Engaging with potential clients is one of those things that requires sales people to both suck and blow at the same time; not easy, but doable.

On the one hand you want to be client focused, thinking less about the ultimate sale and more about fully engaging with the buyer. This involves a full Discovery of the buyer’s objectives and environment, and more.  On the other hand, you also need to drive revenue for your company, acquiring new accounts which by nature are either already buying from someone else, or are not buyers at the moment you are trying to engage them.

The bridge between the two is in the preparation in advance of the initial call, and the entire Discovery process.  At the minimum you have to have a strong grasp of two things, first the specific value your product or service has delivered to other organizations similar to the buyer you are trying to engage.  Second, understand the specific issues and objectives your buyer is dealing with and is trying to achieve.  These two are not sequential, but unfold in a single flow, this is key, because you have to allow the buyer to get involved, engaged, which means you need to adopt a fluid approach rather than a linear step by step approach.  How do you do that?  Once you have handle on these you then need to connect them by formulating questions, the kind of questions that will indeed fully engage the buyer, not just get them interested, but engaged as in wanting to go further with process on their own rather than being pulled along.

We all know and accept that questions are the tools for success in engaging clients.  Questions, the right questions, get people to reflect and think, and once you get them thinking about something relevant to them, they respond and add questions of their own, which leads to conversation and engagement. 

The first, knowing successes and value delivered may seem easy, but there is more to it than many sales people are willing to do.  Most will rely on leveraging the “value propositions” prepared marketing departments.  Good start, but often too high level, you need to spend time and understand what the specific outcomes for your clients have been and talk to those.  The more quantifiable you can make it the better.  Now here is the twist, once you know, you have to develop a questioning routine that will raise the issue you want to target, and in he conversation that ensues you will be in a position to “demonstrate” (this is why specifics and quantifiable, data based examples are needed) the value, and get the customer to engage.

The second helps you set up questions that will help the results captured above resonate with potential buyers.  People often talk about solutions, but by definition, solutions address a objective, or in common sales speak, a “need”, a “pain”, etc.  Unless you talk to issues that are core to the buyer, they will not give you the opportunity to engage, because they will not want to have a conversation about things that are not core to them then and there, they have too many other things to do.  Either you talk about things on top of their hit parade, or you won’t be talking for long, which is not engaging.

When you are able to combine and maser these two, you will find two things.  One is that you will feel much more confident in your approach and resulting conversation.  Second you will be in a much better position to truly listen to the buyer, which makes for better conversation and by extension engagement.  When you have these under control your interview technique will evolve to where instead of thinking about what you are going to say next, you will be listening to the other person, and thinking what you can ask next based on what they said and your experience.  As a result each question builds engagement.  Feel free to contact me if you would like specific examples of this technique.

The process is straight forward, but don’t take that to mean easy.  It requires that you understand where you have delivered specific value to your customers, why they buy from you, what makes you different, and why despite of price or other factors you continue to win deals.  I guess what I am saying is you will have to do some work, talk to existing clients, understand trends, and be aware of business or role based issues.  But once you do the work, and get into the habit of understanding what makes you successful, it will pay dividends.

One last thought, if you are a new sales person, or new to a product line, you can still use this, you just have to use some of your colleagues and some of their clients to learn the data.  In some cases you can use testimonials or case studies, but just make sure they have some meat, as opposed to high level flowery statements.  Talk to the successful sales people to understand what the issues facing buyers are, talk to existing clients, even if you just adopted them, hey, they will se it as customer care, someone taking an interest in their world and trying to sell something right then and there, wow.  The goal is to learn, prepare, review, and do it again, often.

Popularity: 1% [?]

2010 has certainly started off as a better year than 2009, but the scars and the holes left by 2009 will not be erased or made forgotten by a few good months.  It is always easy to make the recovery look better by comparing things to the through, but if you compare 2010 to 2008, [...]

Sales, like life, is an intricate blend of the straight forward and obvious, with the complex and mysterious, this is why both sales and life are just perfect for metaphors, and perfect metaphors for one another. Love is like a rose, life’s a bitch, (and all that stuff); selling is like sports, selling is art [...]

Your personal development can and will do more to improve your success in sales than any other single factor. Personal development focuses on the one factor that is common to every sale in which you will ever be involved: you. Developing the foundational attributes of success in any endeavor and the foundational attributes of sales are the key to developing both your confidence and your competence in sales.

One of the things that attracted me to sales was the ability to “write my own ticket”; the ability to commit and put in the effort needed to have as much success as possible, financial or otherwise. Part of the package is responsibility and accountability that comes with unlimited returns, and that includes continuous development. [...]

A couple of weeks ago I finally sold a program to someone I had been prospecting for some time, close to 20 months. In the end it was a good sale, hard to say if it was a typical sale, but certainly one that represents a portion of the way some sales go, and eventually turn out.
 
One of the familiar characteristics of this sale was the fact that I heard “no” as many time as I heard “yes”.  Of course the thing that made it gratifying was not so much getting the “yes” at the end, but the level of value the “no’s” brought to the sale along the way.

This is not one of those feel good post that will tell you to embrace the “no”, or that every “no” gets you one step closer to a yes.  What I want to highlight is that it is how you use those “no” to build value or move the sale along.

Hearing no should not come as surprise to anyone in sales.  Sales by nature is not a linier process, it is a series of starts and stops that needs to be managed by able professionals, you.  I guess of you are selling pizza slices at the mall food court that may not be the case, but in B2B sales it is a fact, anyone that say other wise is likely an order taker rather than a sales professional.  Which in and of itself is not bad, because if it was easy or simple, they wouldn’t need us.

So there two things to take advantage of here, first the simple one, is how to deal with the “no’s”.  The second, perhaps less obvious, is how to specifically engineer “no’s”.  This is a concept that many sales people often can’t or won’t fathom, but executed well, it could lead to a lot of opportunity to not only learn a lot while solidifying the sale, but also develop and reinforce trust with he buyer. 

We all know that selling is not pitching, if you have any doubts, read Jim Keenan’s Telling is Not Selling; and as you can glean from other posts by my fellow Sales Bloggers Union members, it is more about a conversation that leads to a mutually satisfying conclusion.  Unfortunately buyers have been so conditioned by bad sales experiences that they often are reluctant to open up right away, before they have developed a level of trust, or more accurately, we have earned trust.  One way to do that in sales is to listen, and of course to listen you have to ask questions.

Now some questions will get you answers right away, and those answers will help you because they provide information and guidance.  But at times, prospects may be reluctant to answer certain questions, feel they may reveal too much information too early, perhaps feeling they would be at a disadvantage, or other reasons for holding back.  So if you can ask a question that you know will solicit a “no”, one where you hypothesis about something specific, you will not only get your “no”, but often the buyer will go on to tell you, why not, and what they are in fact doing, thinking or planning.  Often this will go over and above what they may disclose in response to a direct question.

Further, keep in mind that when you hear “no”, it is almost always an invitation to ask why not?  What would have to be in place or what would have allowed them to say “yes”.  So if you are comfortable with the fact that sales is a jagged line experience as opposed to a straight line, getting to “no”, can at times deliver more value that strictly hearing a bunch of “yeses” along the way, and still getting a “no” at the end.

Popularity: 1% [?]

For the uninitiated, sales would likely be thought of as a great example of collaboration, not only individuals collaborating, but whole teams or departments working together for a united cause: revenue through client satisfaction.  Sales people seen as quarterbacks of resource and specialists, working together to craft and deliver solutions made up of the best of everyone’s contributions.  As you look at sales teams that have been consistently successful in both revenue attainment and client satisfaction, you do find that of the common characteristics is that they are indeed collaborative.  

As you look closer at these organizations, you find that the thing that enables them to collaborate so well goes way beyond technology, and is usually rooted in the culture of the organization.  Their collaboration is driven by their view of their customers, their obligation to the customer, and the realization that maintain a leadership role through a commitment to excellence and improvement.

While technology empowers companies and individuals, it can not drive the process.  Looked at another way, technology does not create pull-through in team dynamics and execution.  Going back to things like Louts Notes, to the first wave of portals, intranets, all the power of technology in ones palm, it always took more.  These things changed the way we did things but did not always change the productivity, efficiency and most importantly, the client experience.

Collaboration happens when individuals with in an organization realize two key things and then commit unconditionally to them.  First is the understanding that the customer pays for everything, and even after you have sucked every last questionable expense out of the system, you still need revenue at the top to realize returns on the bottom; and the only source for revenue is the customer, so you better do everything satisfy the customer so they will give you revenue.  The second is the acceptance that everyone in the client chain is capable and committed to the same cause as you, so if you focus on what you need to do, like everyone else who is involved before and after you in the chain, the customer will get the best possible outcome, and give you revenue.  Combined these two elements create the right conditions for collaboration. Again, the conditions, you still need to execute, but if these elements are not driving the process, the resulting action will fall short of collaboration. 

To further complicate things, this also has to happen on a team level as well.  Sales have to play nicely with all the other groups in the client chain.  While an internally competitive environment is good, it also has to be kept at a level where it contributes to efficiency, not overshadow it for ego reasons.  When the competitiveness drives client satisfaction, great, otherwise it impedes collaboration and is likely impacting the big goals.

 The above may seem straight forward, but that does not make them simple.  The hardest part is managing ones ego.  It is hard when you have the ego and drive that many sales people do, to work in an environment where the work of the whole group determines success.  So have difficulty letting go, all to often we here sales people say they need to be involved in implementation, delivery, etc.  While they mean well, and probably think they are “collaborating”, they are not.  They are perceived to be, and likely are, interfering in some way; condescending, as they are saying directly or just by their actions, that they need to supervise, and there by do not trust the others to do their work, this clearly decreases efficiency.  In most instances, the sales person is there to ensure client satisfaction, but the result is different.

Not to take it to a Zen level, but efficiency in collaboration is to make sure that you maximize and produce the best results in you link of the client chain; having been handed the absolutes best from the previous link, you want to build on that with your work and hand on the absolute best to the next link.  The complete trust in the other team members, organizationally the other groups, is what allows collaboration.  Technology facilitates execution, attitude, vision and market view create and enable collaboration.

Popularity: 30% [?]

A lot of sales people and organizations talk about a sales process, but many really don’t get it, and as a result end up doing more harm than good through the motion of implementing one.

A good sales process is a series of logical steps, executed in sequential order that help the buyer and seller go from point A – current state to point B – desired state.  Each step of the process needs to have specific attributes, specific actions tied to specific objective, with clear measures and rules for advancement to the next stage.  I guess you can say it is a discipline, and I guess you can say that discipline is the key reason why implementation is difficult.

Study after survey shows that the number one concern for sales and corporate leaders is the lack of a clearly defined sales process, or adherence to it by their sales teams.  My experience has taught me that the lack of adherence is to some degree a lack of understanding of the function and benefit of having and executing a sales process, but more frequently the lack of discipline needed and involved in consistently executing it and well.  Putting in terms many in sales can relate to, it is one thing to be able to swing a golf club, it is entirely different to do it well consistently, from how you address the ball to the follow through.

There are a number of reasons for this, I’ll touch on a couple.  One thing is that it takes time not only to develop the right process for your type of sale or product, but to then translate it in a way that can be transferred clearly to others.  Again, the key phrase “clearly defined sales process”, which is different than something that loosely fits the definition or just looks like a sales process.  I was once interviewing a VP of Sales at a prominent information provider, and I asked him if they had a clearly defined process that their teams can follow and execute?  He responded “Sure, we use Salesforce.com!”  Don’t get me wrong, I think Salesforce.com is a great tools, but it is not a process, it took me several meetings to get this VP to see the difference and the complementary nature of the two, I showed him several different sales processes our clients have integrated into SF.com, but the tool is not the process.  In fact one the common set back for sales organizations is when they roll out an application, CRM, in the hope of dealing with the problems a lack of process had brought on, only to discover that their issues due to a lack of process have now been automated but not eliminated.

Without a process things like forecasting, resource allocation and other critical things are always out of alignment.  A sales process allows an objective approach to a an area usually over run and mired down in subjectivity.  The A types always forecast from the gut and ego, and everything “gonna close boss, I got it under control” to the conservative rep who looks at the same scenario and forecasts it at 10% till the contract is signed.  Having clearly defined steps, attributes, actions and rule for moving from one stage to the next, with predetermined probabilities, removes this tribal dance and allows you to focus on the one important thing, what do you have to do to move or close this thing and when will that happen; no stories no lies.

Once you can do that you can evolve to where probabilities can be eliminated, and forecasts are based on the state of things as they are not a finger in the air.  I have worked with one organization in the States, that had such a tight t discipline that they had no weightings in their forecasts, everything was based on actions completed and time frames.  Sort of like Zen and the Art of Forecasting.

The lack of discipline comes from two factors.  First is a lack of accountability, not just from the front line, but management.  After all, good sales people are like the “last cowboys” the “real entrepreneurs”, managing them is like “herding cats”.  Some managers are reluctant to enforce a process for fear of offending their stars or pressuring some of their weaker reps, “who are nice guys, you know”.  Bullshit.  Would Phil Jackson tolerate that from Bryant or anyone else that wasn’t following the plan?  The opposite is true, when you have a clearly defined non-negotiable sales process, all the reps do better, and if a super star doesn’t want to line up trade him, because all it takes is one to buck the process and the other will follow.

The second reason is that most organizations tend to promote from within, “hey Johnny, you’re a great salesmen, let’s ruin your life and make you a manager” (See Sales Management: Reward or Punishment?).  With that they ensure another generation of people who have not been trained to adhere to or manage a process.  I would argue that successful managers manage the process not individuals, no process, and the whole thing falls apart.

To the defence of the sales organizations out there, they often do not get much help or support from other parts of their company.  They are allow if not encouraged to just go out there and drive revenue.  Other departments in the same company would not be allowed to function without a process, there would certainly be some intervention, or a large engagement by a consulting firm to ensure everything was document, and just right.  Not so for sales, big consultancies, comment, but they rarely deal with or help in the development or implementation of a process, but they do for procurement or logistics or other groups in the company.

That’s my rant, according to my process, I must wrap up now, but in closing I will say that most sales people and managers are intelligent and want to succeed, and once they are shown a proper process, and its positive impact on their income vis-à-vis the effort involved, they do make an effort to get on board.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Having worked for several companies in my day, I have three times made the ascent from “independent contributor” to Management.  Twice in a sales role, and one of those did not count as I had no direct reports, the team I managed was product not sales, I had the revenue responsibility.  So when I got promoted to management the third time I thought wow, recognition, validation, new cards, no map, no direction. 
 
Sure they sent me off for three days of intensive management training, everything from conflict resolution to harassment workshops, (like I need help in harassing), there was even a half day on cultural diversity and racial sensitivity, it was effective too, I was the only Jew in a room of White Anglo Saxon Managers, nothing darker than a pale beige Coach bag in the room.  At the end I got my laminated certificate, inspiration from a director standing in for the VP, a hand shake and bam! I was ready to manage.  Right!
 
Like most people in sales my promotion was not based on my management skills (much improved since), it was as a result of having successive years of beating goal.  It was an attaboy Tibor, we like, we don’t want you to leave so we gonna make you a manager, not prepare you and ruin your life, all in one memo.  Congratulations.

At the time I was thrilled, but in hind sight, it is easy to point to a few things that would have made a difference at the time.  I was given no parameters or direction, I knew what my geographic territory was, I was given a financial target but that’s it, not even a budget with which to achieve things. So thinking that management was this great freedom to execute, I went at it.  Working with many companies now I see I was not alone.

I quickly devolved to a bird dogging reality, you know, my reps sniffed out targets, and I was brought in to close the deal.  Even when I tried to get the reps to take on new skills, take control of the sales, the pressure to deliver numbers from headquarters was greater than the pressure to develop team members.  At times I was told directly to not worry about the development, just focus on making the numbers.  Same message I see a lot of managers get from their leaders, especially today, where the here and now, surviving the down turn, is the only focus, even at the cost of sacrificing future growth.

I remember talking to my VP of sales, like it was yesterday; I asked him “why did you do this to me?  I am working harder than ever, less focused, closing more deals, making less money and ready to go back to my territory, which by the way is falling behind since I am no longer there, and you have not back filled the position.”  His response: “I want to sprinkle a little of you in every rep that works for you.”  Not sure my wife would be down with that, but I understood what he meant.  He was hoping that my success, and the skills that I had to help me pass them along to my team.  Which may be a plan, but they never bothered teaching me how, or asking if I was conscious of the elements of my success.  I guess they were hoping osmosis would kick in pass my skills to my team, and pass my VP’s infinite wisdom to me.  It didn’t work.

It did get me to step back and think about what I knew and what I didn’t.  It got me to step back and “deconstruct my sale”, and think about how to communicate it to my team, and implement a process for them to adopt and adapt. 

How I did that is now the core of our coaching program, but it comes down to balancing two key elements that need to be equally applied.  First you need to understand that you role to both Manage and Coach.  Managing means setting clear expectations, some major, others less so, but they have to be clear un ambiguous expectations around activities and deliverables, these are not open for negotiations, but they do have to be explained, communicated and reinforced, that does not mean reworked or compromised.  Once those are communicated, agreed and accepted, you need to put on your coaching hat, and turn your focus on helping each team member succeed in developing the skills and habits need to deliver the accepted deliverables.  As a coach you will develop an ongoing plan that will incrementally improve the skills the team member needs to achieve success.

Done right, over time, you will develop a team that thrives on improvement and success, and sees you as an enabler of that.  You on the other hand will do your job but actually enjoy doing it, not theirs.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Qualify is one of those buzz words in sales, you “know” it, you “use” it; you can smell like a sales person and play with the other dogs in the yard, and you get a seat on the bus. What the list above excludes is doing it well which many sales people don’t.

As with many things in sales, it is about the execution; to execute you need to have an objective, the skills and the tools.

Most sales people have an objective, some more short sighted than others: “I wanna close”, (down Fido), but usually they have an objective even if they didn’t have a hand in developing it.   The skills and tools is where the usually can use improvement.

The main problem with the way most reps “qualify” is that they seem to be looking at the wrong end of the telescope. As a result, qualifying ends up being too seller centric and ineffective. It turns into a selection process that eliminates viable prospects, rather than engaging them and bring them to view your offering and you as a value add to their objectives. 

In order to qualify an opportunity it has to be quantified, and to do that you have to be able to ask the right questions. Questions that help drive the value and impact you offering for the prospect in very specific terms.  

Most products (including mine and yours) are not an end to themselves, they do not on their own provide a complete answer, the ones that do are usually commodities and transactional.  Most products/services are usually a part of a broader process, flow or chain; as result it is much more effective to ask discovery questions and impact questions around the desired results of the complete project or process; then quantify the impact of having or not having your offering as part of the entire solution, and in the process validate the value your product brings.

Qualifying stops short of that, a byer may qualify, but not be moved to act, this at times causes reps to spend time with the wrong prospects.  Don’t get me wrong, those of you who have read my stuff in the past, know that I am all about the deal (yes mutual value, keeping the customers need front and centre), but I like the payoff, which means doing things right and efficiently. Sadly the way most reps qualify is not efficient.

To do this and achieve the results you want you have to have the ability to ask very direct, sometimes hard questions. A hard thing if you come from the touchy feely, Cumbaia or Barney school of selling.

You need to ask question that will establish the impact in real and measurable terms, then follow up with questions that capture the full scope of the impact. This will help the buyer understand the impact of both acting: realized returns, and not acting: tangible risk of staying the course.  Once the buyers understand things in a measurable way, it will create urgency, which reduces the cycle.  The discussion will not come down to price only, as through quantifying you will have helped grasp and take ownership of the value.  Let’s not forget, at one point you are going to ask for money, and I for one don’t want to work hard on price, I want to work hard on having established the scope and size of the the opportunity and the impact of the value they are about to receive by signing.

Qualifying is the how and why they may need to listen to you, quantifying is what’s going to make them want to act, buy, and with urgency, involve the right people and share their buying process with you to make it happen, because they want it, they know why they want it and how much it means to them.  This is because you quantified it with them, rather than just qualifying them.  A quantified prospect will be qualified, but many qualified prospects will not act because the possibilities have not been quantified.  That is why Quantifying is Qualifying 2.0 for the 21st century.

For more on the subject visit www.salesopedia.com, where you can read my article “Quantify – don’t Qualify”, and listen to the accompanying podcast interview with me on the subject with specific examples.

Popularity: 13% [?]