present "your business" on msnbc. hi everyone. i'm j.j. ramberg, and welcome to "your business." today marks our 400th episode, so we wanted to use this show to focus okay something all small business owners need to be good at, sales. whether you are b2b or b 2 c, you have to understand the trigger points to get someone to buy your product or use your service. before doing that, you have to get their attention in the first place. the founder of a skin care company discovered that for his business the best way to do this was to turn to a big business model. hiring a team of sales reps to get his brand into doctors' offices around the country. >> i like to say it's not just the sizzle we get the steak also. >> dr. chip pole is a very satisfied customer. >> we actually have some moneybody that we have personal contact with. >> the owner of the oculus skin care center in atlanta says some sales reps miss the mark. >> it's all about the relationship and the end product, which obviously is the consumer. that's what's important to us. >> esthetician stacy clark doesn't meet every sales rep who walks through her door but denise windham made an impression. >> some sales reps are better than others. they know when to push you, they know what products are going to work well in your office and they look at your needs. >> denise is who dr. carl thornfeld needed when he started his boise, idaho skin care company. >> there is no substitute for having someone represent your company walking into an office introducing that potential account to your concept. >> she gets the importance of face-to-face meetings and making personal connections with clients like chip and stacy. >> you never know what they're going to ask and you have to know the answer or be able to say, i'm not sure about that but i can get the answer for you. >> dr. carl's sales team was borne out of necessity. >> as i observed the pharmaceutical industry it struck me that a business model could be done proficiently. it was the best option because that was the way we were going to be able to provide the customer service and the education that's needed. >> he knew he didn't want to sell epione's products over the counter which is why it now sells in the offices of plastic surgeons dermatologists and estheticians who know the skin best. >> it's really education of the physicians and skin care professionals to then create the best regimen for the patient. >> denise and 15 other sales reps based around the country are working the front lines. >> i don't think that there would be any other way for professionals to be detailed often these products other than having a rep walk in and give them the information. >> epione's national director of sales, molly johnson, agrees. she says the most important thing her team does is educate. >> they're talking to doctors, estheticians and nurses. they are doing trainings with our existing accounts. if they have new staff, want a refresher on the products and then they're out talking to doctors that doesn't currently carry our products showing the studies, the training. >> the trainings are designed to help office staff sell epione's products even though they don't have a sales background. >> sales is not natural to them. you have to overcome them rather than doing a hard sale it's education. actually helping them with their skin. >> of course this model would not work without the right people, and finding them is hard. molly looks for driven individuals who are also a right fit for the region. >> someone in the northeast has a very different personality than the south or the west coast even. >> epione doesn't base its reps in most major cities. smaller markets are actually preferred. >> we don't have a rep in los angeles, new york city in chicago. we do very well in the smaller cities to begin with and then as our presence builds then suddenly people in the big cities take notice. >> well, it wasn't always residential easy to keep sales reps, the team has doubled in size in the last year or so. molly believes small businesses like epionce does better. >> a lot of big companies you're just a number they want to know what your sales were and they don't care about everyone else. everyone who works for our company is like a family member. >> the sales strategy hasn't always been perfect. dr. cole admits initially he was selling to the wrong crowd. >> we actually started in another channel initially, with pharmacists, but found that that really wasn't meeting the needs of what we wanted to as far as growth and reaching patients. >> to this day competing against companies with lots of money is tough, which makes the existence of a sales team vital. >> i thought the weight of the skiensz would be sufficient but it's not. the reality is market forces are huge. i underestimated that. that did stunt our growth for a number of years. >> epionce's sales numbers are on the rise and dr. cole knows he has the right sales model and team to take it forward. >> we have been able to grow and remain profitable and still sticking within the model. you need to know what the end game is. once you have that then you can put together the pathways of how to achieve that. as we saw, epionce uses a team of sales penal to get to the doctors, but once a salesperson gets the meeting, what makes the difference between success and failure? a while back we decided to dive into the art of the sale. we went into the trenches to follow three consummate salespeople who live and die by their ability to close a deal. a car salesman a real estate agent, and a woman who sells mary kay. we broke down their techniques so that you could learn from their experiences. >> you know this is very important because it's that time when the customer can bond with the car. if you don't test drive a vehicle, you're selling yourself short and the customer short. >> meter ri miller. >> my name's terry. >> he's the top salesman at the largest ford dealership in the world and bonina gibbons. >> hi debby. how you doing? >> she's one of america's highest earning sales reps for mary kay cosmetics. >> the house is priced here at 329 -- >> and brett barry, a top selling real estate agent in one of the nation's most competitive markets. >> how does your face feel? >> feels good. >> we followed these three a-list salespeople. >> is that important to you? >> and their actual customers. >> you live out here locally, steve? >> yes. >> for a full day to see what makes them so successful. >> by the way, are you replaceing this with anything? >> with everyone's permission we showed this to a social psychologist at arizona state university. he studies the science of selling and we wanted his insights into what makes them so persuasive. >> what i noticed about all three of the people that we dealt with they were people persons. they liked interacting with people. >> here's yours. >> as a salesperson i'm naturally curious about what is going on inside of the head of my client. >> i usually will smile at them and usually if they smile back i take that as an invitation to speak to them. >> the customer frankly will tell you what to sell them and how to sell them. >> one of the keys to her people person skills is something bonita gibbons calls mirroring. >> mirroring is when you are mirroring the way that someone is responding to you. if they're like oh, i'm so excited about trying the products, i'm like great, i'm excited about showing them to you. >> i've never tried mary kay before. really you haven't? i mirror the way they are because that helps them to relate to you. >> he noticed that all three asked their customers many personal questions, a key tool he says to accomplishing two purposes. >> in the bargain of asking those questions, not only does he get information that he can use later on but he is perceived as somebody who's genuinely interested in me. >> do you normally travel by yourself? >> yes. my daughter. i have a 9-year-old daughter still at home. >> he's found out for example that this particular customer has a 9-year-old daughter. you'll see later on he's going to raise that point -- >> you know your daughter probably has friends that you might want to put in the back seat here. >> sure. sure. >> as he says regardless of whether a customer is buying something big and expensive like a new car or a home or something small and personal like skin cream, they're more likely to lay out the cash if they trust you. >> so many people are weary of salespeople so how can you establish your honesty as a salesperson? >> very interesting question. because of the fact that so often we've been tricked, here's one of the things that i've learned that the best salespeople do. they mention a weakness or a draw back early in their case. >> when grant was taking someone through the houses he was really honest about the flaws in the house. let's just watch this for a second. >> this carpet is getting a little wild. look how it's kind of coming up. see how it's limping. >> yeah. >> is that smart to do as someone trying to sell this house? >> that is smart. now what i noticed about this is it was not the very first thing he said in trying to sell the house, but it made him seem honest so when he did talk about the quality of the neighborhood and that it was a good price, the buyer believed him now in a way he wouldn't have believed him before. >> so i think for the price so far that one -- how many stars would we give the oasis house? >> definitely five stars. >> five stars? >> yeah. >> cool. let's go. >> i really do like that house. >> i know you do. >> through years of experience, our three salespeople have developed their own techniques but cheldini warns those who are honing their skills they'll only be successful this they're genuine. >> in the long run, if they are used as tricks people don't come back to those who have tricked them. they just don't. it can without question be a hard transition for companies that are going from either having no salespeople or just one person to hiring a whole team. you have to consider a whole bunch of things process, culture, finances. our guest says if you get it right, you can add a lot more revenue to your company. if you get it wrong, you have a lot to lose. tom siercy is the owner of hunt big sales and he is the author of the new book "life after the death of sales, how to thrive in the new era of selling." tom has some advice. >> good to see you, tom. >> great to see you, j.j. >> some people are natural born salespeople. for some people it's really hard and you have to work hard to hire this team and hire the right people. let's talk about what you need to have in place before you start building out this team process. >> well if you move from a salesperson, and sometimes a entrepreneur is the salesperson, right? >> right. >> you've got to build a process. first thing is you have to build a process. when you were small and you had a salesperson or the entrepreneur selling, they were the process. there weren't any other steps. now you're building a sales force. you want to track what's working and you want to learn from it. >> you want to track it in a way that you think if this will grow, it will grow. if you want to track it on excel, that's fine. as you get something you might need salesforce.com to help you. you might want to think about that early on. >> that's right. you want to get the data early on how do we get better at this thing we call selling. >> i want to move on to talking about how you hire. >> well you need to make certain that you hire a track record. the tendency is to try to hire a mini me or someone who is like your best salesperson that you've always had. so the problem is that person is unique. you need to figure out what's the track record of the salesperson who's coming in to interview? do they do things in a way in their process and in their background that makes sense to you rather than just trying to get someone who looks like or feels like someone you think might be successful. >> i think also in the early stages, right, if you're just going from you the entrepreneur to being the salesperson, are they adding something? presumably they're coming from another organization that has some good processes and they could teach you something. >> right. you have to respect where they came from and it has to feel like the culture of your company because you're ramping up. you're building a sales force and there's going to be those little bit of pieces and parts that maybe you can add on and make your company better. >> right. okay. now also going from one to many is at first you're the one, the entrepreneur, you're selling to everyone. as you hire people should you hire in segments okay so i'm hiring my first person you're going to go after a. i the entrepreneur are going to go after b, c, d. next person comes on you're going after b? >> that's right. you have to segment the markets out. you want to avoid the family fist fights that happen when we're looking at the marketplace when the way you used to do it we hunt and get whatever it is that we land, right? now i may have two, three, four salespeople and you don't want to spend every week picking apart who got credit for this piece or that piece. segment your markets. >> the last tip you have is to manage closely. sales in some ways is easy because if you have targets, you know this person met -- reached that target or didn't but that's only one thing to look at. you still need to make sure that all your processes are smooth and you're getting the best that you can. >> that's right. if you built the process up front that we talked about, now you have to manage closely. you want to make certain that you're looking at this kind of like operations right? step by step. you want to look for efficiency quality, those kinds of things that make your business effective. you want to apply those to your sales organization. when you only have one sales rep or you were the sales rep, you have a close understanding of what looked good. you put five people in there you can feel it's out of control unless you manage it closely. >> this is an incredibly hard department for people to build out. we appreciate your device having done this a few times yourself. thanks so much. >> thank you. we have all been there before. you find yourself staring at a long list of sales prospects who, in spite of all those calls and e-mails, continue to elude you. now here are five ways you and your sales team can revive leads that have gone cold courtesy of inc.com. >> one, keep it simple. the average consumer's attention span is eight seconds. in this digital age, ideas are expressed in 140 characters. so don't get bogged down in features and details. two, don't ask for money yet. getting feedback is a much more productive use of your time than talking dollars, at least initially. that can turn your potential customer off. three, think ahead. offer solutions for your prospect's future needs and highlight them in your discussion. four, mix it up. experiment with different cadences for phone calls and try sending e-mails at different times to see which get the best response rate. and, five clean up your dirty data. information on potential leads should be clean, validated and organized every 30 to 60 days. nothing is worse than contacting the wrong person or fumbling on the phone when reviving a cold lead. coming up more helpful advice on improving sales, including top traits to look for when hiring an account executive and whether to outsource your sales team. and some big names of advice for small business owners on making the sale by focusing on the customer. brought to you by american express open. visit openforum.com for ideas to help you grow your business. nment worldwide. just show them this - the american express card. don't leave home without it! and someday, i may even use it on the moon. it's a marvelous thing! oh! haha! so you can replace plane tickets, traveler's cheques, a lost card. really? that worked? american express' timeless safety and security are now available on apple pay. the next evolution of membership is here. this week's your biz selfie is from sarah from north carolina. her business is smiling hara hara tempeh. that's a vegan natural food product. now we'd like to see your smiling face too. send us a selfie of you and your business to your [email protected] or you can tweet it to @msnbcyourbiz or use #yourbizselfie. in our nine seasons on air we've talked to businesses big and small about their winning sales formulas. so for our special sales formula, we went back and used the greatest pieces of sales advice we've gotten from big names. >> the customer has veto power. the customer decides how to spend their money so if you don't give them what they want somebody else will. there's always going to be a higher price. there's always going to be a lower price. pricing only makes sense in the connotation of what did you give that consumer in return for what they paid you. they'll decide whether it's a good deal or not. if all you have is low price, regardless of product or service, that's all you have that's very easy to sell against. but, if you believe you're at the top of the ladder on price value, then you have no competition. you win that game. >> i have always said ever since i started working that i am my customer. i want to appeal to me. what's missing in my life? what void can i fill that will fill the voids for everybody that's like me? because i always want to please me with what we do. do i want to buy it? do i need it? so it's the need and the want. >> what we really preach and want to do is when a customer comes into the store, we really want to help them with a more comfortable and luxurious and wonderful life. you know we don't want to sell somebody something they can't afford. we don't want to sell somebody something they don't need in their home so if we can really learn and think about what they need in their homes and make things better for them we'll get a repeat customer. i have a simple saying your success is our success. if we have a customer that successfully shops in our store, it's our success. they'll more of the brand. >> there's no reason for the container store to exist if we sell the same products everybody else does. we have to come up with wonderful, creative products that people get emotional about. we want to delight and thrill you so much when you go to the closet you do a little dance. we call that getting the customer dance. the real test is can you make somebody do the customer dance about something as pedestrian as a trash can. >> always order 10% more than you think you're going to need. if you can afford it you're eventually going sell it anyways. if the orders come in, they're more than that you don't get surprised. you have a little cushion when you're reordering. >> whatever it is that you sell is where you sell it. location, location location and then you've got to have the right thing and at the right time. >> retail is detail. 90% of the secrets in retail are at the front door. so if you walk in the front door you see what's going on that's the presentation. >> most businesses don't look as their customer they look at their customers. >> give the customers what they want. put it in the kind of a store and put the products in there they want at the prices they want with the kind of services they want and you're going to be successful. it's time now to answer some of your business questions so let's get our board of directors in here to help us out. david miran scott is a sales and marketing strategist. his newest book is called "the new rules of sales anltsds service, who you to usage guile selling real time customer serving data customer story telling to grow your business." and jay goltz owns and runs five businesses in chicago. you're busy jay. >> yes, i am. >> well, great to see both of you guys. let's get to the first question. all of the questions today are about sales which is why we picked this particular panel. the first one is about hiring the right team. >> when you're hiring a sales professional, what are the top three traits you look for in order to ensure you're making a good hire? >> great question david. i've been through this. it's very hard. >> it's tough. the thing that i always think of is how the buying cycle has completely changed. it used to be sales was about aggressiveness, push yourself at the customer but now buyers are in charge because of the web, they can do their own independent research. so i like to look for brains rather than the aggressiveness as a really important trait. and then what's their social media savviness? are they good on social media, facebook twitter, linked-in? are they engaged? how big is their following? do they have a lot of followers? are their followers people they have? are they important people? if they have a virtual rolodex that's really good then they're likely to be someone who you might want to hire. >> that's a question. did you need to get someone? obviously ideally you'll get someone who has lots of contacts in your world. if you can't find that what are you looking for? >> well this is absolutely the hardest thing i'm dealing with now. i kind of have everything else in business figured out enough but this is the one part that's still very difficult. i will tell you that it really depends what you're looking for. you need someone who's going to find business and make business? or is it someone servicing existing accounts? is it somebody you can give a lot of leads to? so the first question i ask myself is, what is their history? have they been something sesuccessful finding small business? second, what is their knowledge of your business. there are great people selling payroll service or insurance but would be terrible at selling artwork or cars. >> okay. let's move onto the next question. this is about outsourcing. >> i was interested to hear if you've had experience with developing an outsource sales solution and what kind of compensation you've seen and how successful it's been. >> let's start with you, jay. >> i tried that once and i would say what i've learned is if you're looking to outsource, it's probably because it's very painful and hiring outside salespeople is painful. i've learned that the thing that we struggle with the most are the things that help our business if we figure them out. so i would question whether outsourcing is the best solution versus hire a consultant reading some books, going through seminars and learning how to effectively hire train, and oversee your own salesperson because i tonight know -- i'm sure it works in some instances but i have to believe in the long run most businesses are better off with a person that works at the company that can gain all the insights and knowledge of your own company. >> but at the same time there are opportunities that you can bring somebody on to help you out that aren't necessarily an employee of your company, and i think that there's a couple different models for outsourcing. either of those two models you have to dig in as if they were an employee. you have to get in and do the training. you have to manage them and pay attention to them as if they were your employee. so one model is a distribution model where it's a company that handles other lines of business and you're one of their lines of business, but then you might also have one where you have somebody who's dedicated to you. they even carry your business card, they just happen to be employed by somebody else who manages payroll, manages all sorts of ore things. >> right. okay. let's move onto the last question. this is an e-mail that came from david and he asked, what are some effective ways to turn internet traffic into sales? jay, let's start with you. >> i would say the number one thing is as both someone who runs an internet site we sell nationally things online and as a consumer it needs to be frictionless easy get all the way through the process. i'm frequently on to websites where it gets to be a hassle at some point i just abandon it which is why the abandon rate is so high for some websites. making an easy shopping experience is critical. >> give people what they want once they get to the site. >> give them what they want and the biggest mistake i see, which is why there are so many people who do abandon, is because so many sites, so many companies focus on their own products and services and they're really egotistical about that as opposed to thinking who are the buyers i'm trying to reach, what are their problems and how can i reach them and educate them about something of value. >> landing pages. people go in there looking for something. you get sent to a site but then if you're looking for shoes it takes you to a general site and they have to go looking for the shoe thing versus going to the landing page of what you were looking for. >> good to see both of you. thank you so much for taking the time. >> thanks very much. if any of you out there have a question for our experts, we will give you some free advice. every week here on the show. all you have to do is send us an e-mail. the address is your [email protected]. thank you, everyone so much for joining us today. if you missed anything on the show head on over to our website it's openforum.com/yourbusiness. you'll find all of today's segments plus a lot more content with more information to help your business grow. you can also follow us on twitter. it's @msnbcyourbiz and we are on facebook and instagram as well. next week we meet a business owner who ones offers a service no one else wants to do cleaning up crime scenes hoarder homes and meth labs. >> this is not your typical service. this is not a typical coupon or find a buy one get one free. obviously that's not going to apply. you have to be very strategic about how you advertise. >> we'll find out how this entrepreneur is surprisingly peacefully marketing this business so successfully she's even franchising nationwide. until then i'm j.j. ramburg and remember, we make your business our business. brought to you by american express open. visit openforum.com for ideas to help you grow your business. just show them this - the american express card. don't leave home without it! and someday, i may even use it on the moon. it's a marvelous thing! oh! haha! so you can replace plane tickets, traveler's cheques, a lost card. really? that worked? american express' timeless safety and security are now available on apple pay. the next evolution of membership is here. since the year 1835, there have been more than a dozen assassination attempts on presidents' lives. and four of those assassination attempts actually resulted in the death of an american president. the first one killed was abraham lincoln. who was shot by john wilkes booth on april 14th, 1865. that was good friday in 1865, when that happened. the second president to be assassinated was president james garfield, in 1881. he'd only been in office for four months when that shooting occurred. 20 years later came president william mckinley. he was shot in 1901 by an anarchist in buffalo, new york. and then, more recently, the one that happened in many of our lifetimes, the assassination of president john f. kennedy, november 22nd, 1963.