Selling | A Sales Guy

There is Fear in Them Buyers

Buyers are afraid today. They are afraid of spending too much money. They are afraid of making the wrong decision. They are afraid of making a mistake. They are afraid of screwing up. Fear is a prevalent emotion in todays selling environment.

Buyers are afraid because things are uncertain. There is less room for mistakes. The economy is tight. There are fewer resources to go around. People are expected to do more with less. With fewer resources, the costs of mistakes are much higher and no one wants to be “that guy.” The one who screwed up.

Selling in an environment of fear takes a lot more effort than selling in an environment of optimism. Buyers don’t take risks, they want guarantees, prices have to be rock bottom, they don’t want to hear about the conceptual, they want to feel it and touch it and it better have a meauserable, quantifiable return. There is no such thing as a pet project in fear based selling environments.

To make progress in a fear based environment requires, knowledge, trust, relationships, information and gumption.

When buyers are afraid, the more you know about their environment, their goals, their motivations, and their needs the better off you will be. When buyers are afraid, they need to trust those around them more than ever, being in the inner-circle is critical. It’s almost impossible to sell without the relationship. When buyers are afraid, information is critical; information about the market, the competition, government regulation, creative use cases and more. You can’t have too much information when buyers are afraid. But, more than anything, when buyers are afraid YOU can’t be afraid. When buyers are afraid, they are looking for a leader. They want someone to make them feel safe. They want someone with confidence, someone who can do what they can’t — look the challenges right in the eye and not shudder. Selling to buyers who are afraid takes a sales person who is fearless.

Buyers are afraid. They are afraid of losing and to the fearless sales person that’s a huge opportunity.

Don’t be afraid, your clients are afraid enough already.

September 2, 2010 | Filed under: The Chase | View Comments |

It’s Not Your Job to Say “No”

Despite your best assumptions, your best conclusions, your gut feelings, you don’t know what your customer wants until you ask.

You may believe the customer won’t accept a price increase, you may think the customer wont give up buying from the competitor, it may feel like there isn’t a chance in the world the customer will implement the beta version of the new software, but you’ll never know until you ask.

It’s not your job to say “no” for the customer.

Too often we assume we know the answers. We draw conclusions, we make assumptions, and then decide for the customer. We assume “no” will be the answer and we don’t ask the question. But, that’s not our job.

Our job IS to ask. Let the customer say no.

When we say “no” FOR the customer we are operating from fear. It’s our lack of confidence, our fear of rejection taking over. It’s our way of protecting ourselves.

The problem is nothing comes from protecting ourselves; opportunities are squandered, conversations are never had, new products are never launched, competitors are never beaten.

Sophisticated sales happens in the difficult discussions. Fear avoids the difficult conversations. Don’t let fear win.

It’s your job to ask the tough questions. It’s your customers job to give you the answer.

You ask the question and let the customer say “no” or . . . “yes.” It’s the natural order of things.

August 3, 2010 | Filed under: Sales Process,The Chase | View Comments |

It’s the Connections

In sales, knowledge is important, knowledge of the products, the customer, the industry and more.

The relationships are important too. The trust we build, the breadth and depth of those we know in the organization, and the partnerships we create help us sell.

Together they are powerful. Without them sales won’t happen. Most sales people get this. They work hard to have the knowledge and build the relationships.

The real action however, is in the connections. The connections between the information and the relationships. It’s the connections between the data and the requests. The connections are where the sale happens.

Everyone has access to the same data. Everyone as access to the same people. It’s the connections that represent a sales persons value. Each sales person draws their own conclusions, creating their own connections between the data and the relationship.

Get good at creating powerful connections, it’s what your customers are looking for.

July 30, 2010 | Filed under: The Chase | View Comments |

It’s the Connections

In sales, knowledge is important, knowledge of the products, the customer, the industry and more.

The relationships are important too. The trust we build, the breadth and depth of those we know in the organization, and the partnerships we create help us sell.

Together they are powerful. Without them sales won’t happen. Most sales people get this. They work hard to have the knowledge and build the relationships.

Get good at creating powerful connections, it’s what your customers are looking for.

July 30, 2010 | Filed under: The Chase | View Comments |

The “Ators” of Sales

There are two types of “ators” in sales; manipulators and facilitators.

Manipulators manipulate the information, the people, the process, and the environment to make things work for their benefit of themselves. They work the sale for their own benefit.

Facilitators facilitate the use of information, the people, the environment, and the process to make things work for the benefit of the customer. They work the sale for the customer.

Both can drive revenue, but only one is selling.

July 25, 2010 | Filed under: Customer Service,The Chase | View Comments |

A Few Good Salesmen – You Can’t Handle More Facings

This has to be one of the funniest sales spoofs I’ve ever seen. I was laughing out loud.

“You ever call on an account son?”

“Son, we live in a world with big accounts, they have to be called on by reps who know how to call on them.”

“You weep for more features, you whine for incremental displays, you have that luxury.”

This video is classic!

June 24, 2010 | Filed under: Random | View Comments |

What Am I Supposed To Do With This?

It’s funny how we can experience things on a regular basis, but it’s not until someone points it out that we see it clearly. This just happened to me.

I am reading Jill Konrath’s new book Snap Selling. You can see a copy of it in the sidebar. It’s a great book. I’ve read a lot of sales books in my days. What makes this good, is it is timely. Jill does a good job of assessing how today’s selling environment has changed.

Selling has changed and it’s important sales people recognize this.

In Jill’s book she talks about today’s frazzled customer and how the messages we send have to be on target or they will be deleted, (her opening letter from a customer is just brilliant, I wrote about it here.) I’ve been reading it from a sales person perspective looking for ways it could be relevant to my team. However, lately I’ve been in the “customer” position and her points are ever more clear to me.

I’ve been getting a lot of sales calls, and inquiries to meet, to review books, look at products, etc. Between this blog and my position at work the amount of requests for my time and help have grown 10 fold. Most of these requests come in the form of an email. Almost all of them were very difficult for me to figure out “WHY” I should take the time.

This email I got the other day triggered the point for me — I’m still not sure what to do with it, so I deleted it.

Dear Jim,

Trust all is well at your end

I take care of Technology and Communication Practice at XYZ Systems based in Atlanta

My responsibility is to help Communication Technology enablers and Service Providers like you take control of your Product Development, Support and Transformation cost.

Recently we co-developed a Service Assurance Application for a major OEM that currently has been implemented by a large number of Communications Service Providers (CSPs) across the Globe

Some of the Critical Success Factors of our solution include:

- Reduced Churn by 40%

- Increased First Call Resolution by 40%

- Reduced Total Cost of Ownership by 45%

- Enable consolidated view at device, network, service and customer layers

- Perform end-to-end intelligent root cause analysis

With over 19 years of expertise we have been able to help our customers successfully deal with their Application transformation, Quality Assurance, System Integration needs through our global delivery end-to-end IT Services model

Some of the Communication Service Providers and OEMs that have benefited from our expertise include Bell Canada, Telus, Allstream, Nortel, Alcatel-Lucent to name a few

I would like the opportunity to update you while sharing some of our results. The purpose of the call is to introduce Kumaran and also understand some of the current challenges in the IT Services space we might help you succeed.

Would it be possible to connect over a call to further present the expertise in greater detail – I will be able to work my schedule around yours

Look forward to hear from you

Great, I have no clue what to do with this. As a company we don’t measure churn. We do have a call center, but it’s not within my responsibility. Reduced TCO, great where? I’m responsible for sales strategy and operations, TCO isn’t a metric I manage. “Enable consolidated view at device level,” cool, but we make a product that does that. Finally, “application transformation” and “our global delivery end-to-end IT Services model.” Uh?

This email was so confusing that rather than deleting, I reread it, thinking maybe I was missing something. I wasn’t. I deleted it.

I’m getting more and more of these types of emails. I’m deleting most of them, not because I don’t want to help out, not willing to meet or don’t have some need that could be fulfilled, but because I can’t figure out “WHY?”

Jill does a great job in her book breaking down how to engage today’s frazzled customers. I’m not frazzled, but I wish the people who reach out to me would read her book. Then maybe I’d know what to do.

If you have recently sent me an email asking for my time, to review a book, to meet, or to sell something and you haven’t heard from me, I apologize. You’re email didn’t help me understand why I should.

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UPDATE: Honestly, if I didn’t get back to you try again. But, this time tell me what you want, why it matters, and when you want me to do it. Even if I can’t I’ll at least know why and write back letting you know. Oh, yeah if you had your admin or assistant ask for you, forget it. If you don’t have the time for me, I don’t have it for you.

June 10, 2010 | Filed under: Sales Process,The Chase | View Comments |

Account Governance — Reporting

This is part 7 of an 8 part series on Account Governance

A saying of a good friend of mine is “we’re at the blunt end of the stick” and when it comes to sales he’s right. Sales is on the tip of the spear when it comes to the company. They have the relationships with the customers. Sales has access to what is going on. Sales is responsible for making the revenue happen.

Knowing this, sales owes it to the organization and to themselves to communicate what is going on. To keep the company informed and abreast of what is happening sales needs to deliver robust, simple, reporting schemes to the organization.

When it comes to reporting, I don’t think there is one size fits all. However, there is certain information every company needs to track. The baseline sales data that needs to be collected, and believe it or not ISN’T in all companies, is funnel or pipeline data, closed business, and revenue.

Beyond the baseline data every sales person and company needs to have their own set of metrics and reporting.

To build a good reporting structure it’s important to know what you want to measure. Far too often sales organization measure the same things; revenue, profit or gross margin, and funnel. As I said earlier these are must haves. But, sales organizations need to go further. Good account governance adds it’s own set of KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) to the standard metrics.

Choosing what to measure will be specific to each account and each sales organization.

KPI’s I’ve found valuable in the past:

Wallet-Share
Forecast/Outlook
Key Programs
Competitive Wins
New Product Wins
Losses
Product % of revenue (what % of revenue comes from what products)
Key Deals
Dependencies (things the sales team depends on to make or close a deal that another functional group is responsible for)
Linearity (the consistency of sales, does sales come in evenly or in major swings?)
Forecast accuracy (does the team actually meet their stated forecast goals, what is the % of forecast accuracy?)
Net New Customers
Lost Customers
Upgrades
Customer Satisfaction
Demo’s

When it comes to reporting the thing to walk away with is; it’s extremely important to identify the critical components of your sales environment and business and report on them. Build a dashboard that allows a quick snapshot of where you are. This should be done at the management level as well as the account level. The most successful account managers I’ve seen create their own account dashboard and KPI’s. They act as a guide, a benchmark, allowing management and account managers to see where they are going and what needs to be addressed. It allows for proactive management.

In addition to a dashboard and KPI’s, there is an internal reporting cadence that is a must have. It’s the quarterly business review or account review. To me there is only one way to execute a QBR. Each member of the team has 3 hours each quarter to update the entire team on what they said they would do, what they did, what they didn’t do, what they learned and what they will do next quarter. This approach to quarterly business/account review drives tremendous accountability into the process. Traditionally, QBR’s waste everyones time while the presenters regurgitate the same old information of what they did, regardless of whether or not it’s what they said they were going to do, they avoid calling out failures, or missteps, they don’t address what they will do moving forward etc. Traditional QBR’s lack accountability. I make them as simple and straight forward as possible. We only address what it is we said we were going to do, what were our goals and objectives, did we make them or not. Why? Where does that leave us? Can we make up the losses? If so, how? What are we going to do different? How do we know that’s going to work? What are next quarters goals and objectives? etc. The QBR’s are solely focused around the goals, initiatives, and tactics committed to at the beginning of the quarter.

Reporting is two things, what is being reported, the information and how it’s being reported, the cadence. Successful sales teams and account teams pick the right things to measure and have an internal reporting cadence of accountability. It’s that simple.

June 3, 2010 | Filed under: Sales Process,The Chase | View Comments |

Account Governance — Strategy

This is part 6 of an 8 part series on Account Governance

What I like most about strategy and account management is, it’s like a window into how the goals are going to be accomplished. Earlier I talked about the account plan. In the account plan there is a goal section. The goals are the things to be accomplish with in the account. The strategies are the approach to making those goals a reality.

The best strategies take into consideration the unique elements of the account. This is where the analysis phase of the account plan becomes so important. By focusing on exactly what is going on in the account, where the account is going, who the key influencers are, what the market is doing, what is happening with the competition, etc. the strategy will be successful.

I’ve found, based on the account assessment, there is almost always more than one strategy. Most good account governance plans have multiple strategies for each of their goals. Another way to look at it is if you have 4 goals, you would probably have at least 8 strategies, 2 for each goal. In some cases you may have 3 strategies for each goal. This is the template I’ve used with my teams, again feel free to use it. This would be one strategy for one goal. You would use an additional one for a different strategy for the same goal.

Strategies are absolutely critical to success. To create good ones, a strong, robust, thorough assessment has to have been done. Strategies rely solely on information. Imagine trying to create a strategy to capture Osama Bin Ladin with out knowing what he looks like, where Pakistan and Afganistan are, who the leaders of those governments are, what the geography is, etc. Strategies are only as good as the information that made them. A good account strategy needs a good account assessment.

Account assessment is the greatest weakness in sales. Sales people aren’t known for assessing environments up front. They are excellent at reacting. Unfortunately, reacting is what creates pricing wars, and RFP responses. Reacting does little to allow sales to “manage” an account. This being said, the assessment section of the account plan is absolutely critical to creating good account strategies.

To be successful, strategies need execution. To execute on a strategy the initiatives and tactics that will be deployed need to be called out. For instance, if a goal is to increase revenue by 10%, a strategy may be to sell a new product to the account. To sell that product a set of initiatives must be determined. An initiative could be to demonstrate value of XYZ product to accelerate the customers stated strategy of increasing customer satisfaction. Notice this initiative gives life and purpose to the strategy of introducing a new product to increase revenue. Once all the initiatives have been identified, the details need to be ironed out. These details are the specific tactics required to ensure the initiatives happen. Using the example above, a tactic could be to work with product marketing to establish the specific impact XYZ product can have on the accounts customer satisfaction goals. It could be meet with account VP to determine how they measure customer satisfaction etc. The tactics are very specific steps that will be taken to drive the initiatives, that support the strategies, that get you to your goals.

Account strategies are more than a high-level approach that sits on a bookshelf somewhere. Good account strategies are born out of the account plan. They leverage the well researched account and organizational assessment. They have specific initiatives and tactics to ensure they are achieved.

Successful account governance wins or loses on the ability to execute against an account strategy. Keep them linked, be specific and attach them to the Approach section of the account plan and they will be achieved.

June 2, 2010 | Filed under: Sales Process,The Chase | View Comments |

Profit and Loss . . . OK Just Loss

In the spirit of the holiday weekend, I’m going to take a break from the Account Governance series and have a little fun telling a few stories.

———–

When I was younger, I was the kid in the neighborhood who always had the “idea” and most of the time it was about how we could make money.

Like most kids, the easiest, fastest, and most fun way for us to make a few bucks was a lemonade stand. Take a couple of Mom’s Kool Aid packages, two cups of sugar and we had an instant money maker. A kid cash machine.

Location was not on our side as we lived down a quiet street. So, after the usual Mom and Dad customers patronized us, new customers were hard to come by. Recognizing that we had a huge population of other kids, I changed our strategy. We were going to target them with candy. The strategy, buy their favorite candy at Jacks, the corner store a few blocks away and sell it at a discount. The idea was, by selling it cheaper than Jacks, they wouldn’t have to ride their bikes all the way to the corner store. They could just buy from us. Killer value proposition, uh?

It worked brilliantly! All the kids came by and bought up our entire inventory. I was so excited, I went back and bought more, sales were going through the roof. We couldn’t keep the “shelves” stocked.

Eventually we saturated the market and sales came to a close. Excited we sat down to dole out the profits and the oddest thing happen — we had less money than we started with. It was the strangest thing. Sales were through the roof . . . hmmm, some money must have fallen out of the money box some how or someone had given out the wrong change.

May 29, 2010 | Filed under: Random | View Comments |