Hi.  I’m Kathi Woolsey and I’m with ImageSet out of Houston.  And the hot, burning question around here is can you retrain your sales team from a traditional staff to a team of marketing service providers, or marketing service solution salespeople, or whatever we want to call them.  And my answer is I think we can for the most part.  I think it takes a commitment on the company’s behalf.  I think there needs to be training processes in place.  I have a team of sales guys, average age is 54—they’re older than I am.  And they are able to do a very good job of qualifying leads, qualifying opportunities, and closing the business.  And the first few jobs that they sold, for the first few projects and programs they sold, were a little bit tough.  But once they got in the groove and started selling them and had some successes, they were able to identify additional opportunities and close more deals.

So I think you can do it, but again, I think there’s got to be those training tools made available.  And to be honest with you, that’s where you tie into PODi and some of these other organizations that make webinars and sales materials available, and you make sure that that information is distributed to your salespeople.  Because what’ we’re looking for is best practices.  We’re looking for more information on how companies are having successes.  And so once you can see that you can translate it into your own opportunities.  But it is a process and you have to make—it’s an ongoing process.  

You write a plan and you share the plan with the salespeople.  And they know this is where we are, this is where we’re going, this is why we’re going there, and this is what it’s going to take to get there.  And then you look at them straight in the eye and say, are you on board.  Those are more like, more—I mean you hear things from time to time.  I think you have to, I think you have to build it in such a way that you’re their partner and you don’t make it like you’re—I think in a lot of cases people feel like their management’s challenging them or is competing against them, and I think you have to be on their side.  I think you have to be part of that team, and if it means that you have to help write the proposal or if it means that you have to go in and help them close the sale, you do that.  But that ultimately that’s a learning process for that person or that individual and so therefore, they take what they’ve learned and they’re able to translate it into new opportunities.  

I think the biggest challenge that they have very often is being able to get all the resources together themselves and so therefore, if you’re not there for them some of those kind of fall through the cracks, but that’s part of my responsibility.  My job is to make them wildly successful.  Last I checked, there were not a whole lot of solution sales reps that were walking around town looking for jobs.  The people that I interviewed that said they were solution salespeople could talk the talk but they couldn’t walk the walk.  So therefore, I felt like based on where I was at the time, that the smartest thing I could do was take the people who I had, who were committed to our company, and who had really good, deep relationships with our clients, and empower them with as much information as I could make available to them or I could get for all of us.  Because I’m in sales too, I carry a book of business, and I’m constantly having to retrain myself.  And I just—I didn’t find the people out there that could really do what we needed them to do.  And so given the choice, you arm the troops you got and they’ve done very well.  

I have a great team; I really do.