The man who invented modern selling

Published: Wed, 11/10/21

November 10, 2021

Happy Wednesday. We turned the clocks back an hour last Sunday, which means that prospects will be well-rested and friendly all week long... (one can dream). In this week’s Quota, we’ll tell you about the man who literally invented the sales process, find out whether most salespeople can survive on their base pay alone, and help an Account Executive who tried (in vain) to give his cousin an assist. Here we go!

NUMBER OF THE WEEK

$100,000

Of the top 10 paying (base comp) sales teams (enterprise teams within an organization), none has an average deal size below 100k. And only 3 of those 10 have average deal sizes below 200k

Source: RepVue - November 2021

SALES ROUNDUP

Here’s what’s happening in the sales world this week:

Everybody knows it’s bad form to badmouth a competitor, but what about complimenting them? In a recent segment, NPR interviewed a marketing professor from Duke University, who talked about a study showing that when brands praise other brands, consumers get excited and are more likely to buy from the brand doing the praising. While it’s a marketing study, there might be some parallels to sales. You can read the transcript here.
A Florida salesman is suing his former employer, Capstone Healthcare, alleging unpaid commissions of $5,000,000 (!). The company, which conducts lab testing for the medical industry, allegedly refused to pay the sales rep his agreed-upon compensation after back-to-back banner years in 2020 and 2021. You can read the full complaint here (requires you to create a free Law.com account).
Sales enablement isn’t just a fancy tech buzzword anymore. According to a report by Verified Market Research, the sales enablement market was valued at $1.7B in 2020, and is projected to reach $7.3B by 2028. At this pace, every man, woman and child will have their own sales enablement platform by 2040.

MEME OF THE DAY

Source: Facebook -- Sales Humor

FEATURE

Who is John H. Patterson? The Man Who Invented Modern Selling

When we talk about the people who’ve influenced the modern sales process, we think of people like Dale Carnegie, whose groundbreaking book How to Win Friends and Influence People became an international phenomenon, and is still cited as one of the best sales books of all time.

But there’s one man who had an even bigger impact on how we sell. And most people have probably never even heard of him. His name was John H. Patterson, and he was nothing short of a sales (and business) legend.

The National Cash Register Company

After graduating from college and spending his early career managing the South Ohio Coal and Iron company, Patterson became an investor in the National Manufacturing Company, a firm that built and sold automated cash registers. Two years later, in 1884, he partnered with his brother and bought the business, renaming it the National Cash Register Company (NCR).

But there was a problem: the company’s salespeople didn’t know how to sell. Patterson once remarked: “One half of our salesmen are so ignorant of their product that they will actually prevent a man from buying, even though he wanted a cash register.”

The NCR Primer

Back then, there was no such thing as sales training, and nobody had perfected any kind of replicable sales process. But Patterson wasn’t just going to sit down and take it, so he did what any enterprising sales-business-guy would do: he created a sales process!

But it wasn’t just a one-page guide, and they didn’t have online courses back then. Instead, Patterson put together a 450-page document called the NCR Primer, outlining the entire sales presentation from start to finish. All of NCR’s sales reps were required to memorize it or else they’d be fired. After implementing the process, sales of NCR registered skyrocketed.

Always pushing the envelope, Patterson then created the Book of Arguments, an objection-handling guide that gave NCR sales reps responses to the types of questions they were likely to encounter during sales presentations. With those two documents, Patterson laid the groundwork for what we know today as the sales process. The process worked so well that not only did NCR thrive, it also opened the world’s first sales training school on its Dayton, Ohio campus.

Other contributions

In addition to his impact on the sales world, Patterson was also an innovator in marketing and workplace design.

Patterson made use of direct marketing and publicity to raise awareness of the National Cash Register Company, and was one of the first to incorporate testimonials from customers into his advertising.

He also constructed the first “Daylight Factory” in 1893, buildings with floor-to-ceiling glass windows that let in light and could be opened to let in fresh air as well. In the era of sweatshops, this was groundbreaking stuff.

Legacy

Though Patterson was by no means perfect -- he was known for being quick to fire people on the spot, including future CEO of IBM, Thomas Watson, and was also found guilty of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1912 -- Patterson’s impact on the business world was immense, especially his impact on the world of sales.

Patterson died in 1922, having spent most of his personal fortune on social programs at NCR. The company was left to his son, who took it public in 1925. NCR still trades on the New York Stock Exchange, though its salespeople no longer have to memorize the 450-page primer.

SALES FAILS

Each week, we bring you the most cringe-worthy sales moments from across the web. To submit your sales fail story for consideration, click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

“I’m in SaaS sales, and we mostly sell to other SaaS companies. One day I got a call from a prospect (a CMO) I’d been working with who told me he was still really interested, he just wanted to hear the entire pitch again from start to finish. So I went through everything in detail, then he started asking really specific questions, and started digging real deep. This went on for literally hours, then finally I sent him the contract via DocuSign and asked if I could walk him through the signing process on the phone. All of a sudden, he bursts out laughing and hangs up on me, then refuses to answer my calls.

A half hour later, I get an email response to the contract with just four question marks. We go back and forth by email for a few minutes before it becomes clear that the CMO had never called me and that he had no interest in moving forward. Totally bizarre. A few weeks later I found out that one of our sales reps who had been fired was calling the sales team and pranking them to try to get back at the managers who’d fired him. He even ordered three dozen pizzas to the office. They had legal send him a cease and desist letter before it finally stopped. I still felt like an idiot.”

- Anonymous, 33 New York, NY

GRAPH OF THE WEEK

Source: Instagram Poll -- November 2021

ASK THE QUOTA

Want to submit a question and be featured in our advice column? Click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

Dear Quota Team,

I put myself in a complicated situation, and it’s entirely my own fault. I’m an Account Executive at a public software company, and it’s definitely the best sales job I’ve ever had. It took me a while to break into software sales, so I’m super thankful for the opportunity, especially given the crap sales jobs I had to wade through before I got here.

Here’s the problem: about six months ago, my cousin started asking me to get him a job at my company. He’s definitely a smart guy, but he tends to get himself into trouble. He flunked out of college after partying too much and then bounced around a lot career-wise. He was in the restaurant industry, then started a t-shirt screen-printing business that failed because he didn’t hustle for clients, and then eventually he went into sales. He sold telecom and then worked for a small software development firm but got laid off when the pandemic hit, or at least that’s what he told everyone.

Anyways, he started asking me to get him in the door here, and he’s super pushy so I had to keep making up excuses. But then, he had his mom ask my mom (they’re sisters) to help him get a job, and then they both ganged up on me and gave me a massive guilt trip. In our culture, family members are supposed to help each other out, so they kept at me, saying that it was my responsibility to lift up my cousin, and that he’d do the same for me.

Long story short, I finally gave in and (against my judgment) got him in here into a Business Development Rep role. He started a month and a half ago and he’s already called out sick twice, and just seems to be completely disengaged and uninterested in working his way up the way I did.

Now, not only am I worried that he’s going to lose his job, and our family is going to somehow blame me for it, I'm also stressed that his performance, and the fact that I vouched for him is going to reflect badly on me. I’m serious about working my way up here, and want to get into management, but I feel like I really screwed up trying to make my family happy, and now I’m going to pay the price. What should I do?

Stressed out in California

Dear Stressed,

There’s an old expression that applies here: no good deed goes unpunished. You went against your instincts and it sounds like things are unfolding exactly how you thought they would. There’s some good news though: you seem to have pretty good instincts, if only you’d listened to them.

We won’t lecture you about how bad of an idea it was to let your family dictate your professional choices. Your mom and aunt are probably good people who meant well. But they don’t work at your company, you do. They don’t understand the landscape, you do. And they don’t have to deal with the professional repercussions, you do. Even if you respect them and take their advice seriously, you still have veto power, and you shouldn’t be afraid to use it.

As far as this decision reflecting badly on you, the first thing you need to remember is that it’s already done. You got your cousin the job and there’s nothing you can do to change that. The best thing you can do now is the same thing that will get you ahead in your career: stay laser focused on your own responsibilities and excel at your job, becoming the best version of you that you can be (it sounds corny but it’s true!)

You can try to help your cousin step it up at work, but judging by the sound of it, he’s not even willing to help himself. Some people take longer than others to take their professional lives seriously, and others never do at all. If he has no interest in this role, then you’ll both probably be relieved when he ultimately quits or gets fired. And as long as you’re staying focused and hitting and exceeding your sales goals, this should only be a small blip in an otherwise promising career. Good luck!

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Today's email was written by Ken K., Steve R., and Emily H.

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