 Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to San Jose State University's School of Informations Fall 2014 Colloquium Series. This is Dr. Bill Fisher on the coordinator of our colloquium series, and it's my pleasure today to introduce to you our speaker, Michael Grunberg, who is the president of Grunberg Consulting. An organization he started in January of 2012 after a very successful career in the information industry. Mike has worked for ProQuest, which some of you may know as the organization or the company that owns the dialogue search service. He's also held positions with OneSource, with Disclosure, with Oxford Analytica, and other organizations. And in this time, Mike has dealt with numerous libraries, individual libraries, academic corporate consortia customers, and has gained a phenomenal amount of experience with regard to the buying and selling of information. And he is with us today to share that expertise with us. So, Mike, let me turn things over to you. Thanks, Bill, and thanks, everybody, for coming today. My name is Mike Grunberg, and I have been in this business 35-plus years. In that time I have called on virtually every kind of library throughout the world, and called on libraries in U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, Asia, and so on. And over the years, you gain a little bit of knowledge about the relationship that one needs to have with the library to be successful. And so, when I saw it in my company about two and a half years ago, I had a little more time on my hands because I wasn't working for a big corporate entity. And so I wrote a book. And the reason I wrote the book was because I felt as though in many of the places that I had visited, there really wasn't an understanding of the sales process on the other side of the desk. You know, salespeople are taught how to prepare themselves and so on, and I got the feeling more than once that it might be a little bit help-us-ing on the other side. So I wrote the book, and when I put together this presentation, I was trying to think of a good title, and that's one of the tough parts in writing, and I write a column for music site also, and the toughest part is getting the title of the piece I'm going to write. And so for this, I said, well, this is really the information professional-vendor relationship. Or maybe I would say it's learning how to work and thrive as a professional librarian by working with and understanding vendors. And so that's too long. I don't like that one. And then I guess the one that I like the best is we're in it together. And that's really the basis of what I'm going to talk about today, that I've read articles that say the relationship between the library person and the salesperson should be adversarial. I don't believe that for a minute. And so I'll talk a little bit about that and kind of go through that. But before I get to where I have to get to, I think it's important to understand where I've been. Because I don't think you can understand how to get somewhere if you don't understand where you've been. So when I started, my first job out of college, I was a teacher in New York City. Reason I did that, even though I had a political science degree, was that I needed a job very quickly and they were hiring teachers. And prior to that, I'd been a musician. And so you think about, OK, is there any kind of a way in which to say that being a musician playing in a band prepares you for being a teacher? And strangely enough, there was a lot of ways in which that one profession helped the other. And when you think about it, for both professions, the teacher has to have lesson plans. Well, the musician has to have sheet music. Clearly both people have to know the subject matter, the musician has to play the song. And for both, you have to be able to impart wisdom. And in sales, we say we entertain and then we inform. So there's an entertainment thing in sales as well. You know, you have to know the songs by heart. We have to practice a lot. And certainly, when I was a teacher, I do a lot of practicing before I got into the classroom because kids kind of know if you're faking it. And so you have to be really careful of that. And you can't be afraid to speak in front of large crowds. And you've got to like people. And I think that really held me well in that job. And I loved being a teacher for about six years. And in that time, I got my master's degree in administration. I became a licensed principal in New York. And virtually, around the same time I got my degree and my principal certification, I got another notice in the mail from Board of Education. And at the time, New York City was having a severe budget crisis. And they said, well, congratulations on being a principal, but we don't have a job for you. And that was kind of upsetting considering I just recently got married and had a child on the way and so on. So I couldn't figure out what to do. And I spoke to a friend of mine. And my friend said, hey, you ought to be a salesman. And I said, no, I don't want to be a salesman. That's really not something I want to do. But I had no choice. And I figured out it would last a couple of months. And so then all of a sudden, I became a salesman. And interestingly enough, oops, then I became a salesperson. And I thought, OK, what does a sales guy have to do? Again, have long arms to knock on doors. And you've got to press buttons on doors. But actually, it was interesting because I didn't know any better. And the job I got was with a company called Disclosure. And we were the archivist for the SEC in Washington. What that meant was we filmed documents filed there by public companies. No calls to the government in return. We got to sell the data. And we sold our microfeeds. So you see how old I must be. And so we started doing that. And when I got the job, I said to my boss, I said, OK, well, what do I need to know? And he said, well, you're going to sell to librarians. I said, OK, that's fine. It's microfiche. I said, well, that's not so fine because I remember that doing my master's degree. And microfiche is not the greatest medium in the world. And he said, and also, by the way, people can get this for free if they go to an SEC reading room. So here I was trying to make a living. And all of a sudden I realized I've got to really do some hard work here because I don't think it's going to be easy to sell this. And really what happened was I was at, and I must tell you, I really feel very blessed to have the job I had because dealing with library folks was just a great thing because it's by and large one the nicest group of people in the world. And what I also realized going back to my music and my teaching days is that both professions, being an information professional and a salesperson, are in fact very similar. They're similar in the sense that both professions are there to help people. Both professions not to be knowledgeable, and you have to know about the latest trends. Both professions are constantly answering questions. Both need to be fully prepared to do their job properly. Both have to deal with the public and you have to get good people skills. And guess what? For both the salesperson and the information professional to be successful, you guys need to work together. And I have found in all the years I've done this that my most success came when I did work very closely with the library. So the answer to the question of are they similar? Yeah, they sure are. And so for the next 35 years, I've called on libraries throughout the world. I've gone to virtually every library that I can think of, large ones, small ones, public ones, special ones, and so on. You'll notice Stanford over there is in the picture nearby where you are. And I learned that there are three things that both the librarian and the salesperson have in common. And what they have in common is they both have to be good communicators. They both have to really prepare for the job, and they both have to manage expectations. You know, sales guys are taught that they have a goal every month of a certain amount of money. You know, in the library, you have to answer questions and make sure that you have the proper materials for your patrons. But the reality of it is that both professions, and when I did this slide originally, I didn't have the plus and the equal. And then I realized that absolutely that's part of it because the salesperson has certain metrics. We are given goals every month about a certain amount of sales that have to come in. You in the library have certain metrics that measure your success by the number of questions that are answered, that the number of resources that you have. And what that equals is that both people, both people really are aiming for the same target. They're aiming for a successful target that they both will be able to get their job done. And when I thought about it, I said let me put a slide in the talks about let's get the proper perspective. What does a salesperson do? How does that relate to the information professional? Well, the salesperson is paid to represent a product, my old company ProQuest, the sales guys there have multitudes of products that they have to know that they'll be able to present. They are the liaison between the library and the company. Not an easy rope, but not an easy rope to walk across because on one hand you want to keep the company happy and on the other hand you've got to keep the client happy and sometimes it just doesn't work out the way you think it's going to work out. The salesperson needs to know everything about the product. And finally, the salesperson, when they visit you in the library, they're coming to sell you something. I have friends who are sales people and they say well, I'm not really a salesperson, I'm a consultant. Nah, you're a salesperson and your job is to sell something. Now sometimes we call the library and it's just on a hello, hello, how are you, visit for a few minutes just to see if everything's okay. But for the most part, the sales guys show up. And what a lot of my information professional friends don't realize when they're in graduate school is that there will be a stream of sales people coming to visit you once you get a job at whichever library you're going to get a job at because there are sales people who sell databases, chairs, desks, technology, janitorial equipment. I mean, there's a whole host of things that these guys show up. And to be successful, you really have to understand the process and understand who you're dealing with. So for the information professional, you know your service to users of the people in your organization at your library. Your job is to acquire the best source of information. To do that, you have to evaluate products. You have to negotiate with vendors and you have to buy and renew products as well. My colleague and I do a course now on negotiation skills for librarians and we do it at Charleston and internet librarian and computers and libraries. We did that course last year in Charleston and they had scheduled us on a Friday afternoon at 2.15 which I said nobody's going to show up and we had a full house, it was standing room only because people really look for those skills in negotiating with vendors and we'll talk a little bit more about that later but this is to me, this is the most important part of understanding of what people are doing. So to get it down to the most basic of elements, there are literally three elements to every library sale. There's the information professional, there's a salesperson and there's a product or service that's going to be presented for consideration to be purchased. Now what happens then is the information professional needs to get the product they need at the price that they can pay. The salesperson has to properly represent the product because their job is to sell something and they're going to earn a commission. Quite honestly, if I stayed in teaching I would not have made the kinds of income I made as a salesperson. So there's the other part of that equation. Finally, the product or service to be presented has to be the right product at a reasonable price and more than likely will be used by your patrons and the fact of the matter is that's what happens. Now on the other side, oh yeah and by the way, and to be renewable, we are in what is called an annuity business and the annuity business means that if I sell you a database in September of 2014, I'm going to be back in September of 2015 to renew it. And it's not in my best interest to present to you something or sell you something that you're not going to be happy with. So it's not a one-shot deal when the sales guy shows up. But let me go a little bit further to tell you what's on the other side of the desk and what the company views it. Companies like the ones I worked for and they're all very good companies, they devote an enormous amount of money in the budget to train their salespeople and executives. Remember salespeople by virtue of who they are are fairly gregarious people to begin with. So we're now helping them to get even better than they are and we teach them sales techniques. We teach them sales strategies. So I was, I'm part of a, I've gone to Xerox School of Selling, I've gone to IBM School, I've gone to Miller Hyman School, all these things and they're all different strategies and different ways in which to teach us to be more efficient to salespeople. We go to negotiation skills training. We're given books to read when there's a new product coming out inevitably what happens is the product manager, the VP of sales, all the sales managers, all the sales people get together and they teach us about the product and how to sell it. We talk about the client constantly talking about the client and saying okay what do we have to do to sell this thing and what do we have to do to make it right and we have yearly meetings, there are quarterly meetings, there are monthly meetings, there are weekly meetings and that's what we're talking about. We talk about what is the strategy, how do we get the job done and how do we service our customers better. We have CRMs to track the sales activities. So I can look on my computer and look at salesforce.com, one of many and find out name, address, phone number which is easy but how many emails have I sent you, how many proposals have I sent out, what is the name of your partner, what is your favorite color, how many children do you have, all that kind of stuff and it's done for one reason, one reason only to be more efficient but even more so so that if I leave the company on Tuesday, the guy who replaces me on Wednesday knows all the information and when I talk about this at my sessions at computers and libraries in those places, I start this slide and I say okay, all of that is done for one reason and one reason only and that's done to deal with the information professional. Our job as salespeople is to sell something to our information professional friends and the two questions I then ask the audience is how much money does your library spend to prepare you to deal with salespeople? What training course did they send you to? And secondly, how many courses did you take in library school that were devoted to prepare you to work with the vendors? And guys, you know the answer, the answer usually is around zero. That just does not happen and I found that to be the case quite a while ago where I realized that you guys are not trained to deal with guys like me, it's that simple and I've always thought about writing a book about this stuff and the idea of writing a book The Genesis actually started about 20 years ago or even more and I was managing an international sales force and we had our meetings about who we wanted to sell to and so on and there was one really great prospect we had in London and we had spoken to her many times. It was a great prospect, perfect application for our service and it dragged on for some time and then I think it was like a Wednesday after noon or Wednesday morning the salesperson from London called me up and said, Mike, so-and-so just called, they seemed ready to buy, they liked us to come in the next Tuesday at 10 o'clock. I said, great, have a great meeting, you need to know she wants you there as well. So okay, so going that time to live in New York so at that time I said, okay, it's Wednesday afternoon, Thursday, okay, so I left Sunday night, flew all night, got there Monday morning, went right to the office, we went over everything, we had everything prepared, we had all of our arbed ducks in a row, we go there Tuesday morning, 10 o'clock, within 10 minutes of the meeting beginning the librarian says, oh, Mike, something came up, I have to go but don't worry, Jeanette will take you the rest of the way and I looked at Jeanette and Jeanette looked like the deer in headlights and of course Jeanette had no idea and of course as we left the offices a little while later the salesperson looks at me, I look at him and I thought the guy was gonna cry and I said, look, you're not to blame, you were prepared, the problem was she wasn't prepared and she didn't want to admit it or whatever the reason was but she was not prepared and I said to myself, among other things, I said to myself, I gotta write, somebody's gotta write a book about this thing so fast forward to two and a half years ago when I saw it in my company I wrote an article for SLA and the article appeared in this issue of information outlook and basically what I said in the article was that the vendor and the librarian should have a unique relationship that produces results that are acceptable, reasonable and cost effective for both parties and I wrote it just because I felt like writing something and my friends at SLA had asked me to do an article for them. Well, I was absolutely shocked and amazed that I got all these calls from people who said love the article, great stuff, do you think you might want to write and turn it into a book? I had no idea but I said, okay, I could do that and I started with a dear friend of mine who was editing the book for me and we were gonna self publish until I found information today and they said, well, why are you doing that? We'll publish it for you and they did and that's how the book came to pass. So we'll talk a little bit more about that later but the idea of the article and the idea of what I talk about in many of my sessions is that it's all about preparation. How does the information professional prepare for the sales meeting and on the other side of the table how does the vendor prepare for that same meeting? The fact of the matter is if both parties want to accomplish something and cut through all the nonsense and all the stuff on the side, get down to business and I believe by reading the book and understanding what we talk about that we can achieve mutually beneficial results for both parties because again it's not adversarial to me it's working together and so when I started talking about preparation for the sales meeting which we talk about a lot in the book there were some pretty simple hints of what to do. The first one of course is for the information professional do the research. Have a basic understanding of what the product entails so you say, well, I want to see the database on astrology. Okay, take a look, go to the company website take a look at what they've got have some questions. You will find that you're probably going to know a lot more than you think and you're probably more of an expert than you think you are and if you're not, pretend to be. You know, you should know a little bit going into the meeting and the other part of it is have an idea of what you want to spend. When we did the negotiation skills training in Charleston last year we had Carl Grant from the University of Oklahoma with us on stage and he said to the group, he said, look, if you don't have the money then say it, you know, say, look guys I'd love to buy this product it sounds really good but we don't have the money at that point it's up to the sales person to decide whether to come because at the end of the day you don't want to have the person come out there just to say hello and because their job is to sell you something. So have an idea of what you want to spend and if you can't then say so up front. Similarly, express the actual needs of the library. Here's what we need. We have a new school of nursing. We don't have the right elements for research. We have, you know, the Dean of Business wants to get a certain whatever. Again, express the actual needs. Have a working knowledge as we said of the products to be discussed and please be an active participant. Too often my library friends with such delightful people sometimes are kind of passive. As I talk to young library students and I've given this talk at Catholic University and University of Tennessee and I'm pleased to see that a lot of the young librarians are much more active than some of the older ones and I love it because be an active participant. Tell the sales person what you want. And the other thing is be a coach. If, and what that means is this in many organizations every organization is different in the way in which they purchase a product. If you like the product, if you think it's good, if you think it has the wherewithal to be in your library and the sales person will say, well, did you like the presentation? You will inevitably say, yeah, I liked it. It's always great. The good sales person will say, well, what do we do next to get this done? Every organization is different and every organization has ways in which to navigate through there. Help the sales person navigate through your organization. You may say, well, you know, Joe, the way we do it here is there's a committee, there's three people on the committee, two of them are never around, but the third person is always there. I'll introduce you or whatever. Do, you know, be the coach to help the sales person navigate through the approval process. Be realistic about the funding situation and also tell the sales person what your feelings are. You know, Bob, I didn't like the last sales guy your company sent in here or I love your company. It's a great bunch of people. You've done a great job for me. Whatever it might be, good, bad, or indifferent, be, you know, let the sales person know how you feel. Because on the other end of the equation, ladies and gentlemen, your organization has expectations of you. They expect that you've conducted the best research in selecting the best products for the library. They want to feel confident that you are part and understanding of the latest trends in your industry and they want to have the assurance that you've negotiated the best possible price. And guess what? The sales person can help you achieve these goals. You work with the sales person, they can help you. So how can you guys work better together? Well, one of the things that I'm kind of crazed about is the use of an agenda. And I'm always amazed when I talk at SLA, ALA groups of senior librarians and I say, before the meeting, do you have an agenda sent out? And a lot of times they say, no. The agenda is probably the most important part of beginning the sales process because the agenda says to the sales person, here's what I want to do. So here, for example, the sales person may say to you, I'm going to visit your library next Tuesday at 10, I'm going to talk about a solar power database. Anything else you want me to talk about? You may say, no, I'm fine. Or you might say, you know what? I want to talk about the renewal. I want to talk about your other products. Or the librarian may say, Bob, I'm happy to see you next Thursday at 11, and my library director is going to join us. And all I want to talk about is renewal. Well, if Bob is a good sales person, Bob will bring his boss because people on both sides of the equation will get things done a lot faster if now Bob has to go back to his boss and say, hey, you know the library director said. So let's be clear on what's going to be discussed and what we're going to do. And now all of this is so easily trackable on our phones and our POM pilots and whatever. So it's kind of easy to do that now. And I think if you do that and if you learn one thing today from me throughout what we talk about today, the use of an agenda as far as I'm concerned is one of the most important things that you'll learn. And the other thing is, and we talk about this a lot in the book, but the other thing is, what should a typical salesman look like? Well, ladies and gentlemen, if it's anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, more or less, if it's more, there's a mistake being made unless it's serious high-level negotiations. It's real simple. First, five or 10 minutes is an introduction. If you've been there before, review what was said last time. If it's a new, kind of get to know each other. And then 30 minutes, 25, 30 minutes on fact finding because how would the salesperson know what to sell you if he doesn't know what you want to buy? So there's this back and forth of the questions and in the book I give 10 to 15 questions as examples that each side can ask. Then at the end, there's 10 minutes as a wrap up and demo. Maybe because you don't have to give a demo. And then the wrap up, and the wrap up basically says, okay, here's what you're gonna do, here's what I'm gonna do, and that's when we're gonna meet next. And by the way, if the salesperson opens up his laptop within the first 10 minutes of the meeting, there's one thing and one thing only you should say. Please close it. How can you know what I want to buy if I don't tell you what I want to buy? Because mostly when they open up the laptop, it's a demo. It's usually something from the marketing department with birds flying and fish swimming and children singing and not a whole lot of substance. So let the salesperson know what it is you want to buy by answering the questions. Or, and if they're not asking a question then you ask questions of the salesperson. Because it's just like going to the doctor. When you walk into the doctor's office, the doctor doesn't look at you and say, oh, I know what's wrong. What does the doctor say to every one of us? Man, woman, child, anybody. The first thing the doctor says to any one of us is, what brought you in here today? Why are you here? Well, I'm in because my arm hurts. Oh, your arm hurts, I understand. Let me try to work with that. So the salesperson to me is like the information doctor. You know, where does it hurt? I need to probe for pain. I need to understand what it is you guys need here. And the way I do that, by the way, is 10 to 15 questions that I can ask you. And once those questions are answered, then here's the solution I recommend, much like the doctors will take these two pills and call me in the morning. It's the same thing. The salesperson is much like the information doctor. Now, at the conclusion of the meeting, at the very end of the meeting, let's review. Here's what we said. What are my responsibilities? What are your responsibilities? What happens next? Because what we want to get to is a final approval. Okay, so that's kind of the way to get started. But once we go from preparation, and this is something we talk a lot about in the book and we talk a lot at our seminars, we talk about preparation. Let's talk about leverage. I don't know whether you're aware, but outsell is estimated that the information industry is a $550 billion industry. That's B for billion. And you guys know better than me there's a finite amount of libraries, there's a finite amount of vendors. So there's a small amount of vendors that are servicing these libraries and deriving an enormous amount of revenue. They don't want to lose that revenue. And a lot of their revenue is based on renewals. Remember, we talked about that. So when the salesperson comes to renew, you have a lot of leverage in negotiating the price. And that's a story for another time, but just keep that in the back of your mind. And I was watching the US Open here in New York and I thought about leverage and I thought about momentum. And Bill and I, Dr. Fish and I were talking about baseball earlier. And the example, I put the tennis guy in so remember it was the open. But the example I gave, and I hope you guys are baseball fans, I'm not gonna pour you to tears. But if you think about it, let's say your team's winning. The home team, you're winning three to nothing. Top of the ninth inning, the visiting team has done nothing. First guy gets up, it's a single. Okay, gets on base. Second guy up, walks. And I got first and second, nobody out and it's a problem. So next batter hits a ground ball to the shortstop and you're thinking double play, we're practically out of this and the ball goes right through his legs. Base is loaded, nobody out. Inevitably the next guy gets up and hits a home run and the game is a one. And your team gets up in the bottom of the ninth has no idea what hit them. The momentum shifted incredibly once that ball went through that shortstop's legs. And if you think about it, the same thing in dealing with the library. The initial call to your library the advantage is to the salesperson because the salesperson has determined to whatever means that your library is a prime prospect for this guy's product, whatever it might be. When you have that first meeting and you come to the point where you like the product, you actually need the product and you have the money to buy it, all of a sudden that momentum shifts to your side. You are now in control and there are four elements. And we talk about this in the book a lot of organized negotiation. There are objectives. There's a timetable, there's a team you'll assemble and what is your strategy. And when all those four are in concert, then you're gonna have a successful product acquisition. And by the way, this slide alone, we could talk for the, for, you know, half a day. But just to give you the brief overview of it, what are your objectives? Well, I wanna buy a database in archeology. I wanna buy a nursing collection, whatever it might be. My objective is I don't wanna spend more than $10,000 and at the end of the day, I wanna narrow it down to three possible vendors. Those are your objectives. What's your timetable? Well, I wanna buy this within the next six months. How many times will a salesperson say to you, if you signed by Friday, I'd give you a special deal? Really, Bob? How about if I signed by next Tuesday? You can bet Bob will still give you the same discount. It's your timetable. Say, Bob, I can only buy this within the next three to six months, so don't be bothering me every day. Again, it's your timetable is not theirs. Assemble a team. You know, when I started doing this, it was a lot of one-on-one. When I would go in to sell a product, it was me and the head of the library or the subject specialist or the collection development person or whatever. Now, you know, with money being as tight as it is, there are more people involved in the decision. So you have to assemble a team to help you as well. And then what is your strategy? Well, I want to try to keep the total spend to 11k, but I'd be willing to spend a little more if the contents of the database I want to buy is really great. And actually, the database is more important than the price. So these are all things that you can wrestle with, but at the end of the day, it's your objectives, your timetable, your team and your strategy. And you'd be wise to understand that because as salespeople, their job is to have it their way and have their objective and their timetable and their team and their strategy, but you're the buyer. And so when we talk about team, and just to give an example, this is kind of a mock-up of a template that we put together and they're different people. And some people here can be the same person or two people, but whatever, you're the team leader. So you organize it because you're the person that wants to buy the product or is the person entrusted to do that. You know, who's the financial authority? You know, that's the person with the budget. You've got to make sure that you have the money to buy this thing. The technology person and every organization there's a technology department and there's always a guy who really understands this and can say, oh, if you buy that database and you put it on our system, it'll blow up. And believe me, I've had that happen to me as well. We have the experts. There's always somebody in the library who has a certain discipline, knows archaeology better than anybody else or knows music better than anybody else. We call that person the Mr. Know-it-all. The legal person needs to be involved. Your supervisor needs to be involved. And most of all, in your profession, you guys talk a lot amongst each other. Use your network of people to help you. You can say, look, the sales person from ABC company is coming in tomorrow. Do you know anything about the company? Do you know anything about this guy? Whatever. Use these resources to help you when you're doing the negotiation of the price. So all of this, if you put this all together, that's why I wrote the book. The book really talks about all of these things and I take it through and I've divided into three parts. There's a relationship between the information professional and the sales person and how does that work and how does that get you to the sales meeting? And once you have the sales meeting, well, what happens then? And then what happens afterwards? You know, in sales, we say it's easy to make the first sale. It's very hard to keep the sale. And nothing could be truer than in our industry because, as I said earlier, this is an annuity business. And as an annuity business, I gotta come back to you each year to renew the business. And if you're unhappy, then you're not gonna renew it. And so it's up to me to make sure that you are happy throughout the process. The forward is written by a visionary guy, St. Clair, who's been a dear friend of mine for many years and I was honored that he would write this forward. There's a preface to conclusion and the epilogue. And all of the stuff that I've written, it's really about me. Well, not so much me, but things I kind of experienced. Their vignettes, their stories, it's all lessons that I've learned. There is no ivory tower, hypothetical, hoo-ha kind of stuff. This is what happened to me. The only thing I had to do was not use the names of the people because the publisher said I might get sued. So I didn't do that. But it's really what happened, how did I deal with it? And sometimes I didn't deal with it well and sometimes it wasn't solved the way it should. But this is how the situation came to pass. This is how we resolved it and what were the results? And so when I wrote this, it was really for both the salesperson and for the information professional. It wasn't one or the other. That's the way it works. And so when information today said, look, we want you to write for both sides, that really was an interesting part because I did a lot of interviews of library folks around the country and got their perspectives as well. So what are the topics covered? Well, there's so many. I mean, I've had to tone this one down as well. But basically again, what should typical salesman look like? You know, how to use the agenda before, during, and after? Talk about the information doctor. You know, I give the 10 to 15 questions by both sides of the table. You know, how is it to be an active participant as opposed to a quiet listener? When is price discussed? Now, a lot of times, the situation or price can actually introduce at the wrong time. I'll give you an example. At the end of the presentation, some library folks feel compelled to say, so Bob, I like the product. Give me a ballpark of what this would cost. Bob cannot give an answer until he knows your budget, until he knows how many people and he knows the logistics of how this is gonna be in your library. And Bob then feels compelled to say something. And Bob will say, well, ballpark's around and throws out a number. Librarian says, wow, that's way more than I could spend. And says, forget it, don't ever call me again. And that happens. And both parties were wrong. Both parties should not have done that until they got to that final point in the equation where the questions were answered that the salesperson knew everything there was to know about it and the librarian was comfortable with those answers. Coaching the vendor, you know, as I said, every organization has a different modus operandi of how to buy a product. And it's important to coach the vendor to help them get through there. You know, how to deal with difficult salespeople. I mean, I've known, I know that when I was a VP of sales, sometimes people called up and said, you know what? Don't send Bob to our library ever again. Bob was a nice guy, but, you know, there was a personality conflict. Guess what? You're allowed to talk to the company. See, you know what? I don't like this person. I don't like that lady. They're not people I want talking at the library. There's also when to engage and when to walk away. I do a lot of music analogies in the book. And I always use the Kenny Rogers gambler. You know, no one to hold them, no one to fold them, no one to walk away and no one to run. And sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes you can't make a deal. And you have to know that. A lot of salespeople like to put in their forecast a whole bunch of stuff. A lot of that is nonsense, but they don't want to say it. And they don't want to say, well, I got a chance. No, you don't. If you ask the questions, if you did your homework, if they were truthful with you, then you know which are real and which are not real. And at the end of the day, there's a checklist at the conclusion of the meeting for both the information professional and the salesperson to go over what's happened. And finally, using leverage and understanding momentum. If you learn anything in addition to the agenda, but how do you use leverage? How do you understand momentum? Because the momentum always works in your favor. Because again, there's a finite amount of companies, finite amount of libraries. And basically that's it. So I thank you for your time. If anybody has questions, I really thank you Mike. Wonderful presentation. I don't know if any of our participants have any questions. As they may think about things, I just want to reinforce a couple of things that you mentioned. First of all, with regard to, because it was on your last slide, dealing with difficult people, that I think it's important for people to understand that every company is different and every salesperson is different. And you may, as the buyer, have a bad experience with one salesperson, but you shouldn't sort of let that carry over to your next experience with the next salesperson who contacts you, who may want to come and visit you because you could have an entirely different experience. And yeah, that's exactly right, you know, because look, we're all people and you know, and we all know in our professional lives and our personal lives that we try to get along with everybody, but sometimes there are certain people in our lives and we don't get along with as well. You know, the company is not interested in personality conflicts. The company is interested in selling their products. And if you say, you know what, Joanne came to me the other day and she's a very nice woman, but I really don't want to deal with her until you send somebody else, inevitably they will. And sometimes it's in everybody's best interest. The other thing that's interesting, which is sort of a, part of that is we're in a business where there's a lot of competition. And I can tell you, working for ProQuest, which is a great company, sometimes, you know, the products that EBSCO might have might be a leverage you can use when you say, look, I'd like to buy this particular database, but I know that EBSCO or Gale or some of the other companies have something similar. Don't be afraid to say that. The other part of it, with the sales people, sales person sometimes says, you say, well, how'd you get the price? Sales person needs to defend their price. You know, if you say, sales person says, it's gonna cost you $20,000, but whatever they say, you know, you have the right to say, can you defend your price? Can you tell me, how did you guys get to that? Because there is, at the home office, I guarantee it, at the home office, there is a price sheet and there is a rationale for the way in which that price was developed. So never be afraid to ask that kind of question. That's a tremendous question coming from the library. And the fact is it's very legitimate. It's not being difficult. You're asking a very legitimate question. That's a great thing. And again, I think another thing is that as educators, don't do a good enough job getting students ready to understand is it's their job to spend that money. That they hear something like $20,000. First of all, you need to understand it's not $20,000 coming out of your account. It's coming out of the library's account, even though I've got a story for you in a second where that may not always happen. But, you know, it's your responsibility to, in jobs, spend that money. It's your responsibility to get the best product you can for that money. So turning away a salesperson because of a price or something like that, out of hand means you're not doing your job. A quick story that I think Michael appreciates because it has to do with disclosure. As Mike said, disclosure got started by putting the 10K or the formal annual reports that companies had to submit to the Securities and Exchange Commission on microfeesh. And they did that rather than microfilm because they could replace them and pop new ones in and out more easily. And they were, again, this information was publicly available, but not easily available. And so they got started as making this set of corporate information, which a lot of people needed readily available. And I happen to be working as a business librarian at the time in Southern California. And at a small university library, but we signed one of the first contracts in Southern California to get disclosure in our library and had people coming in specifically to look at the feesh, which was all well and good, until we got that first renewal. And it came with my name on it, which I was not aware of. And I took the price that was something like $12,000 at the time. And once my heart started working again, I got that over to our acquisitions department as quickly as possible and asked them to pay the bill and also to make sure that it came with their name on it in the future rather than mine because that was a bit of a shock. Really? I can understand that, but it's funny because I can give you, I had a salesperson at disclosure and she was great. I mean, really good woman. And I gave her the corporate market and we had a product at the time and it was a perfect fit for them. It was a Fortune 100 company on Park Avenue in New York. And so big time. And she goes and I said, this is a sale. I mean, you know, you should do this when you sleep. Comes back, she says, Mike, they didn't want to buy. And I said, well, why didn't they want to buy? And she said, well, it was too expensive. She said, too expensive. I said, you know, I think it was also $20,000 at the price. It wasn't huge. And I said, Leslie, how could that possibly be? And it turned out that she had some financial problems at home. And so she was thinking of $20,000 or $20,000. I said, for this Fortune 100 company, $20,000 goes into the Pepsi machine in the morning and, you know, when people, you know, get coffee and soda. So it's true, as Bill says, it's really a matter of, it's money that the organization wants you to spend on resources. And that's really what it says. So it really, you know, it's nice to believe it's your money, but it's not. It's really theirs. So that's, but that's, I didn't know you were a former disclosure subscriber. With the fish, I loved it when it finally got online. God bless you. With dialogue. Yeah, I know. You know, I saw a lot of fish in my life. I was, I was affectionately known as a fish. Anyway, Lyon, Crystal, and Kathy, you got any questions for comments for Mike? Well, it looks like Ryan may be writing and Crystal. So we'll wait a second. Thank you for that. But, you know, the other point I think I want to make is that, you know, everybody's a salesperson. That now, because people can get information from so many different places, whether it's good information or bad information we won't necessarily get into now. You know, every time the librarian deals with a customer or a client over the phone, online, in person, they're making a sale. Whether money changes hands or not, you know, they have to think like a salesperson. And, you know, it's only getting more and more, I think, along those lines rather than less that everything that you've talked about today and probably is in the book, I think will not only help people negotiate for information products a little better, but if they, you know, sort of take the right perspective, we'll help them do their jobs better, whether they're buying or selling information or whether they are using the information that they just bought in filling their job responsibilities. Absolutely true. And again, part of what's been very gratifying for me is going around the country and talking about this. And the first place I went to to speak about this was Hawaii. And, you know, my friends laughed at me. So, yeah, that must have been tough. But actually, I have a friend who teaches at the library school and the local SLA chapter invited me to come out. And so I did two presentations when I was there. And there was a one woman in my friend's class and she said, you know, I'm a librarian during the day. I'm going for my MLS degree and all this. And she said, we have a vendor who's packaged a bunch of products in one package. And they're 10 different products. We only need four of them, but they've been unwilling to unbundle it. And I said, well, here's what you do. Go to the library director and call, and jointly call the sales person. Bring them in and say, look, we want to unbundle. We only want four. And we want the same discount. And she said, can I do that? And I said, yeah, you really can. It's, you know, and so about three, four weeks later, I got an email from her and she thanked me. She said, I didn't believe you, but I did what you said. And the vendor came in, couldn't have been nicer. And I said to her, the reason is he doesn't want to lose the business. He'd rather get part of something than all of nothing. And so, you know, we have to be much better as consumers when we're buying things to the library, because, yes, it's not our money, but, you know, it's our responsibility, you know, as information professionals to get the best possible price. But as you say, spend the money and have a good part of working with the people who are selling the car, which I don't know anybody who really enjoys that experience, but at the end of the day, if you go home and your money's still in your bank account, and that car dealership still has inventory on the lot, then something's gone wrong, because unless you live in New York or Chicago, you probably need a car and they want to move inventory. So, you know, if it's one of these things, I can give you this price, you know, for the next 30 minutes kind of thing, you know, walk away, because you still have money in the bank and they have inventory and they don't want that. So, the sales person has done something wrong in that regard, and you have a lot of control and a lot of... Right. I don't know if power's the right word to use as a buyer, and, you know, people just need to understand that. Well, I hope if the book encompasses anything that empowers more of library people to be more resilient and be more demanding and not being difficult, because I don't prescribe to being difficult. You know, my style is my style. I haven't changed this, whether I'm talking to the CEO of a Fortune 100 company or I'm talking to the collection development person or I'm talking to whomever at the library. This is who I am, and I think with the way in which that you now understand a little bit better what goes on the other side, again, I think it's empowering for both people because the last thing the sales guy wants to do is, you know, get in the plane, rent a car, stay in a hotel, you know, walk up and down the campus or wherever and what come away empty-handed. So, I'm trying to make it good for both people. I remember I wrote the book, my sales friend of mine called up and said, oh, thanks, Mike, you know? And I said, you should thank me because I'm making it better for everybody concerned here. And that was the whole, I mean, I have no acts to grind. I mean, I've had a charmed life with this profession. It's taken me all over the world and there's a thought of me and income that I never dreamt I could have. So, as far as I'm concerned, I think it's great. And if I can help people and make it something that's worthwhile for both sides and I've accomplished what I wanted to do. And again, I want to thank you for sharing this information with us and spending some time with us and good luck to you and good success with the book.