Nine Years and Going Strong: Happy Birthday Randolph Sterling!

04.04.2012

Welcome to our April newsletter. April is my favorite month of the year, not only because spring has sprung but also because of two birthdays, mine and Randolph Sterling’s.

Randolph Sterling celebrates its nine year Anniversary on April 22nd (three days before my birthday, for those of you sending cards and presents). Please indulge me a bit, while I take a quick stroll down memory lane.

The Randolph Sterling story starts as far back as high school for me. I remember riding my bicycle around town with my friend Christopher Wolf, the two of us discussing how much fun it would be to have a business where we helped the businesses around town with their sales and marketing efforts. While Radburn Cleaners and Baskin Robins never actually became our clients, I kept the idea in the back of my mind as I worked through school as a Marketing Management major and into my career, first in market research and later in sales.

Over the years I have had a variety of different managers that I learned from…some what to do and some what not to do. My dad has been an influence on me as well given that he has been in sales for a good part of his work career and was always willing to offer advice. However, it was back at the end of 2001 when I really started to put the wheels in motion for what we all know today as Randolph Sterling (Incorporated April 22, 2003). When I started Randolph Sterling it was a small consulting company that would provide sales management services to growing companies that did not have a sales manager. During my start-up stages, I figured if one of those companies wanted to hire me as a sales manager, I would certainly consider it.

Over the years, we have added services to complement our sales management programs, some of which came along accidentally but at the right time! Our largest area of the business, our outsourced sales services, came about as a result of working with a company that asked us to put together and manage a sales program for them, although they never followed it. One day I met with them and out of frustration said, “You have us come in every week and each time we discuss getting out and finding new business. Each time you tell me you haven’t done anything. Instead of paying us to ask the question, why not pay us to do it for you?” Just like that, they said yes! Our new mission was to then go out and find great salespeople to provide the service!

It has been a fun ride for us so far. Our intention is only to continue to grow and help our clients grow along with us by adding more services to help provide stronger outsourced systems for our clients. This year alone we have expanded to in Boston and LA in addition to our successful Chicago and Raleigh locations, making it even easier to work with clients throughout the country who range across the business spectrum from funded startups building sales teams to established companies looking to give theirs a stronger competitive advantage.

Happy Birthday, Randolph Sterling, Inc.!

Summer Doldrums…What Summer Doldrums?

08.04.2011

I have been hearing a few people lately speak about the “summer doldrums” when discussing their business. Luckily, none of these people are our clients! I guess I shouldn’t say “luckily,” because much of that is by design.

When I look at the work we do for our clients, there is not a whole lot of difference between April, August, or December. They have a growth plan (that we worked with them to develop) to help them develop new opportunities throughout the year. I will admit that sometimes it seems more difficult to reach decision makers since people actually do take a vacation every now and then, but let’s face it, when reaching out to someone new, is there ever a good time to reach them? A lot of that part of the process is trial and error—we now know that these particular people are easier to reach on Tuesday afternoon rather than Friday morning, this topic drew more interest than that one did, or this size company has more of a need than another size. All of that information comes from us reaching out for our clients and learning that information, and all of it helps to progress a sale.

So, back to the summer doldrums for a minute. I asked a few people suffering from the summer doldrums what the particular problem was and the response I got was that their prospects “were just not ready to buy in the summer.” Really? So what is it about the summer months that causes them not to want to buy? Is it too hot for their pens to write their signature on a contract? There are a few legitimate reasons (maybe they can’t implement the solution yet because a key member of the implementation team is on vacation) but usually “not ready to buy” means that you have not completed the steps you need to before closing the deal. That can happen any time of the year.

We perform our Growth Audit for clients who have this issue (their prospects won’t say yes and they really don’t know why) and most times we have found that a step has been missed.

I try to keep these steps relatively simple:

  1. Are you talking to the right people who make and influence the decision?
  2. Do you understand your prospect’s issue that you are trying to solve and do you have a plan that they understand and agree with on how to make that issue better?
  3. Do they have an idea of what a solution will cost and have a budget for it?
  4. Are they ready to implement a solution?

In general, none of these steps change based on the calendar or temperature but all are needed to close a sale. Therefore look at the people sitting on the fence and answer these questions about the sales process. If you can’t honestly say yes to all of them, make it a goal to get those questions answered and get decisions made before it is “kids are back in school so parents are taking vacation” time.

To learn more about our Growth Audit and Autopsy service, contact us today at rburg@randolpsterling.com or 847-305-3710!

April, My Favorite Month of the Year

04.07.2011

April is my favorite month of the year. Spring is finally in the air (and hopefully the snow is finished for Chicago), baseball season has started, we’ve had our first softball practice of the spring, and there are two very important birthdays coming up: mine and Randolph Sterling, Inc.’s.

My long time friends will tell you that I generally begin celebrating my birthday sometime around April 1 (even though it is not until the 25th) so as much as I act like a 5 year old when it comes to my own birthday, I think I am even more excited about the company’s birthday.

On April 22, 2003, I officially incorporated Randolph Sterling, Inc. Back then, it was just me and an idea that I could help some local Chicagoland companies by acting as a part time sales manager, although I had always had the idea that I could grow the company into something more than that, which is one of the reasons why the company is named Randolph Sterling, Inc. and not Rich Burghgraef Incorporated (although as a baseball fan, I guess I could have called us RBI).

Our goal has always been to help our clients grow. Over the years, we have added additional people, additional offices, and additional services to be able to help more companies in more ways. We still provide sales management services which include the work I originally did when the company first started out, but we now do so much more including:

Thank you to our clients, friends, and supporters for eight great years, we look forward to many many more helping you grow because right from the beginning one thing has remained constant—YOUR SUCCESS IS OUR BUSINESS!