21 Lessons Learned in Sales Management

By Ted Kulawiak

AUTHOR TED KULAWIAK PRESENTS a unique approach for improving sales management skills. Based on his long, high-profile career in sales, sales training, and sales management, each lesson is illustrated using Ted's personal experiences, developed through individual stories, along with current relevant sales management situational examples, each emp

• Language: English
• Publisher: Theodore Kulawiak
• Release date: Jun 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781641119726

Ted Kulawiak

Ted Kulawiak is a highly respected sought-after sales management, leadership coach and business consultant. As the president of Ted Kaye Sales Management Training LLC, Ted utilizes his significant business experience coupled with a personalized and innovative problem-solving approach to guide clients to reach their desired business goals. He held senior sales leadership and training positions in the advertising and media sales industry, selling television, direct mail, outdoor, and newspaper advertising space over the course of 25 years, the majority of which he spent working for the 3M Company in their national advertising division.Post advertising career, Ted transitioned to higher education and enjoyed a 19-year career in executive leadership positions, including as the vice president of enrollment at Westminster College in Missouri, vice president of enrollment at Bisk, an online program management company in Florida, and also at DeVry, Inc., in Illinois. He led the online admissions efforts for DeVry University, Keller Graduate School of Management, and Chamberlain College of Nursing. Ted holds a BS in journalism from Northern Illinois University, and an MBA from the Keller Graduate School of Management. After teaching graduate level classes in sales and advertising management for six years at Keller, Ted earned an Executive Certificate in Leadership and Management from the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of "21 Lessons Learned in Sales Management" and recently published his second book "21 Lessons Learned in Leadership"

Book preview

LESSON 1: INSPECT WHAT YOU EXPECT

You cannot build a reputation on the things you are going to do.

My first real job out of college way back in 1977 was selling display advertising for the Suburban Life Citizen newspaper, part of Life Printing and Publishing, a chain of local newspapers in the western Chicago, Illinois, suburbs and at that time a very highly credible and reputable firm. Life Printing and Publishing and its successors has long since been absorbed by mass media organizations during the media consolidation period and downfall of newspapers in general, having been replaced by much more timely social media options. We want our news instantly, as it happens, and the advances in technology certainly provide that to us currently. Yet, for some people, there was—and perhaps still is—a certain legitimacy to having the news in hard print. For my generation, reading the daily newspaper was the norm. It was a way of life. Working for a newspaper at that time was a worthwhile endeavor, which taught me quite a bit about selling to different types of people and personalities, and their variety of businesses.

With a journalism degree from Northern Illinois University and fully ready to put it to use, I had applied via letter and résumé to numerous advertising agencies, newspapers, and magazines in the Chicago area. No takers. I had a few, very few, interviews but just couldn't get anyone to hire a rookie right out of college with no experience. I applied for writing jobs, copy jobs, circulation jobs—anything and everything that would help me get my foot in the door and start on a career in the newspaper business. Nothing. Then I got some much-needed help. It turned out that my mother attended church with a friend of one of the owners of the company. My mom's friend (I only knew her as Mrs. Ondrus) owned a business in Berwyn, Illinois, and was an advertiser in the Life newspapers. She did my mom a favor and arranged for me (via part owner Jack Kubik) to meet with the Suburban Life general manager, Richard Dick Stern, at his office in LaGrange Park for an interview. I had no specific job in mind, just the opportunity to talk to a person whom I would later come to respect as my first manager, leader, mentor, coach, and role model.

When I walked into Mr. Stern's office, it was easily recognizable as one of a newspaperman. He wore thick black-framed glasses, white shirt, and a tie buttoned to the collar. He had a closely trimmed head of gray hair and no facial hair. His office smelled of cigarette smoke. His habit of smoking two-plus packs per day was ingrained. Newspapers were piled two feet high on the credenza behind his Steelcase desk, the left side of which butted up against the cinder-block side wall of the office. The side opposite of the cinder-block wall was glass from ceiling to midwall. The room itself was no larger than twelve feet by twelve feet. There was one wooden chair across from Mr. Stern's desk set at a ninety-degree angle, so if you sat proportionately in it the way it was placed with your back to the side wall, Mr. Stern would be sitting at your three o'clock. There were three other chairs placed against the far wall directly opposite his desk. It looked like a lineup waiting area for the dentist. No conference table for discussion. No comfy sofa, no lounge chairs, no refrigerator, no artwork. Bare walls, industrial carpet. The only decoration was the trash can to the side of the desk. This was functional, Spartan decor, to say the least. Yet this office, as I would later learn, was perfect for the man who occupied it daily and not only reflected his priorities but also served as a message to his sales staff. Mr. Stern was all business.

As it turns out, there was an opening for a display advertising sales trainee, and to this day, I firmly believe the only reason I got the job was because of my answer to one of Mr. Stern's questions. After a series of the usual basic interview questions, he asked me what I wanted to do with my journalism degree. My answer got me the job. I told him I wanted to get into the business aspect of the newspaper. I wanted to learn the business and was not really interested in writing. That was enough to sell him. I believe he was just waiting for someone to come into his office other than the stream of idealistic next great newspaper editors whom he had been interviewing over the past month. He wanted someone to learn to sell display ads. I just wanted a job. We both got what we wanted.

Monday through Friday and every other Saturday morning, the sales staff reported into the office by 8:30 a.m. sharp. Monday was critical because that's when the sales staff, all six of us, including our display ad layout artist, would crowd into Mr. Stern's office for our weekly meeting. Dick Stern rule number one: be on time. If you were late, you did not enter Mr. Stern's office. You waited until the meeting was over and then walked into his office with your tail between your legs and apologized for your tardiness. You would have to catch up on what occurred in the meeting from the other salespeople. The best thing about learning promptness for a twenty-one-year-old right out of college was that it stuck with me throughout my career. I built part of my reputation by being on time, all the time and can count on one hand when I did not live up to that expectation. Second best was the way Mr. Stern handled every situation where someone for whatever reason came in late and missed the sales meeting. He understood. He accepted the apology and moved on. He didn't have time to make a big deal out of it. It's not that he didn't care. He already delivered the message by barring you from the meeting. He cared about what went on from that point. Even though you would be let off the hook, you knew it wasn't right to disrespect his request. He deserved better, so it was very seldom that one of the sales team missed a Monday meeting.

Once the meeting ended, if it was Monday, and then at least by 9:00 a.m. every other day, the sales staff was expected to either be on the phone calling customers, making appointments, or making calls on customers out in their territory. While there was no typical day, it was acceptable to be back in the office between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. to prepare for the next day or do any follow-up work with accounts that needed to be accomplished. Dick Stern expected us to get out of the office, do our respective jobs, sell advertising space, and promote the newspaper with local business owners, and we did so with a level of trust and flexibility that we appreciated immensely. We had personal freedom while maintaining a level of dignity and importance. In other words, he treated us as professionals, and it was certainly easy to return that respect to a man who embodied hard work, dedication, fairness, and leadership.

We had daily freedom. We could report in for morning coffee, and then go about our day at our speed and come back later in the day for a regular recap. No one looking over our respective shoulders. No one micromanaging us. No one monitoring our every move. Not a bad gig. Just do your job and show up when expected. Certainly, this is a solid management style and at least provides a potential foundation for happy employees—a creed by which organizations should build upon that will hold true to this day.

Except there was just one thing of which I was unaware. While I respected Mr. Stern and his management style, I did not realize the extent of his reach. After all, he was in the office nearly all the time; he rarely went out on a sales call with me or the other sales reps. I can remember being with him to meet with the new marketing director at LaGrange State Bank, and a few brief meetings with other business owners in my territory. That was it. That was the extent of him working with me in the field. I spent more time learning how to sell from the other salespeople—or at least that's what I thought for some time. Then it hit me. Remember, I was only twenty-one and raw to the bone as far as experience and ability to read people. Dick Stern was so ingrained in the community that all he had to do to check up on any one of us was to make a phone call to one of his numerous contacts for the lowdown on how we were doing our jobs. He had people in places where we didn't even know the places existed. He practiced the art of Inspect What You Expect to a level of perfection and detail to make any sales manager envious. And did I learn a lesson.

While the majority of business owners in my territory were professional and courteous to a young trainee barging in on their business day to ask whether they were going to run an ad that week (mind you, there was not much selling skill there; it was just order taking to start), there were a few curmudgeons who wouldn't give me the time of day. They rarely advertised in our paper, spent quite a bit of ad dollars with the competition, and were just plain rude. I remember standing in front of one of these business owners for what seemed like an hour asking questions with no response, offering examples of advertising options with no response, showing artwork and editorials and news that was pertinent to their business with no response, and finally walking out dumbfounded that anyone who owned a business could be so rude and disengaged with a person just trying to do his job. Those customers were not on my regular call list. I avoided them like the plague after several attempts. I was tired of being treated rudely and tired of not selling anything to these select accounts. I gave up.

And Mr. Stern knew it. He knew I stopped calling on these accounts because he himself had talked to these owners. He called them when they ran ads in our competitors' publications, and while they weren't going to buy from us now, he paved a little bit of road for possible advertising in the future. They talked to him out of respect for him and his reputation. They knew him. They had no clue who I was. He wanted to know if I had been in to see them recently, called on them for the regularly scheduled local business promotions like Sidewalk Sale, Moonlight Madness, Back to School—any and all special promotions. And they told him. He didn't go behind my back. On the contrary, he was way ahead of me. He was always in front of the selling situation by practicing the age-old rule of Inspect What You Expect. He expected me to call on everyone and anyone in my territory who could possibly buy advertising space. Regardless of whether they bought something at that time, he expected me to work my territory to the fullest by calling on friends and nonfriends alike. He didn't even have to get out of the office to find out if I was doing the basic newspaper display advertising selling job of canvassing every business.

Dick Stern was the world's greatest sales secret shopper of all time. If he asked you straight up if you called on Mr. Floyd's Men's Clothing store for the upcoming promotion, you knew he had you. You couldn't say yes because he knew you would be telling a fib. If you said no, at least you were being honest, but then you'd better prepare yourself for a discussion about understanding the challenge of sales…take no and keep on trying. Don't give up. Don't give in. Diplomatically continue to pursue because this was the expectation. The worst that could happen was to hear no, and you had to get used to that in sales. You had to grow thick skin and chalk that up as another opportunity to get one step closer to the account that would say yes.

A sales manager must have thick skin as well and come to the realization that even the best of salespeople will waver from the rigidity of expectations. That's one of the reasons why people get into sales; they like the freedom and flexibility. Salespeople like to be their own bosses. So it should come as no surprise that they will use that independence as a way of doing their job. And the sales manager needs to understand, perhaps even encourage, in some instances, the freedom for the salespeople to do their thing without getting in the way. However, that should not downplay the importance of the sales