By Thomas Heath
Monday, February 22, 2010
I said something disrespectful about salespeople many years ago, and my wife, Polly, upbraided me straightaway.
Selling is a real talent, she said. If you can sell, you can always find work.
I immediately gained a respect for salespeople that I have never lost.
Karen Edwards knows how to sell.
Edwards, 45, owns and runs a profitable Gaithersburg printing company called Milestone Consulting Printing and Design Network (McPadnet).
"I am a sales executive," Edwards said proudly. She is an uber-networker who gave me an hour on the phone before rushing off to a meeting of the Women's Business Enterprise. "I love to sell. It's what I do."
Edwards is all business. She carries a business card with a title, "vice president, sales," even though she owns McPadnet. She speaks in quick, tight sentences. She sounds organized and driven. She even has a bit of a chip on her shoulder.
She needed those qualities to get out of rural West Virginia and make her way to Washington, where Milestone grosses close to $5 million a year and posts profit margins of between 6 and 8 percent. Edwards pays herself a six-figure salary and rolls the profit back into the business.
The company's biggest customers are Marriott International, which hires female-owned companies as part of its diversity supplier program, and some government agencies that Edwards won't talk about. The company has less than 50 employees in two locations; one is Gaithersburg, the other is a secret.
An early start
Edwards, one of six children of a coal miner, has been preparing for a business career since she was a teenager. She took lots of math, accounting and typing courses in high school, and specialized in printing at West Virginia Institute of Technology, which is now part of West Virginia University.
"I tried introductory courses in drafting, engineering and printing, and I loved the printing class," Edwards said. "There is so much more to it than ink on paper. And there wasn't any discrimination against women in my class."
After graduation, Edwards spent 2 1/2 years at a Virginia printing company, where she became a customer service representative. It was the early 1980s, and she made about $30,000 a year.
She left the Virginia company for a better opportunity with a Washington area printing firm. But she didn't leave for more money.
"It was a lateral move," she said. "My gut told me. . . . I knew my career was in management or sales, and it wasn't going that way with the previous company."
Edwards was 25 and one of two new salespeople at her new firm. The other was a friend of a vice president.
"They gave him a list of 400 leads and they gave me the Yellow Pages and two leads," she said, adding that one of her leads was a defunct company. The other was a British telcom that was alive and well.
"I called the guy [at the telcom company] and said, 'I know we don't have a lot of great work for you. I know you don't like the pricing structure.' But I asked him to give me one chance to bid a job."
Edwards won the contract, and when the man left a few months later for General Electric, he stayed with Edwards.
In her first year, she brought in $600,000 in business. It was 1990.
The 'network queen'
Edwards said her sales trick is being direct, reliable and creating a close relationship that her clients can't live without.
"You build their trust. I made unbelievable relationships that I still have," she said.
When a client talked about dry cleaning, she would recommend a dry cleaner. When they talked about school, she could talk about school.
Shopping? Doctor's appointments? Cars?
"I became a resource to all clients . . . the network queen."
By the time she left nearly eight years later, Edwards was making more than $100,000 in salary and commissions a year. She earned 2 to 3 percent on her total sales, which were more than $2 million a year.
When she learned that a boss was trying to take credit for her work, she went home, took a bath -- where she does her best thinking -- and decided to start McPadnet. It was 1997.
Edwards took 100 clients with her. For the first few years, she worked from home, and took little or no salary. She didn't own presses, so she sent work to printing companies in return for keeping the commission.
After five years, she used profits and $80,000 from a private lender to buy presses and equipment from a troubled printer in West Virginia, where costs are lower than in Washington.
I asked Edwards for some sales tips, and to my surprise, many apply to my job, especially my favorite: "Listen more, speak less."
Here are some others:
-- Bring stuff to your first interview. The first thing Edwards does when a client requests a meeting is to get a general idea of what type of project they want to discuss. This allows her to bring catalogs of products or print samples. Most clients buy what they see and if you go in empty-handed, that is how you might leave.
-- Find out all of the details upfront. You must know when, where, and how your client wants to receive their final product.
-- When a client suggests there is no rush, ignore them. They won't mind your urgency.
-- Follow up on every little detail, and if you ever have a doubt, follow up again.
-- Know your audience. Do not try to change your clients.
-- Know your competition. The only way you can beat them is to know as much about them as possible and why your client should choose you instead.
-- Deliver on your promises.
Like a good reporter, Edwards is always on the lookout for new clients (or in my case, sources).
"Any great sales person is always prospecting," she said. "I know my husband wishes we could go out to eat once without my critiquing the paper, font and ink of the menu. I am prospecting if my eyes are open."
Follow me on Twitter at addedvalueth.
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