Sales School

Tim Joyce
Vice President, Global Sales
Nike Inc.
Beaverton, Oregon

At Nike, we've made a big change in how we sell. For us, selling is no longer about throwing shoe samples into a big bag, sitting across from a buyer, and waiting while he selects the products that he wants to have in his stock. Those days are over. For Nike, selling is now about planning. That's one reason why we don't call the people in our sales force "sales reps." We call them "account executives" or "account managers." Changing titles in that way might seem like a small semantic twist, but it makes a big difference. Planning works on two levels. On one level, it means knowing our customers' (that is, the retailers') business from top to bottom. It means anticipating the issues that they will face in the next sales period -- even before they do. It means planning their assortment of products and envisioning what their store should look like. On another level, sales planning involves bringing those insights back to Nike and then playing a central role in the design and marketing of the company's new products.

We have a pretty stable and set customer base. That can be both a blessing and a potential curse. We constantly have to guard against slipping into a rote-transaction, order-taking mode. And we must resist the temptation to think that just because we're Nike, all we have to do is show up. One way to guard against complacency is to assume an active role in helping our retailers manage their businesses. Anyone can sell to someone. But it takes a different set of skills to be able to plan for someone.

Tim Joyce joined Nike in 1980 and has held various positions at the company, including Memphis regional sales manager, director of U.S. footwear sales, and director of European sales.

Phil Guarascio
Vice President
General Motors
Detroit, Michigan

I sell ideas and visions. That kind of selling requires a different set of muscles from those that you need to sell products. The challenge is to help people see things that they may not be able to see for themselves. Now, I'm not a visionary from the blinding-flash-of-light school. Instead, I base my ideas on intuition, on facts, and on specific opportunities. The greatest resistance that I encounter from people whom I'm trying to sell to is grounded in discomfort -- which really comes from a lack of understanding. So a great salesperson, in effect, knows how to sell understanding.

One of my first jobs was with Benton & Bowles, an advertising agency in New York City. It was around the time of the birth of cable television, and I knew that cable was going to be a key element in the architecture of advertising. I was trying to persuade two of my clients to take an early position that would be slightly risky but that would have tremendously beneficial pricing opportunities. I succeeded with one client, but I failed to sell the other client on my vision. While making a sale with the first client was great, I learned more about selling from my failure with the second one.

No matter what I did, I could not convince my other client that people would watch anything other than the four standard networks. And that was my fault: I didn't factor in his reservations about trying something new. I was so enthusiastic about making his company a charter sponsor of a major cable-television network that I didn't spend enough time dealing with his concerns. Big mistake. I needed to help him understand that, while this was a potentially risky endeavor, he had protection on the downside. The job of the promulgator of an idea is to help people develop both an understanding of that idea and an appropriate comfort level.

Phil Guarascio joined General Motors in 1985. As general manager of marketing and advertising for GM's North American operations, he was instrumental in developing the GM Card and in coordinating GM sponsorships with the Olympics and the WNBA. Guarascio's division is responsible for the largest media budget in the United States, spending $2.3 billion a year on advertising and promotions.

Carl Sewell
Chairman and CEO
Sewell Motor Co.
Dallas, Texas

Selling should be like theater: one of the secrets of selling is knowing how to stage a great show. I routinely scan other dealerships and businesses to study their selling "sets." If I see a great one, I steal ideas from it. For instance, we've modeled our sales incentives after the AAdvantage program at American Airlines. When it comes to entertainment, we want our facility to be Disney-like. We researched the durable floor tiles that McDonald's uses, and we put them in our service departments. Anyone can teach you a thing or two about setting the selling stage -- even your competitor.