance. Eric the Mauve fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Aug 16, 2020 |
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Aug 16, 2020 18:43
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sanchez posted:In my industry we generally buy/maintain lists of leads, who are in theory the person at an organization that might be a fit for us that is responsible for buying our services. We cold call and email the poo poo out of them and occasionally sign one. Your company is dumb if they do not have a lead/sales management platform in place already. Hubspot is a big one. Check out zoominfo if you have an idea of the type of company your potential customer might be and need contact info. As far as I know, we do not have a lead/sales management platform in place. I'll take a look at those two services, thanks! CarForumPoster posted:Commonly in B2B sales you'll have someone, often called a Sales Development Rep or Business Development Rep, whose jobs it is to generate leads/prospects and to get those leads/prospects into meetings with an Account Executive. Sales jobs that have you do both roles, one being the grind of banging phones and the other being relationship building, tend to not be great. They're pretty different skill sets. This is most definitely a sales job where I would have to do both. CarForumPoster posted:
I think there are just a couple other sales people aside from my boss (who is the CEO and owner of the company). Average lifetime value for a customer would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. I am unsure what we would think of as an "ideal customer." I am from the nutraceutical/dietary supplement manufacturing industry and so I find myself contacting similar factories. Eric the Mauve posted:If they’re not giving you leads then they expect you to sell to your family and friends until you run out of people you know well enough to tolerate you selling poo poo to them, at which point they’ll move on from you to the next sucker. I do have a few industry contacts but so far those industry contacts have been unproductive. bedpan fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Aug 18, 2020 |
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Aug 18, 2020 02:20
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bedpan posted:As far as I know, we do not have a lead/sales management platform in place. I'll take a look at those two services, thanks! Google that phrase and start making one then find companies who fit it. I’d start with the current clients that keep the lights on. With that LTV you’re in the relationship building business. It’s not really my area of expertise but it is the subject of many books. You’re a whale hunter. It also definitely supports an SDR. FWIW Sales can be a really lucrative position and if you figure out a process to do it better, by starting from scratch in this case, it can be very rewarding for your career. CarForumPoster fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Aug 18, 2020 |
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Aug 18, 2020 02:49
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bedpan posted:As far as I know, we do not have a lead/sales management platform in place. I'll take a look at those two services, thanks! Could we have an update on where you are with things?
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Oct 2, 2020 09:58
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Breath Ray posted:Could we have an update on where you are with things? You may, although not quite yet. I wanted some unequivocally good news before I updated this thread again to give all of you rubbernecking goons something to counterbalance all of my unskilled, idiot flailing. And I just might have something pretty good and something else that is awesome. I will return once these develop a bit more and I have a solid story to share.
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Oct 28, 2020 12:06
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Hello op are you back with any news yet
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Nov 13, 2020 03:19
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elrnAl6ygeM
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Nov 13, 2020 03:27
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ABC baby
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Nov 13, 2020 03:29
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AOCs Pink Pearl posted:Hello op are you back with any news yet Hello yes this is Bedpan. CEO, President, Founder, etc. of Pantshitter Chemicals and Nutraceuticals Inc.. As would be expected of someone with all of my august titles, I am imminently qualified for my position. As for updates and news, well I don't have anything "good" to say. I don't have COVID though and according to the dentist, my teeth are great. Also, I am current on my bills. I am still struggling to make contact with accounts and clients my company sees as worth pursuing. I had made contact with some places outside the country (USA) that were seeming like they were interested in the sort of volume that my boss is looking for. Alas, I've been asked to only go after clients in USA and Canada, and I continue to struggle with making contact with these. I have neither guidance from nor regular contact with the home office/HQ. On the other hand, they ask me for nothing and only pay on commission so there has been little to speak of recently. My initial account base, such as it was, has shrunk from 2 to 0. One of those accounts has all but ceased production and the other, the other was a former account of my boss and I gave it back to him for a variety of reasons. My boss has asked if I am able to keep living and asked if I needed any money. I've already been given $2500 (separate from some commissions) but that is spent. This is 100% goon craziness but I told him that I did not want any additional money and that he could congratulate me when I finally land a solid PO. As for "other news," I've reconnected with someone I've done business with in the past. This individual is going through the process of opening a starting a new business. If I can find clients who need capsules, tablets, or dry blends, my reward will be very rich indeed. The "awesome" news was originally connected with this person, and a plan to supply staggering quantities of premixed, preportioned brine powder to an industry contact that I do have. This deal may yet materialize, but it won't materialize quickly and I have no hope for it in the short or medium term. I am in a similar place as to when I posted the OP in August, albeit shabbier and more desperate. I do have more and other experiences to share, but none of these are good experiences. I have no sweetness to counter the bitter. I'll keep this thread updated and I will at least be able to give my goon audience an ending.
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Nov 13, 2020 04:54
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I’m not a lawyer but in the US you must be paid minimum wage and overtime for work over 40 hours per week. Possibly additional things depending on state. Your boss not paying you may be a massive liability to him and he should consult a L&E attorney. Also wishing you the best of luck. Any progress with lead sourcing? Getting past gatekeepers is definitely hard.
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Nov 13, 2020 05:18
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Oh boy. Having found myself in a similar situation a couple of jobs back, here is what worked for me: 1. Day to day survival Recognise there are two parts to your job: 1. Making sales 2. Reporting upwards on your progress Making sales gets you commission, reputation and referrals (which is where tomorrow’s business comes from). Reporting reliably keeps your sales director off your back. This is nice but not that important. I completely ignored my sales director and just tried everything that made sense to me until I made my first sale. There were months of increasing awkwardness and requests to be in the office more which I ignored. Then I landed a big deal and everything was forgiven. “You’re only as good as your last sale” works both ways - you are also only as bad as your last dry patch. The exact mix will differ based on the sales cycle of whatever your product/service is (shorter and emphasise reporting, longer and emphasise doing it right) but that’s a fairly basic dynamic. 2. Internal research If you’re selling something and nobody local to you can tell you how to sell it - in my case, we were selling software in Asia and the only people who knew the software specs and functions were in another part of the business, didn’t want our business unit to succeed at selling it and wouldn’t tell us anything, and our management didn’t have a loving clue - you need to do a bit of mild internal espionage. You need to understand: - what each of your products is - what it does - who in the past bought it and why How you do this depends on your company. You can find some stuff out online, some from customers, some by making personal contacts inside your company etc. If you don’t know this all well you won’t be able to sell it because eventually someone will ask you a question you had no context for and that will kill the sale. 3. Market research A highly functional company would give you a list of qualified leads. You don’t have that: how do you get one? Well, you’ve found out who uses your stuff already so start there. Do those guys have competitors in your territory? Look them up on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has a sales navigator thingy that was pretty good for my product in my region, it might work for yours. Check public records. Hit up google. You should have a list of 20 or so names quite quickly. Start with them. 4. Plan approach You could cold call everyone but that’s a horrible use of time. It has its place, particularly for getting you over the fear of pitching, but it’s not a great way of getting sales. Instead you want to start by working out how to actually sell your thing. I think there’s 3 steps to this: - work it out intellectually - work out how to say it in the real world. I recorded myself a bunch of times doing quick pitches and adjusted until I wasn’t cringing at the sight of it any more - test it on colleagues and, if you’re lucky enough to have them, friendly existing customers. All of that should get you up to speed and with as good a chance of selling as anyone else. Will it work? gently caress knows; I only did sales for 2 years before getting a completely unrelated lucky break elsewhere, and your circumstances might be totally different. But the above is what worked for me in those 2 years, when nobody around me had any idea how to sell these products and HQ was actively hostile to me selling them.
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Nov 30, 2020 07:46
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Beefeater1980 posted:Oh boy. I appreciate this detailed writeup. This was more guidance and instruction than the company has provided these past 10 months. I'm not just seeing this now, by the way, but I've not wanted to respond until I had something positive or something final. And today, Jan 4th, I had part of a final call with my boss. I will type up a more detailed summary for all of you gorehounds out there. CelestialScribe posted:I think sales may not be for you. Indeed.
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Jan 4, 2021 23:12
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Okay! I just had a strange but possibly encouraging phone call. My goose may not yet be cooked. I'll writeup a summary because parts of it were a bit eyepopping. Did you know that the Coronavirus vaccine will turn you into a slave? Anyway, this train has not yet jumped the tracks.
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Jan 5, 2021 00:20
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bedpan posted:Okay! I just had a strange but possibly encouraging phone call. My goose may not yet be cooked. I'll writeup a summary because parts of it were a bit eyepopping. Well I'll be checking back on this thread 
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Jan 6, 2021 07:18
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jiminy fuckin christmas OP just tell us if you made the big sale or not
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Feb 1, 2021 21:35
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Agreed with the Doc.
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Feb 1, 2021 22:50
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Doctor Dogballs posted:jiminy fuckin christmas OP just tell us if you made the big sale or not Alright, my faithful BFC audience. I had been dragging this out because I wanted some success in the story, some sweet to go with the bitter, but professionally I have nothing. As a story though, well, it was certainly interesting if nothing else. Oh, a big sale was made, but I'll get to that later. First though, let me step back a bit to when I started with the B2B chemical company: it is February, I've been laid off as have many people as a cost cutting measure, and I don't know what to do or want to admit that a job I really liked was over. The circumstances of the end were also very nasty; as the owner of the chemical company said to me when I told him the story, "you did not know who were your friends and who your enemies." I liked what I was doing, I liked the field I was in, and I was reluctant to give those up and start over. I was not without contacts or ability (not in sales) and the chemical company made me an offer: represent our firm in your territory. And I accepted. I protested, not hard enough though, that I was totally inexperienced but in the balance I could contact and learn from my boss and I had two accounts to start with: my former factory and another factory. I would begin with the firms in the area and work those while I contacted the people that I did know in the industry, who I had met while working at my former job. Right about that time is when COVID really exploded. My boss was someone who had been telling me that COVID was going to be a problem all the way back in Jan/Feb and I remember a long phone call where he described the protective measures for himself and his family. Also, he told me that COVID was a bioweapon that escaped from a biowarfare facility in China. My task then, would be to work from home; to work the phones and the emails and try to establish working relationships without ever laying eyes on the people at the other end. I did have some email addresses to contact, but would need to find others. The existing accounts could be worked without much difficulty from home, and so I set about. Initially, very initially, things looked good beyond belief. I had reached out to my most likely contact to discuss supplying them with a chemical product. The deal would be worth in excess of $10 million per year, gross sales volume. At the end of it, though, the client was unwilling to switch. Alas. There were some other bad portents for my future success as well: my boss had mistakenly sent a draft of my business card to my old corporate email. I discovered later that this set off alarm bells and a friend of mine was interrogated as to my current activities and threatened. After this I did not have much hope of establishing a good sales relationship. And knowing the temperament of my old employers, suspected that they would burn me if any mutual contacts reached out to them with questions about me. 1 account off the table then. As for the other, my boss insisted that it was a productive account worth in excess of $800,000 per year gross sales. I could believe this but did not experience it in practice. I had several short but pleasant email exchanges with the owner of that firm, who both my boss and I knew, but somehow would never hear back when it came time to discuss setting up a time for a future phone call or if they had any current material demands. The other account off the table. At this point, whatever goodwill my boss felt towards me had long since vanished. I was a uniquely unproductive salesperson who could destroy relationships by merely existing. He insisted I continue to send out emails, to make calls, and to contact him regularly. I could agree with the first two but as for the third, the conversations were uncomfortable at best. The take away messages were to work harder and that his time was entirely consumed in continuing to establish the business. Also, and there was a new trait in his character, he began to mock and denigrate me for whatever errors I had so far committed, and would bring those up in later conversations to laugh in my face again. I worked virtually without contact with him, except on a few occasions when I needed to get some documentation for a possible client. I certainly wasn't going to go back to him with anything less than success. And it isn't that I was inert. I tried to dig up possible contacts and would reach out to these people by email and by phone. I followed up until the other side was silent. I reached out to the contacts who I had met while working with my old company, but I have reason to believe that my old employer burned me to them. Nothing I can prove, of course. I stumbled around, depressed and despairing, until the start of the new year. The call that I knew was going to happen happened, although it did not unfold as I had imagined. This call was in two parts, separated because I did not think it was going to go on for as long as it did and so had something else scheduled ~45 minutes after the start. There isn't much to mention from that first ~45 minutes. He interrogated me as to who I had contacted and what sort of responses I received. I mentioned that one of the last people I had emailed I had not called as the emails had dried up and didn't think there was anything to be gained. Then I go to my other appointment and come back, the conversation resumes. In the interim my boss contacted the buyer at this final factory and chatted with them. He was able to secure commitments of around $500,000 per year for two of our chemical products. Had I called, that very well could have been my sale. As it was, this final "victory" was a bitter one. The conversation then continued onto bizarre territory. He brought up that no woman would want me if I didn't have a good job and that I would be out on the street without employment. He derided the ongoing COVID relief efforts as wasteful handouts and more importantly, that the government would make acceptance of relief conditional on being vaccinated and vaccination would make me into a slave. I was offered a brief extension, two more weeks to turn the ship around. In addition to this, he asked that I speak with him if I had any questions (although there was nothing in his voice or offer that would make me take that up), and that he was also available for dating advice. If I had questions as to what to say to a girl I could ask him and he would tell me what to say. I thought this was ridiculous and said that he was reminding me of Cyrano de Bergerac. He got the reference and didn't seem to like it. He closed with advice to begin dating a person known to the both of us at my old factory, who happened to work in the purchasing department. I don't know what her relationship status was, because I never asked or had reason to ask. She was 15 years older than me and I never, not ever, saw her as someone I would begin a relationship with. On that we parted, in theory I had accepted to try for two more weeks, but after three or four days I accepted the inevitable and emailed him my resignation. And that, more or less, is that. I do have a small epilogue though: in December I had called a person I knew from the old factory to wish them a merry christmas. This was the purpose of the call and we spoke and caught up for 45 minutes or so. Apparently, later on, either in passing or intentionally, despite my explicit warning, this person made a reference of our conversation to someone else at the factory. Things then got very, very ugly for a friend of mine who was called back in, interrogated, and once again threatened. The only thing that saved the friend, it seems, was that we did not speak of our time at the factory because it caused me pain to remember. This friend was apparently able to just barely convince the management to stay their hand. The friend, drunk and angry, called me later to describe the event. That was an ugly phone call but we are still friends to this day, although I am more careful than ever to not mention our shared past and to absolutely avoid anyone else I know from the factory. The end.
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Feb 3, 2021 02:48
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That sounds horrible and dude just kept you around to abuse you and use you to make himself feel better. Sorry to see that. Please, please tell me he was paying you a base salary and you were not 100% commission ? Did he pay you this whole time?
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Feb 3, 2021 15:05
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bedpan posted:Also, and there was a new trait in his character, he began to mock and denigrate me for whatever errors I had so far committed, and would bring those up in later conversations to laugh in my face again.
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Feb 4, 2021 05:02
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This thread is absolutely bizarre. Like how TF do you get no sales in like 6+ months and this guy gets a verbal on a $500k in one call on one of your leads?
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Feb 4, 2021 05:29
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bedpan posted:I do have a small epilogue though: in December I had called a person I knew from the old factory to wish them a merry christmas. This was the purpose of the call and we spoke and caught up for 45 minutes or so. Apparently, later on, either in passing or intentionally, despite my explicit warning, this person made a reference of our conversation to someone else at the factory. Things then got very, very ugly for a friend of mine who was called back in, interrogated, and once again threatened. The only thing that saved the friend, it seems, was that we did not speak of our time at the factory because it caused me pain to remember. This friend was apparently able to just barely convince the management to stay their hand. The friend, drunk and angry, called me later to describe the event. That was an ugly phone call but we are still friends to this day, although I am more careful than ever to not mention our shared past and to absolutely avoid anyone else I know from the factory. This whole goddamn thing is wild and depressing and infuriating but this bit right here is the most baffling to me. Holy poo poo.
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Apr 20, 2021 01:10
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Target Practice posted:This whole goddamn thing is wild and depressing and infuriating but this bit right here is the most baffling to me. Holy poo poo. Then you will really appreciate this update that I have: I've been told that the CEO of the company I used to work for was publicly defaming me at a recent industry conference. Recent as in the past few months. I was fired two years ago. CarForumPoster posted:This thread is absolutely bizarre. Like how TF do you get no sales in like 6+ months and this guy gets a verbal on a $500k in one call on one of your leads? An answer to this, aside from a lack of skill and ability on my part, is that my former employer, not content with merely firing me, embarked on an aggressive campaign of slander and libel. And it worked too. Aside from deleting my linkedin profile the only thing I can do is to stay out of and away from my former industry. I know that at least some people associated with my ex company were looking at my linkedin profile and it isn't many steps to using that profile as a means of stalking me. Had I known how vindictive these people were I would have sued for defamation from the beginning. Not all is dark though. I have two good things I am working on at the moment: brokering some salt and brokering some dried peas. bedpan fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Jul 6, 2021 |
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Jul 6, 2021 06:35
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