Rick Page's Blog, page 2

The ABC's of Selling - P (Personal Agendas)

If you have read my book or been to our class you know that I have more P words than any other letter. I chose Personal Agendas because these are powerful but invisible requirements that impact deals and you may never know it.

Personal Agendas are outcomes that a stakeholder wants out of a project or initiative that benefits them. It may be good for the organization; it may not. These hidden needs won't come out in a discovery session with anyone else around. They are personal and political. You have to build a strong enough relationship in order for a prospect to share them with you. You may have to ask about them when you have the prospect alone at lunch or outside the office.

Every stakeholder has personal agendas and they don't appear in an RFP. It may be a promotion, obviously. It could be for recognition that they brought in a hit solution. It may be job security by getting experience with your product on their resume. It may be for more leisure time. It may be an issue outside work. It may also be illegal in the case of a kickback.

"What does this deal mean to you, personally? What would success look like to you in this project? What's next for you?" are some of the questions you might ask. If you are too familiar too fast (which differs in parts of the world) you could be considered too nosy. But if you ignore these personal agendas, you do so at your own peril.

Over? Over?

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?  Oops, wrong movie! No actually the word today is Optimism and Over-Optimism. As salespeople we have all been raised to being optimistic about life. Otherwise you woudn't get up and do this job every day. And most have heard every motivational speaker talk about optimism. My father-in-law would come to breakfast every day and yell "I feel great!" and make us yell it too. The curious thing is that after you yelled it, you did feel great!

Positive mental attitude is important for salespeople and entrepreneurs. But in a complex sale with multiple decision makers, politics and competition can cause some disappointing surprises. In research of over 1800 companies by CSO Insights this year, they report that only 46.3% of forecasted deals actually close.  Forecasted deals! Roughly a quarter of the lost pipeline is to competitors and the rest to no action with anybody.

This is one of the lowest performing areas of business. If airlines allowed this failure rate there would only be one plane flying at the end of 30 days - and they would probably lose your luggage.

What is needed is a healthy dose of critical thinking in strategy reviews with the front-line sales manager who can find blind spots, challenge assumptions, help read the politics and competition, and help refine an action strategy to win.

If you have a losing plan, from whom do you want the bad news? Your competitor or the customer? CSO Insights also says that organizations that do this well see an average of 11% more wins and less turnover from failing salespeople. Yes it takes time, but nothing wastes more time than pursuing a deal and finishing second!

But many sales managers either don't think it's their job or don't know how to coach a deal. We polled successful sales managers we know to ask them what questions they ask to coach a competitive, political solution sale. There were over 50!

That's too complicated some reps will say. That's what it takes to win, I say. Of course you wouldn't ask all 50. There are 12 questions that you should ask in reviewing every deal. If you aren't confident of the plan in that area, then you drill down. It could take only 5 minutes or it could take all day. More experienced eyes can increase your odds of finishing first.

The ABC's of Selling - O (Over? Over?)

O - Over? Over?

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?  Oops, wrong movie! No actually the word today is Optimism and Over-Optimism. As salespeople we have all been raised to being optimistic about life. Otherwise you woudn't get up and do this job every day. And most have heard every motivational speaker talk about optimism. My father-in-law would come to breakfast every day and yell "I feel great!" and make us yell it too. The curious thing is that after you yelled it, you did feel great!

Positive mental attitude is important for salespeople and entrepreneurs. But in a complex sale with multiple decision makers, politics and competition can cause some disappointing surprises. In research of over 1800 companies by CSO Insights this year, they report that only 46.3% of forecasted deals actually close.  Forecasted deals! Roughly a quarter of the lost pipeline is to competitors and the rest to no action with anybody.

This is one of the lowest performing areas of business. If airlines allowed this failure rate there would only be one plane flying at the end of 30 days - and they would probably lose your luggage.

What is needed is a healthy dose of critical thinking in strategy reviews with the front-line sales manager who can find blind spots, challenge assumptions, help read the politics and competition, and help refine an action strategy to win.

If you have a losing plan, from whom do you want the bad news? Your competitor or the customer? CSO Insights also says that organizations that do this well see an average of 11% more wins and less turnover from failing salespeople. Yes it takes time, but nothing wastes more time than pursuing a deal and finishing second!

But many sales managers either don't think it's their job or don't know how to coach a deal. We polled successful sales managers we know to ask them what questions they ask to coach a competitive, political solution sale. There were over 50!

That's too complicated some reps will say. That's what it takes to win, I say. Of course you wouldn't ask all 50. There are 12 questions that you should ask in reviewing every deal. If you aren't confident of the plan in that area, then you drill down. It could take only 5 minutes or it could take all day. More experienced eyes can increase your odds of finishing first.

Needs

Selling didn't change much from the industrial revolution to the 1970's. Then consultative, or need-based selling was introduced by Neil Rackham who conducted the first scientific research on sales effectiveness funded by Xerox and IBM.

They found out that the best salespeople listen first and actually hold back the product or solution until they have thoroughly heard the buyer's needs. It doesn't matter that you call on this industry every day and know most of their issues; they have to confess, and thereby start building a relationship. These findings changed the listen-to-talk ratio for good salespeople.

Out of that finding many sales training companies began selling "discover-link-present" training for building personl preference with a single buyer. This should be a foundational skill set and habit with any salesperson today. The dash-to-the-demo approach is a common fault we still see in many salesforces even though this type of training has been around for over 30 years.

We need to talk about their stuff more and our stuff less. When selling to executives focus on outcomes and results of your solution, not how it works. The technical buyers will want to know that.

A few gaps have emerged in this type of sellin. First of all, it works best in demand reaction selling where the buyer has asked you in. If you are prospecting and doing demand creation selling, you don't have an hour to play twenty questions, you have about two minutes to show value and provoke interest in order to get another five in order to get 20 more or a demo later.

Also in a complex sale, where committees buy, the client team doesn't always agree with each other on priority of needs. So when they can't get them all from one vendor, a political power struggle often breaks out. Issues change priority as you go through the sales cycle. Once you have been selected it happens again in the approval process with all new stakeholders each with different new needs.

Discover-link-present is a foundational skill set, but it is not enough in a committee buy or complex sale. You also need a political strategy to sell to the right people and a competitive strategy to defeat the competition.

The ABC's of Selling - N (Needs)

N - Needs

Selling didn't change much from the industrial revolution to the 1970's. Then consultative, or need-based selling was introduced by Neil Rackham who conducted the first scientific research on sales effectiveness funded by Xerox and IBM.

They found out that the best salespeople listen first and actually hold back the product or solution until they have thoroughly heard the buyer's needs. It doesn't matter that you call on this industry every day and know most of their issues; they have to confess, and thereby start building a relationship. These findings changed the listen-to-talk ratio for good salespeople.

Out of that finding many sales training companies began selling "discover-link-present" training for building personl preference with a single buyer. This should be a foundational skill set and habit with any salesperson today. The dash-to-the-demo approach is a common fault we still see in many salesforces even though this type of training has been around for over 30 years.

We need to talk about their stuff more and our stuff less. When selling to executives focus on outcomes and results of your solution, not how it works. The technical buyers will want to know that.

A few gaps have emerged in this type of sellin. First of all, it works best in demand reaction selling where the buyer has asked you in. If you are prospecting and doing demand creation selling, you don't have an hour to play twenty questions, you have about two minutes to show value and provoke interest in order to get another five in order to get 20 more or a demo later.

Also in a complex sale, where committees buy, the client team doesn't always agree with each other on priority of needs. So when they can't get them all from one vendor, a political power struggle often breaks out. Issues change priority as you go through the sales cycle. Once you have been selected it happens again in the approval process with all new stakeholders each with different new needs.

Discover-link-present is a foundational skill set, but it is not enough in a committee buy or complex sale. You also need a political strategy to sell to the right people and a competitive strategy to defeat the competition.

Management

Management, sales management that is. It is one of the hardest and most underperforming jobs in business.  In its annual survey of sales benchmarks, CSO Insights found in 2010 that of forecasted deals only 46.3% actually close. Deals that stall and don't buy anything from anyone are 23.6% and deals lost to competition are now 30.3%.  This is an incrediby high rate of failure unequalled in ay other area of business. This explains why the average life span of sales managers is not 19 months and falling.

Here are the reasons that I see:

Promoting the best performer and giving no training in sales management.
Personality-based sales managers who think they can hire the "natural" sales talent, aim them, cheerlead, and then flog the forecast.
Thinking that one training course is enough to train a sales force when there are 65 competencies in leading a team through a complex sales cycle.
Weak hiring - there aren't enough "naturals" out there - you have to grow some.
Sales goals that are set by financial types and Wall Street analysts based on stock price and growth rates that have no bottom-up input from the sales managers.
Forecasting without a strategic review of political and competitive strategy only adds up bad numbers faster. You can win without a strategy - it's called luck.

The other problem is that there is very little management training focused on sales management and few performance reviews based on their sales process.  Universities don't teach sales management or even sales. Management courses at universities are aimed at the strategic level when what is needed for new managers is blocking and tackling in hiring, deal coaching and performance management to get the most out of each salesperson.

(Shameless Plug Alert) This has become an opportunity for me and The Complex Sale. Our Sales Management Academy is focused on tactical, practical sales management - check it out on our website at TCS Sales Management Academy.

The ABC's of Selling - M (Management)

M - Management

Management, sales management that is. It is one of the hardest and most underperforming jobs in business.  In its annual survey of sales benchmarks, CSO Insights found in 2010 that of forecasted deals only 46.3% actually close. Deals that stall and don't buy anything from anyone are 23.6% and deals lost to competition are now 30.3%.  This is an incrediby high rate of failure unequalled in ay other area of business. This explains why the average life span of sales managers is not 19 months and falling.

Here are the reasons that I see:

Promoting the best performer and giving no training in sales management.
Personality-based sales managers who think they can hire the "natural" sales talent, aim them, cheerlead, and then flog the forecast.
Thinking that one training course is enough to train a sales force when there are 65 competencies in leading a team through a complex sales cycle.
Weak hiring - there aren't enough "naturals" out there - you have to grow some.
Sales goals that are set by financial types and Wall Street analysts based on stock price and growth rates that have no bottom-up input from the sales managers.
Forecasting without a strategic review of political and competitive strategy only adds up bad numbers faster. You can win without a strategy - it's called luck.

The other problem is that there is very little management training focused on sales management and few performance reviews based on their sales process.  Universities don't teach sales management or even sales. Management courses at universities are aimed at the strategic level when what is needed for new managers is blocking and tackling in hiring, deal coaching and performance management to get the most out of each salesperson.

(Shameless Plug Alert) This has become an opportunity for me and The Complex Sale. Our Sales Management Academy is focused on tactical, practical sales management - check it out on our website at TCS Sales Management Academy.

Tribute - Joe Terry

One of the best salespeople on the planet has gone.  Joe Terry, a Senior Principal with The Complex Sale for almost 15 yeas and a VP at MSA Software prior, passed away in November 2010.

We worked together for over 25 years.  What made this man a great salesman is that he was first a great person. The two things are inseparable. Trust is built on character and assurance that a salesperson will never do something for themselves that is not in the customers best interest. Joe always said that if he wouldn't take an offer himself, he wouldn't offer it to a prospect.

Joe had courage, character, political savvy, competitive instincts, successful experience in a very competitive market, and could build lasting relationships of trust. His knowledge of sales effectiveness and process resulted in many innovations at TCS and MSA and many happy customers. Some of his customers bought from him at five or six different companies.

His presence and confidence filled a room when he was there. He was our top salesperson for 5 years and sold a $37 million dollar software system to the State of Texas when quota was about 5% of that amount.

And Joe was fun to be around. Always positive but realistic. He would always say, "Well, we are where we are" which always meant to not worry about the past but get focused about what we were going to do next.

If you were fortunate to have had him as an instructor or manager, then you learned from one of the best ever.

 

The ABC's of Selling - L

L - Learning

We learned years ago that adults learn differently than children. And salespeople learn differently than adults - other adults, that is. Many salespeople have high energy and short attention spans. Many, like me, have ADHD. Many great salespeople I know were not very good students because our education systems are designed for left-brain learning in a structured, linear fashion. And our schools don't teach interpersonal skills vital for building business relationships.

At TCS, we have found that if we use actual live accounts in class to teach from, then the workshop is very relevant to our students' world, and they engage more intensely. And since we teach competitive and political strategy, the time spent isn't instead of their job, it is their job. We have turned millions of dollars in evaluation strategies around in class.

We have also found that any instruction needs to be no more than 15 to 20 minutes before you get back into an exercise. That is why we have had success with virtual, instructor-led workshops rather tha two hour self-directed elearning. The salespeople we know won't sit still that long.

The ABC's of Selling - K

K - Knowledge

There are four kinds of knowledge you need to be a successful salesperson today.  Obviously you need to know your product and company. But you also need indepth knowledge of:

your client
the industry
your competitors

The reason that knowledge about the client is important is so that you can be a consultative salesperson and can connect your benefits with their problem or opportunities - by individual. Otherwise, the linkage or connection of your solution to their needs will be done by the client who often gets it wrong or misses the benefits of your solutions. Or worse, the competitor links into a pain you weren't aware of to close the deal.

Industry knowledge is key to establishing credibility and bringing value to a selling relationship. And if you can bring benchmarks, best practices, ideas and innovations, you can earn advisor status.

Knowledge of competitors, their solutions, and their strategies will allow you to differentiate yourself in a professional manner and get them reacting to your questions (through the client), rather than being on the defensive. It will also allow you to anticipate, predict and neutralize a competitor's strategies.

The great salespeople that I know purposefully build a knowledge of their competitors' solutions that equals their own. How and when to use it professionally is a fine art depending on the quality of your relationship, the industry and country that you are in, and where you are in the sales cycle.