On this blog, Sales Bloggers Union, you can find 15 different perspectives on a single topic every month. Much of the time you will find ideas that vary widely, and sometimes you will find ideas that contradict each other—sometimes they are even diametrically opposed.

The Internet, just like any library or bookstore, contains content that is written by individuals and organizations to share their viewpoint on a certain subject. There are hundreds (if not more) of great blogs about sales, many of which contradict each other.

So how do you go about deciding which ideas you should pursue? How do you choose which ideas are valuable to you and your effectiveness as a salesperson? Who should you believe?

The following three rules will help answer these questions and give you a framework for reading about and studying sales on the Internet.

1. Identify Articles With Different Perspectives

When you are interested in a topic under the general subject of sales, do a search for that topic. Identify articles with different perspectives. Find the articles that most appeal to you and that you feel are most helpful to you. Read those articles.

Then, read the articles that lay out a different perspective. Especially read the articles that bother you. Read the articles that you disagree with completely.

Ask yourself why these ideas make you uncomfortable. Do you know the ideas to be wrong for your circumstances? Do they contradict one of your long-held beliefs? Ask yourself why the person would write what they have written. Try to discover the writer’s truth; what is her experience?

For example, I believe that cold calling is an outstanding way to reach high-level decision-makers. That is the truth of my experience. But you will very easily find dozens of articles insisting that cold calling doesn’t work at all. That is the truth of that writer’s experience.

2. Decide and Act

If you are searching the Internet for ideas about sales in order to be more effective, you have to make decisions about which perspective makes sense for you, and you have to act on those ideas.

As you read the different perspectives you come across, make a list of action items and takeaways. Write down how you will implement those ideas in your work. But don’t just write down the ideas from the articles that you agree with. Take the time to jot down your ideas as to how you would implement the ideas from the articles with which you disagree. Even though these ideas may not be right for you now, they may make more sense later . . . and they may even make you more effective in some other areas.

Let’s stick with cold calling. After you have found articles on how to be more effective at cold calling and taken some notes on how to apply them to your work, then write down some ideas from the articles that are opposed to cold calling. Both sets of articles will deal with prospecting, and there are lots of ways to prospect for new clients.

What could you apply to your work from this second set of articles? How would it change what you are doing? Can you think of a circumstance in which the advice that you disagree with might be useful?

Act upon both sets of these ideas. If you can’t act on some of the ideas, keep the ideas; they may be helpful in the future.

3. Remember: There is No Right and Wrong, Just Effective and Ineffective

Sales is a dynamic, human endeavor with lots of moving parts. Like lots of things in life, there are no right and wrong answers, there is only effective and ineffective. As circumstances change, what was wrong before may be the right answer now.

The key to success in most human endeavors is to have a strong command of the basic ideas and principles, and then to build an enormous set of exceptions. These “exceptions” are the little variations from the main rules, and sometimes they are in complete opposition to the basic ideas.

These exceptions are the building blocks of effectiveness and provide you with the ability to identify when you are you using the wrong approach and to change it. If what you know to be true isn’t working, what would work?

The openness to ideas, especially ideas that you disagree with and that make you uncomfortable, is one of the foundations of mastery. Judge these different perspectives on their effectiveness in a single situation, knowing that there is no right and wrong.

There is only effective and ineffective.

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We all have one — the first one that is.

And we all do whatever we can to convince others that ours is the best looking.  Our perspective that is.

We love our own opinion.

WE love the sound of it.  WE love the logic of it.  WE love the fact that we can have an opinion in the first place.

It’s all about we, we, me….

And the world of explosive selling is no different.

Line up 50 gurus and you’ll find 67 ways to go make tons of money.  Each dude has 4.3 easy steps to hitting your quota.

At the end of the day you are left shaking your head trying to figure out who to listen to and what to do.  It’s confusing, isn’t it?

You just want to sell.  And instead you find yourself defending a sales methodology.

So what do you do?

You need to understand the art of “perspective”…  It will go a long way to helping you negotiate big deals.

• Remember that everyone has a perspective even if they aren’t stating it loudly.
• Remember that “facts” don’t exist.  Everyone is talking about their perspective of facts.
• Remember that your customer’s perspective is the only one that matters.
• Remember that everyone’s perspective changes.

Once you understand these ideas, you will start placing the words “in my perspective…” in front of anything that anyone tells you. You’ll start defending less and showing more empathy…

It’s a winning formula.

———–

If you want to know a few more high-performance philosophies, join me on my EDGY CONVERSATIONS teleseminar on March 2nd.  I expect it to be “sold out” later this week so make sure you grab a spot soon.  I will share my perspective, and I look forward to hearing yours….

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Steven and Tammy’s Story

Steven and Tammy wanted to have a new patio built in their back yard. They had looked at patio stone and brick products for several years, and finally decided this was the summer they were going to look into getting it done professionally. With Steven’s new health problems now in the picture, doing the project themselves was out of the question. If they were going to do it, they were going to have to hire someone to do it.

They had discussed the project enough that they both had a vague idea of what they were looking for, but both Steven and Tammy recognized that they needed someone to give them some guidance on the design and product selection for their patio. The first thing on Monday morning, Tammy did an internet search to find landscaping companies in her area that could come to their home and provide some information.

Tammy called eight landscaping companies that morning. She scheduled four in-home consultations with landscape consultants in the next two weeks. She was excited to take the project

to the next stage, but had some apprehension, too, since this would significantly tax their family budget if they actually had the work done.

Roger’s Story

One of the consultants called to Tammy and Steven’s home was Roger. His appointment with the prospects lasted forty-five minutes, and he left the home without a contract signed by the prospects.

Roger called his sales manager on the way from the appointment to tell him that he hadn’t sold the job.

“I think they will go ahead with it, but they just needed to talk about it a bit,” Roger announced to his manager. He estimated there was a ninety percent chance the prospects would eventually place a job order for the project.

Two weeks had passed and Roger had heard nothing from Tammy. He decided to phone her and check in with her. Tammy told Roger that she and Steven had selected another company to do the work.

Roger was frustrated. He felt he was that close [can’t you just picture his forefinger and thumb ¼” apart] to getting this one. But what happened? Why did Roger fail to close this sale?

The Law of “Incongruency of Expectations”

Roger failed to understand the Law of Incongruency of Expectations.

During most initial sales interactions, and for virtually all sales interactions of the one-call close variety, there is an incongruency of expectations of the prospect and the salesperson. The prospect usually has the “shopping around” mindset. They are “getting ideas.” They’re “looking into things.” They’re “getting information.” And, most of all, they’re “getting a price quote.”

Yet, the salesperson’s perspective is that he is on the call to make a sale.

There are two parties in the sales interaction with two different perspectives: one is investigative and one is closure.

Two Highways

Think of these two different perspectives as two parallel highways.

The prospect is traveling on one highway and the salesperson is traveling on the other. Both the prospect and the salesperson are moving forward on their own highway (and even in the same direction), but the space between the two roadways signifies the incongruence of the two parties’ expectations. No matter how far either party travels on their highway, they will never come together. In fact, the longer the prospect travels on his road, the more difficult it is for him to switch routes – this is due to the law of sales momentum.

With this in mind, the goal of the salesperson in a one-call close scenario, and really any selling scenario, is to get the prospect on the salesperson’s highway immediately! Once there, the prospect is likely to stay on the salesperson’s highway. And the farther down the road the prospect travels, the more difficult it is for him to switch routes.

The Sales Solution

The very nature of the prospect’s highway is explorative: It is open-ended, flexible, undetermined, and gray. It is difficult, if not impossible, to complete a sales to a prospect who is in this nebulous state.

The salesperson must take action quickly to counteract this strong force of indecision within the prospect. And the antidote is simply this: Get the prospect to start making decisions, even miniscule ones. The more decisions that the prospect makes, the more solidly the prospect is positioned on the salesperson’s “highway” toward the sale.

You could begin by having the prospect select which chair he wants to sit in at the table. Ask him before you sit down or direct him to a chair. Ask, “Craig, which chair would you like to sit in?” As you start the discussion, ask the prospect another simple and easy-to-answer question, such as, “Do you want to start by talking about the widget or the wadget?”

Later, as you identify the prospect’s needs and desires, write them down. Make sure the prospect sees you writing them down. Each of these items constitutes a decision. Review the needs list with the prospect before moving into the presentation phase of the sales interaction. Ask the prospect for confirmation of accuracy of your list. Don’t continue until you receive confirmation.  Go one step further and ask the prospect to rank the needs in order of importance.

Baby Steps

Each one of these actions is a baby step toward your highway of writing an order. It is the cumulative effect of many small baby steps being made that propels the relationship forward on the proper highway.

Let’s imagine that you’re selling storage sheds. As you begin your needs and desires investigation, you ask your prospect what size of shed they have in mind. “You know, we’re not really sure,” they say. “We haven’t thought that much about it.”

Do not go further until this decision is made by the prospect. Going forward, or making the decision for the prospect, permits the prospect to be on their highway that leads to a price quote. But getting a decision keeps them on your highway to the sale. Before the prospect can make this decision, a ten or twenty or thirty minute discussion may be required. In extreme scenarios, the prospect may have some other stakeholder he needs to check with before answering your question. That’s perfectly acceptable. Allow the prospect to get the question answered. But there’s no need to present color choices, styles, height options, siding materials, hardware, and other options, not to mention beautiful CAD drawings of a new shed until the prospect can definitively decide what size they need and want their storage shed to be.

If the prospect asks you to price out the shed in two sizes, let’s say 8’ x 10’ and 10’x14’, agree to do so, but quickly follow-up with this very important question:

“If you had to decide right now about the size of the storage shed that would be best suited to your needs, would you select the 8’ x 10’ or the 10’ x 14’?”

Once you get this answer, this becomes the focus of the remainder of your sales call. You can always price the other product later, but you are going to act on the prospect’s decision, and that will help the prospect act later instead of having to “think about it” (“thinking about it” is the mantra of the quote seeker).

Working For You or Against You

The law of incongruity of expectations can work for you or against you, because it is neither good nor bad, it just is. You simply have to understand it so you can deal with it in an effective manner. Yet thousands of salespeople head out into the marketplace every day without an understanding of this important law.

If you want to sell more, get your prospects on the right highway early in the sales interaction. Keep them on your highway – it goes to where you want your prospect to be.

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Recently I’ve been reading “Cluetrain Manifesto” (I know, I’m late to the party) and really enjoying it! The book heralded the oncoming revolution in marketing that the web represented when released 10 years ago.  Today it’s a fascinating perspective on the results of that revolution we’re witnessing now – the explosion of social media and mobile marketing just to name a couple.

A core thesis of Cluetrain is that the web democratizes marketing and allows truth to be distilled by customers more easily.  Corporations can no longer rely on overblown claims broadcasted from on high to attract customers and must engage in more honest and open “conversations” with customers  on a one to one level.

In addition, I’ve been diligently doing my social media bit and have lately noticed a number of “discussions” on LinkedIn and other sites heralding the end of the sales person (Gasp!) as a result of the new ways customers shop and buy online.

The idea put forward is that due to the vast resources of information, reviews, opinions, etc. available to customers on the web, the role of the sales person in conveying this information to customers is obsolete.

Of course, this misses the true role of sales people fundamentally.  As Tibor Shanto so rightly pointed out in his recent post, 70% of sales people may see their role as the purveyors of product information – sort of a human product catalogue.  However, it’s the other 30% that really drive most of the revenue for companies.  This group of real sales people understand that their role is to solve problems for customers.  To build relationships with customers, by understanding them and finding opportunities to improve their world.

So, could it be that the web has brought on the death of the 70 percenter?  As all the product knowledge that these sales people see as their primary asset is commoditized on the web, sales people have no other value than that they can act as problem solver, interpreter, translator and match maker.  The abundance of information makes this role of greater value in fact.

This is indeed good news.  But there is another, darker element of the sales game that’s being overturned by the web and all of this information and connectivity.

Most sales people are also negotiators for the companies they represent.  This is where the stigma inexorably attached to the sales profession of manipulative, lying, double talker, etc. comes from.  I believe that those that perpetuate this perception also happen to fall into that 70% population and are on their way to pasture.  But this is not just coincidence.

Just as customers are bewildered by all of the information, options and solutions they can easily find in a quick search and therefore greatly need a trusted guide, the web and its ability to distill the truth makes false posturing during negotiations far more difficult.

If you offered a low price last month and someone posted it on Twitter, you can bet customers will be bringing that price up for months to come.  But not only will the seller be kept on the moral high road by the potential hazard of the Internet exposing the lie, so will the customer.

Let’s face it.  Customers lie.   Everything from white lies to darker ones is standard practice when a buyer decides it’s time to get the best deal they can get.

The sales person asks “What’s your budget for this project?” and the customer responds with a number 20% below the actual budget.  And so the posturing goes, often on both sides.

But customers will bend the truth about your competitors too.  “ABC is offering me 10% better pricing, paid out in 6 payments and next day delivery.”

Not so fast Mr. Customer.  Not anymore.  You too will be held to a higher standard by the forces of the Net.  As a sales person, has recently stopped offering next day delivery due to supply problems.  Or I’ll know they never offer payment plans AND a discount and if I don’t know, I can find out almost instantaneously.

So now whether we wanted to or not, we’re all going to have to be much more honest with each other.  Well that’s a good thing of course.  And as it happens, another element of change in the connected, networked marketplace of tomorrow that will cause the cream of the sales profession to rise to the top and the rest to find alternate employment.

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It may be time that sales organizations re-examined a core belief that may in fact be limiting their revenue growth rather than helping it.  The question revolves around the need or practicality of having a dedicated sales force.  I’ll state my bias right from the top, I don’t think it is always necessary, and I think there is very much room for alternatives.  In addition I also believe that success in sales come from ones ability to “sell” not their knowledge of “product”.

There are numerous functions in today’s corporations that are key, yet being executed by temps, contractors, or other non-employees.  Let’s be clear, we are not talking about people on the loading dock, but people in important functions such as finance, IT, marketing and more.  These people bring their expertise not just in their function, but they also bring a blend of “best practices” gained in their stints with other corporations they have worked with.  There are many top notch professionals in these fields who have either never worked full time for a given company, or not worked for one in many years, reason being that they have the sought after skills many companies need and are willing to pay for, even if their pay is above average, the total cost to the corporation (pensions, health care and other sundry costs considered).  So why not sales?

I can hear the “Relationship” camp fidgeting, hang on, I’ll get to you in a second.

It seems to be a requirement in sales to buy into and accept the 80/20, the Pareto Principle; or even if you are a convert to the Shanto Principle, the 70/30 rule, either way, the pundits always tell you that 20% of your team brings in 80% of the revenue, (I guess the other 80% are there for weight distribution on the bus), the cost of carrying the 80% must be a real burn.  When you ask why, more often than not they tell you that the 20% understand how to sell, not pitch product, how to work with buyers to uncover the objectives, and then present and deliver a solution that delivers value to the buyer and revenue (usually not discounted) to their company.

Well what if you could have team of those 20% types who deliver based on their ability to sell, not their skill at pitching product?  Let’s face it, when it comes to selling certain products, you can swap one seller for the next, when it comes to some base products, transport, wireless, office supply, and others, success is based on the sellers ability to sell, not product knowledge or how well they manage relationships.   So why not outsource it to a team of pros, with a track record, up to date training, willing to execute even the nasty activities required and a willingness to get things done.         

Relationships can still be managed by those built to manage relationships trying to pawn themselves off as sales people, you just don’t need as many.  With the tools available today, and truly integrating marketing and sales to focus on the market and buyers, you could probably make progress over the state of affairs today.  In the end you can probably save money as you would save on unearned commissions.  The reality is, and it was demonstrated over and over again in the economic down turn, relationships are very different in up markets than they are in down markets.  Keep the ones that really managed and grew relationships in 2009, bring in some hired guns to find new buyers and opportunities in existing accounts and you could have the model for the 21st century.

Tibor Shanto

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5:45 PM. Rick Johnston, VP Business Development, sank into his office chair, dialed his voice mail pass code and was greeted with, “You have seven new messages.”

“Hi this is Sean Preston from HiTech Corporation. We’re providers of customized software solutions that help companies like yours streamline their ordering processes. I’d like to…” Rick pressed the delete button and started listening to the next message.

“Mr. Johnston, Susan Meyers from Analytic Metrics. I’d like to schedule a short meeting to show tou how our newest product will save you time and money…” Delete.

“Rick, it’s Brian from logistics. We have a major problem with the Global Software program. Call me right away.”

And it continued. Fortunately, Brian’s voice mail was the only one Rick needed to take action on. However, his email in-box was another story. Forty-two new messages waited for him and that was just since 2:30 this afternoon. Today, like every other day, was a blur.

He had arrived in his office at 7:15 AM and spent forty-five minutes responding to outstanding issues from the previous day. Then, for the next several hours, he hustled from meeting to meeting. A half-eaten sandwich on his desk reminded him of the minor crisis that had interrupted his lunch. Unexpected problems with their new CRM system they had recently implemented company wide absorbed his afternoon forcing him to cancel two other meetings and delay a decision on yet another prject he was overseeing.

On top of that was the directive to reduce spending yet again. It seemed that the CFO was completely out of touch with reality. “How can we possibly run so lean and still cut resources?” Rick had challenged. The CFO simply shrugged and said, “That’s why you get paid the big bucks.”

But the biggest thorn in Rick’s side was the political battle he was fighting with Drew Strick, VP New Accounts. Every time Rick attempted to implement a change that would improve the company’s results, Drew challenged him and attempted to derail his efforts.

He broke away from his reflections and sighed. Another three hours of work to do and I still feel that I haven’t made any headway. He grimaced and dialed Brian’s extension to discuss the problem in logistics.

And that, my friends, is a typical day in the life of a corporate executive and decision maker. Internal politics, budget cutbacks and spending freezes, an impossible amount of work to accomplish, and limited resources. It’s little wonder that they don’t return your calls or seem to take forever to make a decision. Even if you have a solution that is a perfect fit for your prospect’s company, it’s going to take a lot of work and patience to get through to your decision maker. Put yourself in the shoes of your buyer, customer, or prospect. How would you manage their situation?

In today’s hyper-speed, octane-fueled business world the outdated and traditional methods of selling are now ineffective. Yes, you are under pressure to reach your sales targets but your prospect is under similar, albeit different, pressures.

Welcome to the jungle!

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