David learns why a great telemarketer often fails in field sales.

I talked to Reed Morrison early Monday morning. He called from Dublin and asked how things were going. I told him that everything was under control and that I was going to spend time with the sales force and meet with some customers. He thought that was wise, as long as I didn't lose hold of the administrative end of it.

"Do you know Aaron Abbott?" Morrison asked me.

I knew of him. I'd even met him once at a conference about three years before. He was a name in the industry, not a huge name, but well known, well connected. He had a reputation for being something of a visionary, a champion of innovation. Around the time I'd met him at that conference, he'd started his own company.

"He's coming to work for us," said Morrison.

"You're kidding? How'd you pull that one off?"

"He sold his company a couple months ago, and now he's bored," said Morrison. "I met him in Boston on my way to Europe and we came to an agreement. He starts next week and he'll be working out of Chicago."

"What's his position with us supposed to be?" I asked.

"We came up with a title, something like ‘executive director of advanced systems,"' said Morrison. "Functionally speaking, he'll be kind of a grand salesman-at-large."

"You sound excited."

"I am. He could be our rainmaker," said Morrison. "Just what we need right now."

After we hung up, I wondered if I agreed with that.

Even though I'd delegated everything I reasonably could, between my own job and Gene Cherson's there was still an abundance of details and decisions to be dealt with. It was midmorning before I was able to get down to Ann Lansky's office.

She asked about my weekend, and I told her I'd spent most of it looking for a place to live. She told me about a play she'd seen Saturday night.

"Which theater?" I asked.

"Oh, it was on television," she said. "Anyway, I guess you're here because you want to work with some of my salespeople."

"Right."

"Did you have anybody specific in mind? How would you like to do this?"

"Well, who are your best people?" I asked her. "I'd like to work with two or three of your best, and perhaps meet some of the others as we go along."

She thought for a moment. "Why don't we try Charlie Summers. He'd be my first choice. Charlie's a great guy for you to start with, because he's been around for quite a while. His customers love him."

So we went to see Charlie, but Charlie was out.

"Let's see. Well, maybe Jennifer Hone. She's one of the best I've seen at presentations."

But Jennifer, too, was out on the road.

"Okay," said Ann. "I know. Kevin Duttz is the one for you. He's in most of the time. Kevin has adapted the best of anyone to the telemarketing systems that Gene Cherson and Jim Woller had us install."

I followed Ann down the hall and made a left into one of the cubicles. Kevin was on the telephone. At his left hand was a product catalog. With his right hand, he was tapping the keys of the computer terminal in front of him. We stood just inside his cubicle, next to his desk, as he finished his call. Then Ann introduced us.

Kevin stood up to shake hands. He was a big guy in his early thirties, looked as if he might have been a football player in high school—not the quarterback, but a lineman. Ann explained that I wanted to observe some salespeople in action and that I was to work with Kevin, and he was to give me his cooperation.

"So, ah, where do we go from here?" Kevin asked after Ann had left. He didn't seem to have a clear idea of what this was all about. I didn't blame him; I wasn't sure I did either. To some extent, I was making this up as I went along, figuring I would know what I wanted to see when I saw it.

"I'd like it if you would just do what you would ordinarily do," I told him. "Ann picked you out as one of the better performers here in the Chicago office. As you know, our sales could be a lot better than they are and I want to watch some good people in action to see if maybe there are things that you do that our other salespeople across the country can apply."

That was more or less the truth.

"Oh," said Kevin, warming considerably. "Well, normally what I do right now is make my phone calls. Then if I have appointments, I use the middle of the day to go see people."

Not exactly an original approach, but I told him just to go right ahead and try to ignore me, that I wasn't here to criticize or judge, but just to learn. So he picked up the phone and went to it.

"May I speak to Ron Campbell? Hi, this is Kevin Duttz with Elemenco. How's it going today? Not bad. What's the weather like down there in Terre Haute? Still snowing? Come on up to Chicago. We've got sunshine today. But the reason I called, Ron, was that we've got a good deal for you right now on all our cable products. Fifteen percent off list. And I see on the computer it's been about two months now since we made our last shipment to you. How's your supply of twisted pair holding up?"

Next call:

"Hello, is this Urbana Systems? May I speak to Doris Krebb? Hi, Doris. This is Kevin Duttz with Elemenco. How's it going today? Not bad. What's the weather like down there in Urbana? Snow let up yet? Come on up to Chicago . . ."

And that's pretty much the way it went, call after call. Kevin took it nice and steady, always friendly, but plowing ahead.

"You know, this is probably going to get pretty boring for you," he said at one point. "Maybe I've got a magazine you could read."

"No, I'm fine," I said.

In fact, I did sort of tune out after a while. But I know from experience that to get value from observation you often have to endure a lot of seemingly insignificant details before larger patterns emerge. So I stuck with it.

Then I noticed the nature of the calls had switched. Instead of making a pitch over the phone, he was calling people and confirming orders, reading from sheets of paper. I asked him about it.

"Oh, yeah, I should have mentioned this. Maybe you'd want this idea for the other offices," said Kevin. "See, this is something I came up with."

And he held up a photocopied sheet of paper that said: FAX YOUR ORDER TO ELEMENCO! Below that was the office fax number.

"I sent copies of this flier to all my accounts along with our catalog and one of my business cards. Then a couple times a day I check the fax machine to see if any orders have come in. I always give the customer a call to confirm everything and let them know the order is being processed and when they might look for it."

"Does it work?" I asked.

"Sure it does," said Kevin. "Well, some of the other sales reps here don't think that much of it. But, heck, I get four or five orders a day on the fax. A lot of them aren't very big, but a sale is a sale. And it's business we wouldn't be likely to get otherwise."

I told him I thought he was probably right, but on the other hand, we weren't going to sell any big systems that way.

"Oh, I don't know," said Kevin. "I've even had some orders for our 386 Pcs come in this way."

I didn't want to tell him that a 386 PC hardly qualified as "a big system." These days, despite the lingering technical aura, personal computers were almost in the category of commodities.

After the fax confirmations, he started on a new set of calls. "These are my follow-ups on inquiries routed to me on the 800 line."

"The 800 line? Tell me, what do you think of that? Is it very worthwhile?"

"Yeah, I think so," he said. "I mean, it doesn't hurt. Anything I can do to develop leads is to my advantage. Plus it's more convenient for the customer."

"Uh-huh. Well, don't let me slow you down."

He worked energetically, moving right along from one call to the next, not wasting any time. And I didn't get a sense that he was acting diligent just because I was there. By eleven-thirty, he had finished his phone work, stood up, and stretched.

"How well did you do this morning?" I asked.

Kevin tapped a few keys on the computer, which kept a tally of his orders.

"Not bad. A little above average," he said.

He had his computer print a summary of the morning's activity and, son of a gun, the guy had racked up sales of more than $6,000 while I was sitting there. It wasn't glamorous, but not too shabby for a guy sitting at a desk making phone calls.

We went to lunch together. I let Kevin pick the place, because I wanted to see what was usual for him. We walked a couple of blocks, Kevin's gait being just a bit faster than mine—he definitely had a store of physical energy—and arrived at an old-fashioned lunch counter. Kevin led the way through the door, saying something about how he ate there two or three times a week. We sat on stools at the counter.

"You know, you can drop a lot of money in this town just buying lunch," said Kevin. "I like good food, but I'd rather spend my money after work, go have a good time on Saturday night with my wife."

Okay, the food was quite reasonable in price, and not bad, if you like to eat at diners. I'd rate it about a fork and a half. I had the cheeseburger deluxe, extra pickles, hold the chips; Kevin opted for the tuna-salad special on rye, no onion. Not really your power lunch, but that was all right, because we started talking and Kevin began to open up. I found out he was in his late thirties, married, two kids, had a house in the suburbs. What we think of as an average, normal guy.

"How long have you been in sales?" I asked him.

"About ten years."

"Do you like it?"

"Sure. I mean it's okay," he said. "The money is nice. And I like the people. Most of the time anyway. I can't see myself in a job where I was like maybe just running a machine all day, where I couldn't talk to anyone. That would drive me nuts. It just isn't me."

"Seems like you have an established routine," I said, actually not knowing if he did or not.

"Sort of. But I change it now and then. Depends on what kind of mood I'm in. You know, in sales there's always another call you can make, something you can be doing. I like that. I like being busy. Makes the time go fast."

I noticed he was getting bored just talking about work. Sports is usually good for conversation, so I asked him if he'd watched any of the basketball games over the weekend. That brightened him up. I soon found out his real passion was football; he had season tickets to the Chicago Bears.

"You ever take any customers to the games?"

He got a tense expression on his face.

Right away, I said, "I'm not saying that's good or bad if you do or if you don't. I just wondered if you did it."

"Well, no, not too much, unless we're already friends or something. I mean, my weekends are my time. I give a hundred percent at the office, but after work . . ."

He started talking about what else he did in his spare time, about the radial-arm saw he had just bought. I found out he was into home remodeling. He seemed comfortable with his life and did not want much to change. He had his saw, his Monte Carlo, his Bears tickets, and all the other comforts and diversions

he wanted.

"We'd better get going," he said. "I've got a customer appointment scheduled for one-thirty at a plant over in Indiana. Are you going to come with me?"

"Absolutely."

We had to stop back at the office so that Kevin could pick up a few things, including his sample PowerCase, the electronic briefcase with the phone, computer, fax machine, and a few other whistles all in one.

"Ann is on me to try to sell PowerCase. But I haven't had much luck with it yet," said Kevin.

"Is that why we're going to see this customer?"

"Nah, I just thought I'd take it along and show it to them," he said. "You never know. Maybe they'll have a need for one. No, these guys make automated controls and they want a price on some AD510s."

I knew the part. It's an analog-to-digital board we offered. Pretty standard stuff.

"I talked to the guy over the phone a couple days ago," Kevin was saying. "I've already got an estimate worked out for him. Figured I'd go down and deliver it myself since it's a big order."

We got in Kevin's car and headed south on the Dan Ryan toward Hammond and East Chicago. Traffic was crazed as usual, but Kevin handled it without much trepidation. I sat back and tried to ignore the various brushes with death.

"You think we'll get the business?" I asked.

"To be honest with you, I don't know. We're a little pricey compared to some others who make basically the same product."

"Do you know this guy? You've had orders from him before?"

"This guy? No, not from him personally, but from the company," said Kevin.

We arrived at a smallish industrial building with a drab, brick office building next to it. The sign read "Lakeside Electronic Controls." Kevin led the way across the parking lot to a pair of 1950s-style institutional doors marked "Vendors' Entrance." Inside there was a small counter and a window with one of those circles cut in the glass so you can talk to the receptionist, a woman who looked at us and said nothing. Kevin spoke

to her, and she responded in a nasal monotone.

"Have a seat."

The waiting room had a couple dozen molded plastic chairs. The walls were barren except for a three-dimensional representation of the company logo. We sat there for about fifteen minutes, and then were directed into the bowels of the purchasing department. We met with a little bald guy behind a small gray desk. The placard next to his in-basket designated him as "Mr. Macy."

There were quick, almost cold introductions, no coffee ritual. Mr. Macy was not at all impressed that I was on hand. In fact, he seemed a little put off by two people showing up for the meeting. As we sat down, Kevin reached into his suit jacket and pulled out an envelope, the prepared price quote. Mr. Macy raised his chin to look through the bottoms of his bifocals.

"Delivery within thirty days?" he asked.

"No problem. I've already checked with our inventory people," said Kevin.

Mr. Macy continued reading. When he got to the price, he put the quote down on his desk.

"Elemenco is an established company. We've purchased from you before with satisfactory results," said Mr. Macy. "I'd be inclined to give you the order, but I already have a bid from another vendor with a lower price."

"Tell me what it is and maybe we can match it," said Kevin.

"You'll have to do better than just match it," said Mr. Macy.

He opened a file, wrote down a number on a piece of paper, and handed it across the desk. Kevin studied the number.

"We can meet that price and give you an additional 2 percent discount," said Kevin.

Mr. Macy swiveled toward his adding machine. His fingers tapped the keypad—Chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, brrrm. Chk, chk, chk, chk, brrrm! He looked at the total with no more expression on his face than your average lamppost, then reached for a form and started filling in the blanks.

Kevin looked at me and gave me the barest of nods. We were getting the order. Mr. Macy went scribble scribble on the bottom of the form.

"The other supplier already indicated their bid was final so I'm awarding the order to you. Take this form to Mrs. Ashneyer, second desk on the left, and she will issue your purchase order."

"Thank you, Mr. Macy, and, by the way, have you seen one of these yet?" asked Kevin. "This is PowerCase. It's a complete portable communications center. Got a fax machine, cellular phone, and personal computer integrated into one unit. Runs off its own batteries, the cigarette lighter in your car, or regular AC power."

Mr. Macy was amused, but we might as well have shown him the space shuttle. What use did he have for a $20,000 briefcase?

Finally, as Kevin was about to demonstrate the fax machine, Macy said, "If you're trying to sell me one of these to impress your boss here or something, you're wasting your time. I only buy what the engineers tell me to buy. If it isn't on the components lists, I don't get involved in it."

Kevin said he thought Mr. Macy might just want to know about PowerCase, maybe pass the information along, but it was clear he wasn't getting anywhere. Macy was just an administrator. In fact, the whole preceding transaction had been like one administrator dealing with another. Kevin really had not sold the product; he had taken the order. Since it was convenient, we waited for the purchase order and left.

Outside in the car, I said, "You know, that price break you gave in there shaved off a lot of our margin."

"We should still make a few bucks. I mean, that was a pretty big order," said Kevin. "Anyway, how else am I supposed to get the business? We're up against competition—Korean, Taiwanese—that's all making the same basic product. What else do I have to work with?"

"Sorry, I didn't mean to be critical, but I just wanted to point that out to you," I said.

"Ann gets on me from time to time about that, but I figure, what the hell, it's better for us to get the order than someone else—even if we do have to come down a little on the price."

To change the subject, I asked him what he would do to improve sales. He talked about telemarketing, about dumping the distributors, going directly to the customers, doing more pullthrough kinds of marketing. He thought we should be doing more advertising, particularly the lead-generating kind. I let him talk, didn't argue with him or agree with him on any of it.

Kevin had another appointment that afternoon, this time with a new prospect, a president at a big trucking company.

"What are we going to talk to him about?" I asked.

"He wants to know about our satellite communications and tracking systems," said Kevin.

"Oh yeah?"

This was big-ticket, big-bucks stuff. You could be talking $2 million and up for these kinds of systems from Elemenco.

We drove out the interstate, farther into Indiana. Kevin got off at one of the interchanges, and drove down into an industrial park with a four-lane highway. We drove along looking for address numbers among the warehouses, offices, factories. Kevin didn't know where the place was, but we didn't have any trouble finding it, because we came upon an expansive parking lot with a hundred or so tractor-trailers lined up, most of them with "All-Points Express" on the side. Down the road, past the dispatcher's building and the maintenance shops, was the company's headquarters, a four-story building with a lawn and trees around it. Rather nice landscaping, actually. And on the corner of the lawn was an expensive sign with the company name, spotlights in the grass to illuminate it by night.

No vendors' entrance here. We walked up a broad sidewalk across the lawn, up some steps, into a carpeted lobby with mahogany paneling. A receptionist smiled and greeted us, called up to the president's office, then directed us to the elevator. On the top floor, the president's secretary offered us coffee or soft drinks.

This was more than some little trucking company run by a guy and his brother-in-law. Although it was not exactly Fortune 500 either, it was a company with some stature. We waited about five minutes, then she said, "Mr. Sternholtz will see you now."

Arnold Sternholtz came around his desk to shake hands with us. He was heavyset but vigorous. He had well-trimmed black hair and a hell of a grip. I guessed that he had worked on the loading docks in earlier years, though those times were clearly behind him now. Unlike Mr. Macy, Sternholtz seemed impressed that I was in the meeting. Little did he know it was only by happenstance that I was there.

Kevin got down to business fairly quickly. "Your inquiry indicated you were interested in our Apogee satellite communications network."

"Well, I don't know if we're interested or not," said Sternholtz. "I know that one of our competitors is putting in a similar system for its fleet, so I thought I'd see what it was all about."

"Then let me show you our brochure." said Kevin.

He pushed the brochure across the desk to Sternholtz and started explaining how the system worked. He was doing a fairly good job of it, telling Sternholtz about its various capabilities and benefits and so on. But I was watching Sternholtz's face and I could tell something wasn't right.

"Tell me," Sternholtz said, "what kind of investment would we be talking about for this kind of system and what kind of payback could we expect?"

From the look on Kevin's face, he might as well have asked how high the sky is.

"This sort of system doesn't have a list price," said Kevin. "It depends on a lot of factors."

"Like what?"

"Well, how many trucks you want equipped, what sorts of features you want in the system, any customizing of the software we have to do, that kind of thing," said Kevin. "I'd have to check."

"But, ballpark, what are we talking? I assume this kind of system can't be cheap. Are we talking $100,000, $1 million, $5 million, what?" asked Sternholtz.

Kevin didn't know what to say. He looked over at me. I had seen some figures in a report the other day and tried to remember them.

"I think our average installed cost per company is about $2 million," I said.

While Sternholtz didn't jump out of his chair, he did get a quizzical look on his face. He didn't know how to take a number like that.

"Of course, as Kevin says, an exact price would depend on the extent of the system," I added.

I'm sure that we can configure a system that would be within your budget," said Kevin.

Sternholtz didn't like the sound of that. To his credit, though, he didn't throw us out of his office either. He started firing some questions.

"Seriously, what kind of bottom-line improvement could I expect if I went with this kind of system? And how and when would this start to pay for itself?" he asked.

Sternholtz was directing most of his attention to me, because, I began to suspect, I outranked Kevin. I was a manger; Kevin was the sales rep. Maybe he thought he could talk to me more easily. But this became rather awkward and made me uncomfortable because I had mentally cast myself in the role of observer. I wasn't even prepared to answer his questions.

It soon became apparent, however, that Kevin wasn't sure how to sell to this guy either. He'd done fine with Mr. Macy, but here he seemed ill at ease. He kept hedging on Sternholtz's questions, saying, in effect, it depends.

Opportunity was rapidly slipping away here. I could read it on Sternholtz's face. He was not impressed with us. We were not giving him what he expected, what he needed from us. Kevin seemed to sense it too, but he wasn't doing anything to save us.

Sure enough, about thirty seconds later, Sternholtz said, "Well, let me read through your materials here and think it over. If we're interested, I'll have somebody get back to you."

We went through the formalities of leaving, the shaking of hands, the smiles, the comments of appreciation. As we were walking out, I wondered if anybody from Elemenco would ever get in the door again.

At the elevator, Kevin turned to me. "That went pretty well, didn't it?"

Was he kidding? He had totally blown it in there. But Kevin seemed oblivious to whatever missteps may have been taken. I was very disturbed about the way things had gone.

It had been our first meeting with that company, yet Kevin had done virtually nothing to start building an image that would increase the customer's confidence in Elemenco. He had said nothing about how Elemenco was the best in the business, why we were the best, or why Sternholtz and his company should buy from us. He had done nothing to try to build a rapport with the president. He had done nothing to try to understand the

company or what it might need from us, and hadn't asked any significant questions. All he had done was shown the brochure and explained the product. Yet I wasn't upset at Kevin so much as at the management that had put him in the situation.

As we drove back to Chicago, I wondered how many other Kevins there were in Elemenco sales who were expected to sell turnkey communication systems when they really belonged on the phone selling cable.

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