“There are three kinds of salespeople – those who make things happen, those that watch things happen and those who are wondering what happened.”

It’s an oldie but a goodie.

In fact there are generally two types of salespeople I come across in my business.  The first are what I would characterize as “improvisers” – they seldom do any preparation and rely on intuition and instinct to carry them through.   They approach every sales interview as an adventure and while they still make sales they tend to be very inconsistent.

The second type are the “systemisers” – these are the professionals and they have a sales plan which includes activity targets and strategies to insure consistency and more importantly predictability in their results.

The systemisers are characterized by pre-sales planning and follow through during and after the sale.  This of course leads to repeat sales to existing clients and referrals to new prospects.   Typically they have lists of the most common objections/conditions they strike with prospects along with the answers.  They also have prepared questions that help the prospect to uncover potential needs if they exist and they have strategies to advance the sale.

So we have two types of salespeople who achieve different results.  Each one follows a pattern, one unstructured and one structured.

Where do you see yourself?

Most systemisers have developed their skills through training and practice – there is
no such thing as a “natural born salespeople”.     

Zig Ziglar – Author and Sales Trainer extraordinaire in his best selling book “Zig Ziglars Secrets” says he’s travelled the world and seen that women have given birth to boys and given birth to girls but had never seen that a woman had given birth to a salesman.  He goes on to state that he had seen salesmen die so draws the conclusion if they are not born but die, then obviously between birth and death – by choice and by training – they become what they decide to become, namely trained professional salesmen.

Key Message -   You can become whatever you decide to become as long as you are willing to put the time and effort into the training required and follow the disciplines learned.
Action Steps –

1. Make  list of all the problems that your solutions and products overcome for your prospects
2. Make a list of all the issues associated with each of these problems
3. Develop questions around each of these problems and issues that will help the buyer to focus their thinking
4. Once this list is developed put each of these questions in order of logical sequence

Quote:
Failure is nothing more than a few errors in judgment repeated every day
Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines practiced every day

My thought was he must have been a very good listener which brings me to the subject of today’s article.

Sales is about listening to understand the buyer needs.

The old stereotype of great salespeople was that they were great talkers and had the “gift of the gab”.  In today’s sales environment studies of behavioral characteristics of the top salespeople consistently show these people listen “more constructively” than their average counterparts.

Constructive – Construction = building.  Listening constructively means to listen for things upon which to build your questions and solutions on.

Great salespeople ask great questions and actually listen for the information the prospect is giving and then use this information to build the next question.

This is the key to formulating the best solution for the prospect as it helps us to get a grip of the prospects core issues, needs and motivation.

Most average salespeople haven’t planned their questions and instead of planning their next question are in fact impatiently waiting to talk about their solution.

A study published by RainToday.com found that 74% of 200 purchasers surveyed at companies across America said they would be “much more likely” to buy from a salesperson if they would just simply listen to the buyer.

Next time you are out at a function be it at Chamber event or a party and you meet someone new, take note of who does most of the talking and more importantly your reaction to this person.

I believe we are more attracted to people who are genuinely more interested in us – it comes back to our basic human nature.

I think it was Mark Twain who said “A bore is someone who opens his mouth and puts his “feats” in it”

A good rule to follow is “be more interested than interesting”

The only person who can tell you their real need is the buyer.

We will look further at what makes an exceptional salesperson in my next article.

Quote of the Week:

    “You can listen a buyer into a sale faster than you can talk them into one”

                                                                                                                                Unknown Author

My answer to this is there is no such thing as a natural born salesperson.  There are salespeople with the “gift of the gab” who make good sales but they tend to lack consistency in their results.

Contrary to popular belief, the best salespeople aren’t the best talkers, they are the best listeners.

The best salespeople, the consistent high performers, are those who have been trained in the best sales practices and then supported through management. 

A vast amount of “sales training” is focused on product or technical training rather than specific sales skills development.

This tends to produce product focused salespeople who use the classic show and tell sales presentation.    Typically the presentation goes something like this –

The salesperson looks around the prospects office and finds some item of interest and begins a discussion on this, much to the annoyance of the prospect who has had the same discussion with a hundred other salespeople and hasn’t got time to waste with the usual so called rapport building techniques.  They then ask a few self serving questions to uncover a potential need, then launch into a product/technical solution based presentation.

A study of over 500 buyers from the fortune 1000 companies showed that salespeople jump in with a
solution before the real problem has been uncovered.  This happens in 63% of sales interviews.

Sales like any other business activity is a process and needs to be systemized to ensure consistency in the results.

Exceptional salespeople have a planned approach to selling not canned and follow a process.

McDonalds doesn’t hire staff and then challenge them to figure out how best to do the job.  Instead they work on the basis there is a best way to take an order, greet a customer and put a burger together. 

In sales there is a best practice too.

Like assembling a cheeseburger, sales has a process.  Firstly to identify your prospects, next to get a referral to them, then establish trust, uncover their need, if they have one, present a solution, and ask for the business.

Selling is very simple but not easy!

Imagine sitting on a plane at HB Airport waiting to take off and the captain comes on and says – “this is my first flight in one of these really big planes – I’m going to try and figure out the best way to fly this thing”.

Many companies send their salespeople out into the field with great product training and very little if any sales training to “fly by the seat of their pants”.

It is a fact the greatest asset in our businesses is our staff.

It costs businesses just as much money in salary, travel and costs for a poor sales performer as it does for a great sales performer.  Therefore we need to lift the performance of all our salespeople to ensure consistency in sales results.  The way to achieve this is through using best sales practices and measurement for accountability.

A question I sometimes hear is “What happens if we train them and they leave?”    I ask “What happens if we don’t train them and they stay?”

Coming back to what makes great salespeople, Malcolm Gladwell wrote in his famous book “Outliers” – “success in any field comes from opportunity and practice”.

Many companies give their salespeople the opportunity to undertake sales training - what makes the difference between good salespeople and the great is the great salespeople continue to learn and practice the skills they have learnt.  They say “practice makes perfect” – this is only partly true – perfect practice makes perfect.   Therefore sales come down to using best practices.

The first of these is developing a goals programme around what your sales targets are, the obstacles of achieving these, the solutions to overcome these obstacles, a detailed plan of sales activities mapped out over the next 12 months.

We can’t control sales – we can control sales activities.

We will look at this in my next article.

Action Steps –
1. Review your sales targets
2. Break down into monthly and weekly targets
3. Review your Prospecting Plan
4. List 3 actions you could implement this week to move forward e.g. Ask your key clients for specific referrals

Quote –

“Until we learn the formula (process) for success we can’t repeat it”
                                       Brian Tracey

This occurs largely due to a lack of a clear step by step plan on how to go about prospecting.  Many salespeople make the excuse they are so busy servicing existing clients they don’t have time to prospect for new ones.

A recent study of over 500 companies in the UK would tend to support this argument.  They weighed the influence of 73 different factors in successful selling.

What would you expect the number one cause of low achievement in sales to be?

Low motivation?  
Personality Problems?  
Inferior products or service? 
Poor training?
Overpricing?   

Wrong.

This survey pinpointed the number one cause of low achievement in sales as poor time utilization due to lack of planning.

This considered it comes back to us as the salespeople to plan our time to maximize our face to face time with prospects and clients. 

A client I worked with recently in professional services was able to delegate 11 hours of low value work he had got into the habit of doing.  This effectively gave him another 7 appointment slots in his week which could be used for –

1. First appointments with new prospects
2. Follow up appointments
3. Existing client appointments
4. Centre of influence meetings

All key components of a prospecting plan.

Another constraint that can impact on prospecting is the sales manager or business owner overloading the salesperson with other duties.

What we need to think about is in the wide range of activities we do in our business – manufacturing, accounting, HR, risk management, sales, research and development, quality control etc.    Out of all of these only one – sales activities – brings in the money.

There is an old saying –

“Without the sale no-one gets paid”

Another one for us to think about is –

“Unless you are talking to a prospect or
a customer you are unemployed”

So back to our prospecting plan – our first step is to have a clear picture of the type of prospects you wish to target, for without this you will waste precious time hunting the wrong game.

In our training we develop a prospect profile which describes in generic terms what a good prospect for our business would look like.  This helps us to clarify which type of clients we wish to target and helps our centres of influence to better understand who they should be referring to us.

We will look at the next step in my next article.

Quote of the Day:

Clean out your prospect funnel.  Put your current prospects through a sieve.
The biggest mistake salespeople make is they call on the same useless prospects over and over.  If you have not been able to get anywhere with a specific group of prospects, move on and find new prospects.  Being persistent is good.  However, if you are spending too much time on fruitless leads you will just burn out. After a shepherd’s herd has eaten all the grass in a specific pasture he knows its time to move on to a new pasture.  If he does not move on his sheep will starve.  Move on if you are not getting anywhere with old prospects and come back at a later date.
Larry Duca

Her answer was that a week probably wasn’t the right duration – more like a month.

When I asked how many they were doing a month the answer was that they would be lucky to average one a month each.

The explanation for this she said was that they were busy sorting customer problems, building the relationship, doing pricing/proposals, delivery services or installations.

My thoughts were she didn’t have salespeople; she had very expensive mobile customer service reps disguised as salespeople.

This is a problem I see in many businesses I work with – the sales teams getting bogged down in the admin and low payoff areas of the business.

There are two reasons for this –

Firstly the company is under resourced which means the salespeople must be “jacks of all trades”.  While I understand not all businesses can afford to add adequate support staff to take on the extra duties that could be delegated by the sales team, the questions I asked the sales manager were –

1.  What was an average client spend over 12 months    Answer: $6000

2.  What was the average conversion ratio of your salespeople?   (Most businesses guess around 80%, in fact conversions for most companies run at around 35-45%, say we work on 50%)

3.  How many extra appointments with new prospects could your sales team do if we took away one activity, say quoting?    Answer:   5 new appointments per week
If they converted half of these that would be 2.5 extra sales per week or $15k if we translate these into dollars or $780k over 12 months

Quite a compelling argument for freeing up your sales teams time!
The second reason is a lack of confidence in the actual salespeople themselves usually due to a lack of sales skills/systems.  Interestingly enough I often see this lack of confidence in very experienced salespeople who have fallen into the role of “farmers” over the years.  

“Farmers” is the term given to salespeople who spend the majority of their selling time managing existing clients and selling to these clients and slowly get out of the habit of prospecting and selling to new clients.

These “farmers” have become busy looking after the relationships they originally gained through prospecting.

The lack of confidence to go out and prospect for new clients generally stems from a lack of a step by step plan on how to prospect.

The answer most sales managers and business owners offer on how to prospect is “go knock on enough doors and you will get the business”.   This is known as “cold calling” which is defined as: “calling on a prospect who may not know you and isn’t expecting a call”

Some companies believe sending a letter then ringing helps to warm the call up.  In my opinion the only advantage of this type of approach is that it may save the salesperson a little time.

Cold calling is a punishment for not having a prospecting plan.

We will look at this in more depth in my next article.

Quote:

There’s no magic to it, and you don’t need a lot of natural talent.
What you need is a disciplined organized approach to selling.
If you have that, you’ll outperform the great salesman who
 doesn’t understand the process every time.
Selling can definitely be learned.

Steve Bostic

I was most disappointed to hear this as I have been waiting for the call from NASA for some time!!! 

But in fairness I have to agree that selling isn’t rocket science, it is very basic.

I always say -    “selling is simple – but not easy”

Sales in a nutshell comes down to –

Identifying your Prospect

Gaining an Introduction

Uncovering a Need
(If they have one)

Showing the Return on Investment

Asking for the Business

Delivering the Service

Follow Up and Support

Regular Contact

So if you want to launch your sales to new heights in 2011 you will need to jettison some of your unproductive practices that do not directly contribute to one of these areas.

We know that most salespeople on average only spend 90 minutes per day in face to face meetings – the rest of the time is spent gliding through the myriad of other jobs that they are tasked with.

A breakdown of where a typical sales rep spends their time would be -

Sales administration:  16%.  This includes any administrative work directly related to a sale such as entering information, writing reports, filling out order forms, pricing up jobs, quoting and writing proposals.

One way to lessen sales administrative time is to put an expert network in place.  Sales reps spend a lot of time tracking down answers to customer questions – finding the right person to answer the question,
sending emails, exchanging voice mails and so on.  Consider delegating the most time consuming tasks such as pricing and proposal writing.

Sales preparation:  16%.  This includes all the time spent preparing for a call, including research, preparing a meeting agenda, putting together a presentation and so on.

Waiting: 11%.  This includes time spent waiting for a customer, whether in the customer’s reception, on the phone, or in the customer’s office while he or she attends to another matter.

Travel and travel-related waiting:  21%    This category is just what it sounds like – the time reps spend in a car, on a plane, sitting in traffic or sitting at the airport.  To decrease the amount of time reps spend travelling or waiting to travel, look at how you might use telemarketers to interact with customers.  Face–to-face contact is great, but save it for when it adds the most value.   Territory planning can have a huge effect on reducing travel time.

Other administrative tasks:  10% - This is a catchall bucket for time-spent doing everything not included in the other categories. It includes everything from filing expense reports and time sheets to getting a cup of coffee.

Selling:  25%.  If you can decrease the time your reps spend doing other things, they theoretically should have more time to spend selling.  So put systems to work for you and watch this percentage grow.

How do these figures compare to our sales week?

If we are to propel our sales into lunar orbit then we need to delegate any task that is not related to business growth.

The beauty about selling is the sky is the limit when it comes to business growth.

So to help your sales to soar this year, spend more time face to face with great referred prospects – after all, it’s not “Rocket Science”!!!

Action Steps:

1. Identify all tasks that take up more than 30 minutes per week
2. Plan to either eliminate, delegate or outsource within a month
3. Block times for face to face meetings in your weekly planner

 
Quote:
                                                             Sales isn’t rocket science
                                                                                        Unknown Consultant

A challenge I hear from many salespeople and business owners alike is that there is never enough time to keep in touch with all their clients and prospects.   This in turn leads to many lost opportunities and indeed lost clients.

There are just two areas salespeople and business owners need to focus their time on as far as sales are concerned.

The first we will look at is retention of existing clients.   Our existing clients offer the best opportunity for future growth for a couple of very good reasons.

Firstly we have already earned their trust as an advisor/supplier and are therefore most likely to be offered the first opportunity of further work and secondly in many cases we are only getting a percentage of their work.

Some studies have shown that most of what we might consider to be “A” type clients are only in fact giving us slightly more than 50% of their potential business. 

Secondly, and this may come as a surprise to many salespeople, the key reason for this is a lack of account strategies and planning, particularly in smaller businesses who seem to believe if we look after the client we will automatically get all their business.

So to maximize sales to our existing clients we need to develop an account strategy.

The first step in this process is to identify the services and products they are already buying from us then work out what other needs we can fulfill for them and build these into our call objectives.

Another step is to work out a call cycle. This will depend largely on what type of client you are dealing with.  A trap for many of us is to categorize by turnover.  It is therefore very important to look at a number areas when categorizing accounts, such as gross profit margin, lifetime value, wallet share, potential growth and so on.

All accounts, including those of prospects and customers, should be categorized to keep their call frequency as productive as possible. You must decide which accounts are most important to your company.  Categorizing helps determine this.  For every prospect or customer, there is a call frequency that will give you maximum return per call.

It is based on the belief that a greater portion of time should be spent on prospects or customers who offer larger volume potential.   Less time should be spent on lower volume prospects or customers.

You will categorize your prospects or customers as A, B, and C accounts.  A are major accounts; statistically they number about 15 percent of your accounts and give you 65 percent of your volume.  The following 20 percent of your accounts are B, or minor accounts.   They give you 20 percent of your total sales.  Of the remaining prospects or customers, 65 percent are C, or marginal accounts.   They give you 15 percent of your total sales.  These percentages apply in most industries and are an excellent rule of thumb for determining account classification and setting sales-call frequency.

In most businesses, this simple analysis is rather startling.  You will probably find that a small number of accounts produce the majority of your sales dollars, whereas a majority of your prospects or customers provide you with a small percentage of your sales.  The classic statement that “80 percent of your business comes from 20 percent of your customers” is refined somewhat in the three account classification – A.B.C.

A good exercise would be to go through your database of clients and categorise them as

A, B or C.  By understanding this you can then manage your time more effectively and look after the 20%

of your clients who are indeed giving you 80% of your income and more importantly retain these very valuable clients through regular call cycles.

I will look at the second key area which is growth in my next article.

Quote of the Week:

“Sales is a contact sport”

                                                                                       Brett Burgess

Today we will look at the key reasons salespeople don’t ask for the business.

In fact surveys conducted with the fortune 500 in the States showed that 62% of presentations finish without the salesperson actually asking for the business!

The number one reason people I train state for this is fear of rejection and embarrassment.  This fear comes as a result of lack of sales processes which would naturally lead to asking for the business.

The first part of the sales process then is getting a referral to the prospect by a trusted advisor and just as important is the way the advisor positions you with their client.

One of the tools we develop for our clients is a positioning statement.  This is a tool you give to your referrer so that they position you in the best possible way.

Having been positioned well the next step towards closing is doing your homework on the prospect.  Your referrer will often help here as they are working in the best interests of their clients in helping you.

We have been positioned well with the prospect, we are well prepared with background information including possible issues we may have solutions for, we have our appointment, -  the next step is to establish trust.

We hardly ever buy from people we don’t trust and of course if our prospect doesn’t trust us then they may not give us all the information we need to taylor the very best solution for their need or may in fact deny they have a need.

Some key ways to build trust are –

• Being early or on time
• Coming prepared
• Dressing appropriately
• Having the very best sales aids – pens, folders, business cards (not a good look when salespeople hand you their “dog-eared” business card!)
• Asking good questions  (nothing upsets buyers more than poorly prepared salespeople with self-serving questions)

Now we have established trust with our prospect the next step is to uncover the need and help the buyer to recognize whether the need justifies our solution.

It has been found that 64.3% of salespeople start presenting their solution before the buyer recognizes the desire for a solution.  This results in buyer objections which opens
a whole new minefield to manoeuvre through.

We will look into this further in my next article.

This Weeks Action Step –

Make a list of all the closing phrases you currently use in asking for the business.

Quote of the Week –

If you don’t close the sale you are working for the opposition

The first of these was the different needs of buyers depending on their roles within the business.

We identified 3 potential buyer levels –

1. Middle Management level
2. Senior Management
3. Chief Executive Officers and Managing Directors

Then we looked at lack of funding where we discovered we need to clearly identify all the associated costs related to their current need.  Business owners make buying decisions based primarily on the expected return on investment.  If you can’t show a clear cost saving then there is no reason to change.

It is a fact that 99% of new prospects you visit already have a provider providing the same services/products you do.  Therefore they are only focused on two things in talking to you – the cheapest price or at least a price check on the current provider or improved value over what they are already receiving.

Our sole goal is focused on adding value. This can only be achieved if we can uncover their needs through good questions.

The opportunity for us to add value with these prospects lies in the following areas –

1. Helping them to uncover an unrecognized need
2. Helping them to uncover new opportunities
3. Finding new solutions for old problems

To achieve this requires good preparation which unfortunately most salespeople tend to skip as they argue they are far too busy.  These types of salespeople are generally referred to as “professional conversationalists” i.e. they get paid to go around and talk to people but not actually to make sales.

Back to the subject of today  - No Hurry/No Desire to change from the status quo.

If we can uncover a big enough need through this process and combine the return on investment calculation that we looked at last time then this should create the desire and more importantly help the buyer to come to the buying decision.

We will look at the last of the obstacles in my next article.

Quote of the Week:

“Opportunity dances with those who are ready on the dance floor”

                                                                                H. Jackson Brown Jr

The next of the big five obstacles is “No Money”.

Unfortunately for many of us in sales the majority of prospects we meet do not have large amounts of cash reserves sitting in their bank accounts waiting for us to show up and relieve them of it regardless of the wonderful solutions we may have to offer.   They do however have funds they can access if the issue you uncover is big enough to warrant immediate action and worth diverting these to you.

This being the case we need to uncover the specific problem our solution can solve and then use what I term a Return on Investment Calculation (ROIC).  This will in essence turn the problem into an issue that requires immediate action.

A friend of mine showed how his solution could save a professional service business 273 billable hours at $120/hour.  This came to $32,760 – and his solution cost $12,000.  It was easy for the buyer to see how he could save money by reducing costs.

Evaluating the “return on investment” for a prospect (or customer) makes it easier for him or her to justify spending money on your product or service and helps the prospect visualize the value the purchase or investment will create.  This sales skill will help you position your offering apart from your competitors and ultimately make moving forward with you and our offer more compelling.

Your goal is to put the value your product or service creates in context for your prospect.  Sales professionals create this context by breaking down the costs associated with the product or service and illustrating how the purchase or investment provides a positive rate of return for the company.  When the prospect sees your analysis, they should conclude it’s a no-brainer. Above all, remember – the wiifm principle (what’s in it for them?) always applies.

Objective –

To provide quantitative information to demonstrate the hard value your prospect will receive by making an investment in our product or service.

Return on investment is defined as the amount of money they can expect to make or avoid losing as a result of making an investment…an investment is anything that is purchased for the purpose of generating income (or decreasing expenses) or an item that is expected to increase in value over time…while an ROI analysis can be very sophisticated and include such details as time value of money, tax rates and cash flows, a simple ROI analysis will generally work…just be sure to match your audience appropriately and never work at a level you feel they may not understand (it’s always best to be on the conservative side during your preparation)

Keep in Mind –

Your goal is to illustrate the investment you’re asking your prospect or customer to make in terms that help him or her see a positive return… be sure to…

• Keep our analysis brief and direct
• Clearly state your assumptions
• Include all costs (direct and indirect) the prospect will incur to make the investment

Things to Avoid –

Your prospect may disagree with your assumptions and approach…if so, you’ll have an additional opportunity to engage with your prospect and you’ll likely learn even more about how your prospect will make the buying decision… to ensure credibility of your analysis, you’ll want to avoid the following:

• Unrealistic assumptions on usage, response rates, etc
• Assumptions that the prospect cannot control
• Excessive time frames which exaggerate positive returns
• Over estimating the value of intangibles

Action Steps –

• Create a problems list – your solutions overcome
• Work out what costs potential buyers may be incurring as a result of not using your solutions