San Jose Mercury News

Sales training gets out of the classroom

BY PHAM-DUY D. NGUYEN

Mercury News Staff Writer

On a recent afternoon in the Santa Cruz mountains, Gisella Parker climbed steel rungs nailed into the bare trunk of a redwood tree, measuring every step. When she reached the top of the 50-foot stump, Parker hesitated and then jumped into the brisk air.

"It's all about letting go of the fear," said Parker, after three of her teammates had lowered her to the ground by cables strapped to her harnessed body.

Parker is learning to sell, but not in a traditional 12-week Dale Carnegie course. Instead, she is engaging in an intense three-day sales training conducted by a Los Gatos company called M3 Learning. There, 15 top sales people from Sacramento-based Sterling Software learn to overcome the fear of dreaded cold calls, to profile their buyers psychologically and to use their bodies as a communications weapon. But rather than drudge through three-hour lectures and end up with only a fat notebook full of scribbles, they swing on ropes, climb trees and learn tai chi in the pristine woods.

As beads of sweat rolled down her foundation-caked face, Parker, the only woman from Sterling, admitted she didn't want to try at first because she isn't athletic. But after jumping, she said she would do it again and remember it was no big deal the next time she needs to psyche herself up for that cold call.

"So you grab that phone and call that president," said M3 Learning President Skip Miller, vigorously snapping pictures of Parker, looking like a football coach on the sidelines in his polo shirt and sweater vest.

All this rope-swinging and tree-climbing apparently works. During a break from one of Miller's sessions, Sun Microsystems account manager Kimberly Copher was so excited about something she had just learned, she picked up her mobile phone and made an appointment to try it out on one of her clients.

After meeting with her client later that week, Copher said what she learned from Miller was, indeed, applicable. "Now we're working together and my client doesn't just see me as a salesperson but a part of the team," she said.

Miller, the founder of M3 Learning, knows he's not selling anything new, just re-packaging the basics. Miller himself was a stellar salesman the first year of his career. After a peak year at McDonnell Douglas Corp. where he sold 300 percent of his quota, he fell into a slump and only met 30 percent of his quota the next year. Miller was bewildered.

"I have a huge fear of poverty," said Miller, 44, who watched his father support six kids in Ohio on the salary of a tool and die maker. "I never wanted to work in a factory." So he began educating himself. He started watching videos, reading "tons of books" -- actually, he admits, "only about 20" -- and turned himself around. He was so good at gleaning the pop psychology from these books and applying them to his sales strategy, he got promoted to manager and started training other people.

In 1993, Miller became vice president of North American sales at Dataquest. According to Miller, the company's revenues had fallen 23 percent for two straight years. The sales staff averaged $250,000 a year in new sales. When he left the company three years later, he said his staff of about 30 sales representatives were averaging $1 million in new sales a year. Revenue grew at about 33 percent a year.

The company's turnaround was due to the entire management team, but former Dataquest executives admit Miller was a stand-out. "He's a fabulous sales manager," said the company's former CEO Judy Hamilton.

Top salesman

Larry de Angelis, Dataquest's former CFO, said Miller is the best salesman he's seen in his almost 30-year career. "He is highly motivated and a great motivator," de Angelis said. "He was always looking for ways to successfully grow revenue and give the sales guys a reason for making more money."

Miller had been teaching salespeople for about seven years when Dataquest was sold to the Gartner Group. After attending the John Gardiner tennis ranch in Monterey, he got the idea for M3 Learning, which stands for "Miller and his three kids."

"Why not have a tennis ranch for sales people?" Miller asked himself. On a misty morning last Wednesday, Miller stood on the grounds of the bucolic Inn in Saratoga. He watched as a tai chi master led seven salespeople through stretches. They look like an awkward modern dance troupe but later in the classroom, Miller will tell his students a salesperson is more successful when he's calm and in control.

"Don't chug a Coke before a presentation and get wired," Miller said. "Use tai chi to calm yourselves down."

Indoors, the class, which is a group limited to 20 and costs $1,695 each, takes a personality test and learns to categorize their potential buyers. Miller suggests watching people at the airport to practice identifying the four types of personalities. Then he demonstrates what his students should look for. For the dominant personality, Miller walks quickly across the room and yells, "Get out of my way."

He also acts the part of three other personality types. The "influential" personality is easily distracted by the duty-free shops at the airport. The "conscientious" personality constantly checks the monitors for departure time. And the "steady" personality gets to the terminal two hours ahead of time. "I try to Macintosh these concepts so it's not so complex," Miller said.

Personality

Once salespeople can gauge a buyer's personality, they can tailor their sales pitch, pace their speech and emphasize their body gestures accordingly to maximize their hit-rate, Miller said. "Is this manipulation?" Miller asks. "No, this is communication. Understand that your body is a total communication weapon."

The students play roles and guess each other's personality types. They imagine what types their current clients are. Henceforth, Sun's Copher said she'll note each client's personality type in her war book, a salesperson's black book.

Miller's courses are intense but fun, say some past participants, and that's why managers like Imagine Media's MaryAnn Kearns sends her staff to Miller.

Kearns said Miller understands the salesperson's psyche. "Sales people have to be `people' people. They can't learn sitting in a hotel ballroom being lectured to with a binder full of notes." In her 10 years in sales, she has accumulated a bookcase full of dusty binders from tedious sales training courses. Only Miller's course inspired her to send her staff. Though she is cautious to credit her sales staff's three-fold increase in revenues in the past year to Miller's training, she said their motivation and professionalism have dramatically improved. At the end of the course, Miller asks his students if they believe their hit-rate will improve by 10 percent. Everyone raises their hands.

Miller has made another sale. "They may not all (achieve it) but they believe it," he said.