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Brief of the Experience and Qualifications of
Education
Experience
My sales career began with a series of successive failures at various “commission only” jobs. These included stints selling vacuum cleaners (door-to-door), replacement windows, frozen food, fund raising, and termite control.
In 1988, with a $1500 investment, I started my own pest & termite control business. What began as a part-time venture operating out of the trunk of the family car soon grew into a solid little service business with over 600 annual accounts, four employees, and almost $250,000 in yearly sales. By 1995 I thought I had it made. That is until the IRS came knocking on my door. Years of careless accounting practices had finally caught up with me. I was in big trouble. The tax man told me they had a problem with my estimated tax payment figures and he was sorry but the discrepancy was not in my favor. The IRS proceeded to levy my bank accounts and freeze all of my business assets. I was unable to pay my creditors or even meet payroll. Feeling depressed and hopeless I filed for bankruptcy. Another failure.
In an attempt to salvage something from the experience I was able to sell my client list to a former employee. I immediately invested the proceeds into one failed business opportunity after another and by 1998 I was completely broke. The family car had been repossessed and the bank was threatening to foreclose on our home. It was a struggle just to survive. On several occasions the only food in the house had been provided by the kindness of church members and friends. Throughout all of my failures I had always held to the belief that someday I would succeed. Now I was beginning to lose faith in that hope. My thoughts seemed to be just a continuous recounting of my history of failure. I slowly began to give in to what seemed to be the obvious reality of my situation. I was a failure. I could not even support my own family. I came dangerously close to accepting failure as the final statement of my being. Then one day it happened. I picked up a little book, started reading, and it changed my life. The book was Think and Grow Rich by
I say that the book changed my life that day not because it changed the circumstances I had created for myself. I was still broke and unemployed. I still had no idea of how I would ever get out of the mess I was in. My life was changed, not because my situation had suddenly changed, but because I had begun to change my thinking. I now knew that, although I had failed, I was not failure. Although I had made poor choices, I could begin making good choices. My self pity was replaced by a deep sense of responsibility to make things right. I realized that this was not outside of my control because I could control my thinking! I immediately set out to develop a plan of action.
Preparation meets opportunity
My plan centered on finding a good sales job in, what was at the time, a very tight job market. I recognized that the market might present an opportunity for me because it was hard for employers to attract and retain qualified people at that time. I decided to market my skills and work ethic toward attaining the first legitimate sales opportunity I could find. I was determined to make up for whatever I lacked in education and experience in corporate business to business sales, with hard work and perseverance. Soon after, a placement agency I was working with told me about an opening in the telesales department at Newcourt Financial, an equipment leasing company about an hour from where I lived. Despite my weak resume, the Department Manager had agreed to give me a telephone interview. The Agent shared with me that this Manager had interviewed 27 candidates already without hiring a single one of them. He told me that I should call the Manager and leave him a voice mail message. If he liked my message he would call me back to schedule the telephone interview. If that went well, we would then schedule a face to face interview. Because I was determined to have this position I decided to leave nothing to chance. Before calling, I sat down and planned the call, taking care to write out exactly what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. I then picked up the phone and left my message for the Manager. Within five minutes he had called me back. He said he was very impressed by the message I had left for him and wanted to speak with me in detail about the opportunity. We spoke for another 20 minutes on the phone before he asked me to come in for a personal interview. I prepared for the interview the same way I had prepared for the initial call. I imagined myself already in possession of the job and even becoming the most successful salesperson in the company! Needless to say, I got the job and within three short months I was indeed the most successful salesperson on the floor!
The Importance of Self Improvement and Personal Growth
My success was due mostly to careful planning backed by persistent effort. My job was to call computer equipment dealers and show them how leasing, and monthly payment options, could help them increase their sales and profit margins. Years before, in one of my failed sales jobs, someone had shared the old sales adage with me that “success leaves clues”. That is, if you want to become successful at something, find someone who is successful at it and copy what they do. Wanting to emulate the presentation of someone successful within the leasing business I asked my Department Manager to recommend a mentor for me. He came by my cube a few days later with some audio tapes on The Art of Selling the Lease by Bill Greniari. Those tapes marked my enrollment in Automobile University. I began to look forward to my hours commuting to and from work because they provided time for me to listen and learn from some of the world’s most experienced salespeople. I felt that I was assimilating the equivalent of year’s worth of experience, trial, and error from proven winners like Tom Hopkins, Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, and Anthony Robbins. I have come to believe that this type of learning has given me a distinct competitive advantage in every job, sale, or negotiation I have had since.
I didn’t know it at the time, but when I listened to Steve Chandler’s 17 Lies that are Holding You Back and the Truth that Will Set You Free, and later Re-inventing Yourself, I was being equipped with the kind of “ownership” thinking that would help me succeed at a time when most of my co-workers were becoming victims of a corporate merger. Six months into my new career in leasing it was announced that the company was being sold. The buyer, CIT Group, would soon declare their intentions to relocate our operations to Jacksonville FL. Within six months we would all be unemployed. The ownership messages communicated in those tapes empowered me to recognize an incredible opportunity within the same situation where others saw only a devastating setback.
Because it relies heavily on travel and tourism, Orlando FL was extremely hard hit by the economic effects of September 11. Sales really started to slump across the board. I knew I needed answers and I needed them fast.
Sales Process Management: the key to thriving in a bad economy
Did you know that according to legendary quality expert W. Edwards Deming, there is one critical but often overlooked factor upon which success in almost any business depends? Were you aware that your company’s ability to meet and exceed your sales and revenue goals will be determined largely by your understanding and ability to effectively manage this one thing? In fact, if this does not receive your primary attention, it will almost certainly lead to disastrous results including outright failure. Unfortunately, most companies neglect it entirely, focusing instead on individuals and performance issues while the real problem goes unnoticed and unaddressed. Do you know what this important component is that can either make or break your company’s success?
According to Dr. Deming it is your system, or process. In this case, it is your selling process. Did you know that regardless of how talented, educated, or experienced your people are, or how hard they work at it, the tasks and actions they take everyday, and the order and sequence with which they take them, can make all of the difference between success and failure? Many of the mistakes and failures blamed on people are really caused by processes in need of improvement.
I learned this first hand at Monster during the recession of 2001-2002. As the economy continued to suffer the effects of recession, management focused on inspecting and monitoring the individual performance of the salespeople. The implication was that we were not making the necessary number of daily sales calls. The resolution was to mandate ratcheting up the activity levels on the floor. If we failed to make X percent more dials every day we could be penalized or otherwise punished. Incentives were introduced to reinforce and reward the required behaviors. Employee morale plummeted. Salespeople expressed concern that management was unfairly targeting them for blame. Management expressed concern that perhaps many salespeople had been taking advantage of the situation during the good times and didn’t really care about the company, or, worse yet, were lazy and needed to be weeded out. As a result, the average number of daily sales calls increased dramatically. The increase in the number of sales calls did not, however, result in the hoped for increase in sales and revenue.
During this time, my focus was on finding something that would work to produce measurable results for me. Initially I ratcheted up my activity levels too. In order to accomplish this I began coming in early and staying late. After a few months of this I noticed that although I was working harder and longer, and sacrificing time with my family to do it, I wasn’t seeing any appreciable return on my investment of additional time and energy. I began to realize that I wasn’t addressing the real problem. The market had changed dramatically while my sales process had remained the same. I was doing the exact same things I had been doing when the market was hot. The only difference was that I was now doing a lot more of them!
I began to analyze how the marketplace was different and to think about the changes I could make to my own approach and how they might benefit me. Unwittingly I was actually applying the Deming Cycle to improve my sales process. I recognized that during the time the economy had been booming almost every company seemed to be hiring. A salesperson could just pick up the phone and dial a prospect (seemingly at random), and chances were that they would be hiring or could refer you to someone who was. My data showed that nearly one in three of my sales calls resulted in a lead. It was a perfect market for making as many sales calls as you could possibly fit into the day.
The present situation was very different. Instead of one out of three I was now making almost 30 dials, on average, to get to that one lead! Increasing my outbound sales calls by the suggested 50 percent wasn’t going to get me to where I needed to be. I would have needed almost a 1000 percent increase to come anywhere close!
Another difference was that, during the boom, I could approach a prospect and communicate the benefits of online recruiting using very general terms and without needing specific knowledge of their business or hiring plans. With good leads now so few and far between, I realized I needed to approach prospects with a more thorough knowledge of their situation, as well as specific, customized solutions if I hoped to engage them in any kind of meaningful discussion. Each lead was too rare and too valuable to risk losing on a random, unplanned cold call. I concluded that I needed to change my selling process from one in which I was making more, random sales calls, to one where I was making fewer, more targeted inquiries. Talk about flipping conventional wisdom on its head! I couldn’t argue with the logic, however, and, after some initial hand wringing, my manager couldn’t either. He agreed to let me try out my new process.
The new approach began to yield immediate results. I was now targeting only those industries that were still hiring or that were at significant risk during the recession. I now approached them only after having done my homework and gaining an understanding of their specific situation and needs. As a result, I found myself opening up far more new sales opportunities than anyone else and my sales numbers went through the roof! In addition, I started suggesting to my clients and prospects that the bad economy was actually an opportunity for them to grow their businesses and grab market share while their competitors were standing still. I began to become intensely interested in helping my prospects identify with the goals, dreams, and aspirations they had for their businesses. We would then look for solutions and ways to help them meet or exceed those goals. Sometimes these solutions included Monster products and services and sometimes they did not. It really didn’t matter because I had reinvented myself in the eyes of my clients and won their trust and confidence. In doing so I had differentiated myself from my competitors and created a huge competitive advantage. I was no longer just another bothersome salesperson trying to take their hard earned money. They now took my calls and carefully considered my recommendations and proposals. I had become a trusted, valued business advisor and it was about to pay off big!
In December 2001 I closed a sale, over the telephone, for $308,000. At the time it was the largest single sale in Monster Telesales history. The sale allowed me to surpass my income goals for the year and made me the number one sales rep in the Southeast Region for 2001.
2002 brought additional challenges as the economy continued to be weak and hiring sporadic at best. Many people who were once very successful gave up and left the company. I continued to have more and more success challenging myself, my clients, and my prospects to focus on what was possible instead of what was not. The approach consistently had me producing large sales and smashing quota. In September 2002 I rewrote the rules for what was possible to sell over the phone when I closed a deal for one million dollars! I finished 2002 as the number one sales rep in the entire company at 166% of goal, with over $3 Million dollars in revenue. Once again I met and exceeded my goal with $250,000 in personal income!
The Value of Optimization and Duplication
I began to apply the Deming Cycle to every part of my sales process. First, I would identify all of the activities I was engaged in everyday and measure the results of each. I would then look for ways to improve those results. I repeated these simple steps over and over again; continuously looking to identify inefficiencies and replace them with new, improved ways to do things better. Often the improvements would come as a result of talking with and observing other top performing reps. I would identify what they were doing differently that was allowing them to perform at a high level and immediately incorporate it into my own selling process.
The result is a powerful process that you can easily adapt to your own situation. The process allows for tremendous and rapid growth, and, because it calls for continued measuring and improvement, this process will work in any economy or environment, industry, or company.
After increasing my income by almost ten times in just a few short years it began to dawn on me that this had not happened by accident or by sheer luck. I began to look back at the process that had taken me from failure to success so quickly. I recognized, at that time, that I had been documenting and measuring details of my sales and non-sales for years while continuously testing different approaches and comparing results. More than that, I had identified and implemented the best practices of some of the most successful sales reps at each company I had worked for over a ten year period. The result is this incredible selling process I am offering to put to work for you! I was humbled to realize that all my success was due to this process and not to me being some superstar salesperson. The truth is that anyone could have accomplished what I had accomplished if they had developed and followed this process.
From there I knew this sales process was like gold! I began a small sales consulting firm helping clients implement my process across their own organizations. The results were fantastic. One client grew from six employees with modest revenue in 1999, to a sales force of more than 300 with revenues exceeding $3M per month by 2002. Another client quantified a $4M dollar reduction in costs for an International company using the
I have been a featured presenter at numerous sales training seminars since 2006. Teaching others the principles behind this process and motivating them to become more successful at what they do has been as thrilling an experience as it has been my privilege to enjoy. There is nothing I love more than standing in front of an audience pouring all of my energy, enthusiasm, and passion into my presentation and watching people come alive as they reconnect to their goals and dreams!
How My Consultative Selling Process Saves A Small Non-Profit
When the opportunity presented itself for me to build a sales department from the ground up at Lifestyle Center of America (LCA for short), I jumped at the chance. Not only would my process be able to help a small, struggling non-profit realize financial success and stability but, because the organization was dedicated to helping people restore their health through lifestyle, I would be working to make a real difference in peoples lives. This had been an important goal of mine from the beginning when I had pursued training in the use of healthful diet, exercise, and other lifestyle based approaches as a means to stop the progression (and perhaps even reverse) chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease and obesity.
The Next Challenge
What about your business? Could you benefit from a process that has produced the kinds of measurable results you’ve just read about?
What about your customers and prospects? Do they recognize and acknowledge the unique value they get from you or do they see you as the same as everyone else who does what you do?
And what happens if the economy gets tough and your customers cut back on their spending—will you have the answers you need to sustain growth and profitability? In a market where sales will be harder to come by, will you be able to continue to compete on value or will you be forced to cut price in order to avoid losing sales to competitors?
I believe that I’d be a valuable asset to your company in any economy. However, with an economic forecast calling for recession, I’m confident that the skills, experience, and proven selling process I bring to the table could prove invaluable to you this year. I can help you win. I offer you my passion, experience, and a process proven to increase sales and grow your business regardless of what happens with the economy. I’d like to invite you to imagine the possibilities and consider what can happen when people with specialized knowledge and experience work together in pursuit of a common goal. I'd love to talk with you about it.
Click here to schedule an interview or call me at 580-622-4605
The Krajewski Family
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I graduated from Mount Missionary Training School in Harrisville, NH in 1982 ready to spend my life in service to God. Mount Missionary was a small self-supporting institution affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church. My studies focused on the Medical Missionary work, a curriculum which included learning to use diet, exercise, herbs, and other natural remedies to treat illness and disease. Although I have had no formal schooling since that time, my love for books, and for learning in general, has enabled me to become fully self-educated. In addition, I have participated in over 1000 hours of seminars, lectures, and other training while attending Automobile University (a phrase coined, I think, by Zig Ziglar to describe the many hours that one can utilize for personal growth and the acquisition of specialized knowledge by listening to audio tapes and cd’s while commuting to and from work).
My next incredible opportunity was at Monster.com. A highly profitable Internet company, Monster was succeeding when other Internet businesses were fading fast. I wanted to be a part of their culture and success. I had heard that their compensation plan was weighted heavily in favor of the overachievers and I was ready to make some big money. Selling web-based recruiting solutions had been easy in the late 1990’s when the job market was tight and unemployment was hitting all time lows. It was still pretty easy when I came on board in May of 2000. Even working Orlando FL, a territory primarily dominated by low wage, service, and hospitality jobs, I enjoyed immediate success. The free ride ended abruptly though, as the economy slid toward recession in February 2001. Suddenly employers were tightening their belts, cutting recruiting budgets, and putting hiring decisions on hold. Many salespeople accustomed to only success were experiencing failure for the first time. As summer wore on the market seemed to be getting progressively worse. Many of our clients in the recruiting and staffing industry were going out of business. None of us could have imagined what would come next... September 11! 
My time as Director of Sales at LCA resulted in the biggest jump in revenue in the history of the organization. This was evident from the very first month (July 2005) when we recorded record sales—a 400%+ increase vs. the previous July on our way to 60% year over year growth the first year alone! This increase represented $1.8 million dollars in additional sales dollars for the organization and allowed reduction of subsidy for the first time in the nine years of LCA’s existence. You might be interested to know that all of this success was accomplished using the very same people who had been failing miserably for years. Our close ration jumped from a paltry 2% to more than 18% generating an exponential increase in sales of a difficult, high ticket ($7000 average sale) offering. As a direct result of our people being able to close so many more sales we didn’t need as many prospects each month to hit our revenue targets. This meant a decrease of 30% in the net cost of sales or a more than $90,000 savings per year from our sales and marketing budget.