Part 1: Sales Autopsy launch and lessons learned

Hi Dan, can you tell us a bit about your sales background?
I've been involved in high-impact sales and marketing for privately run companies since 1980. I was an early adopter of the Internet when overseeing sales for the first Internet job site in 1993, Online Career Center, that merged with Monster.com in 1999.

My background is in sales training and management. Since this work has been for small to medium sized companies, I've managed to become a guerrilla marketing expert as well.

What inspired the launch of Sales Autopsy?
I left the training world to run a website that collected worst or most embarrassing sales experiences. It has been my dream to become a syndicated writer and author of hilarious stories that also teach. I'm currently realizing my dream, at the expense of others' nightmares, as I'm being carried by several trade publications that reach 1 million plus readers a month. My book, "The Death of 20th Century Selling" will be out this summer.

Can you share one of your favorite stories from the Sales Autopsy archives.
Sure.

1) THREE RING DISASTER

Scott is the ringmaster of this disaster:

My associate and I are about to do a demonstration and sales presentation of our data and information technology services to a retail client in August. It's hot, and we're about 45 minutes early to their building, so we decide to get something to drink at the closest convenience store.

We spot a store and I buy a super large cherry frozen drink thing and my partner does the same, only a lime flavored one.We drive back to the prospect's building and sit in the visitor's spot, mentally preparing and drinking frozen pop.

When we're ready to go I look over and his mouth, lips and tongue are BRIGHT GREEN, I mean really bright, like a clown.

Mine, of course were GLOWING RED.

We couldn't wash it off, wipe it off or anything, so we went into the sales call looking like a couple of circus clowns. People actually laughed when we went in and we were never asked back.

POSTMORTEM: Obviously thinking more carefully about one's actions just before a sales call is important. The psychological reason a call like this fails is that you cannot gain rapport with a prospect if he or she cannot relate to you looking like a circus clown. There is no hope for a rep who is unprofessional in his or her first impression to a prospect.

However, at a speaking engagement I told this tale and received a smart suggestion: Bring some frozen drinks for the prospect, too. It might just save the sale.

For each story on the site, you also try to educate at the end with a lesson note, why do you feel that is important?
First of all, I have to credit Gerhard Gschwandtner, friend and Editor of Selling Power Magazine. The day the site went live, I called him and he reviewed it with me. His advice, "Dan, you must include the lesson learned on each story. This will continue to brand you as an expert and keep you from just being a simple humor site."

My wife agreed with him, so I made my expert analysis part of my writing strategy. It's made the stories much more fun for me, because I get feedback from others agreeing and disagreeing with my views and suggestions.

It's interesting that the sales pros who share their stories seem to identify their lesson learned as a fairly superficial event. I like to go deeper. For example the slurpy/clown story is a failure because (as the postmortem notes) the issue is rapport with a prospect, not necessarily doing a dumb thing. My desire to help people improve seems to create a perfect blend of "edutainment."

On the subject of horror stories: what was the biggest mistake you made in the site's early days?
I didn't target the other ezines online that fit my exact market for readers. I have since identified a good list. They will also be a great resource later when my book hits the street, since the ebook will hit these expert websites as well.

Which methods work best for generating site traffic? Which methods are least effective?
Most effective? My favorite strategy is to subscribe to the best online publications. I monitor articles and respond to the writer's insights with thanks and thoughts of my own. My signature file "sells" the unique thing that I do. Most of these people visit the site before responding and I begin a relationship that often results in their publishing an article on SalesAutopsy.com. I also do this with print publications, but find a trip to the library is easier than subscribing to 12 or 15 magazines.

Probably my favorite result of this is my article in Sales & Marketing Management Magazine, where they said I was becoming a "cult hit" among salespeople. I also feel that it is imperative to be listed in Yahoo! The cost of this is negligible compared to the traffic that results. I also do regular submissions to the search engines of links and articles posted about SalesAutopsy.com.

For example when this article is posted at your publisher's website, I'll submit that url to the engines, making sure that the latest stuff shows up.

Least effective? I've struggled with asking for links. The time it takes is hard to give up. So I'm working on some unusual ways to deal with that problem. I do get plenty of surprise links showing up from places like universities, but doing it myself takes too long.

Continued...