The first date – you don’t want to mess with it

Unlikely comparison but it makes sense here. You do know how a perfect first date goes, don’t you? You get excited, nervous, and most importantly curious. You ask questions and try to know as much as you can about your partner. You’d tend to pay attention to the body language such as fidgeting, shifting nervously, voice tone, eye contact, and speech patterns.

With clients, it’s the same – except that you don’t have any romantic inclinations here. Ask them the right questions and find out everything you can. That doesn’t mean, however, that you ask questions for the sake of asking them.

Clients are family

Talk to your clients like you would talk to one of your very close ones. You don’t have to share anything too personal with them or try to probe them to know about anything personal about them either. All you have to do is to tune your voice, demeanour, and behaviour with them as you might with your family. What this specifically means is that you jettison the ‘sales pitch’ – the gyrated, almost orchestrated talk, the hypnotic persuasive talk, the pushing and pulling, etc. This is precisely what causes clients to think negative about sales persons and the sales process in general.

Ask them what’s stopping them – the barriers

You ask questions, and then you listen to them. Talk to them like you talk to your close friends and family. Only after all these steps will you be able to offer your solutions and that too in the form of a mere suggestion, insinuation or an indirect reference. By now, you’d have a firm understanding of what your clients want (and what they don’t want by reading between the lines and listening to what wasn’t said). It’s time to build a bridge: ask them what’s stopping them from moving forward. See how you can surmount their problems for them.

Nurture your clients

Often, the first time you talk to them nothing much would come out of it – at least not a sale right away. There’s more work to be done: an effective follow-up sequence, nurturing your prospects by answering all those questions, doing the due-diligence by researching and giving your clients more information, etc. The key is in the nurturing. It takes time, incredible amount of patience on your part. That’s where I believe the actual value delivery comes forth for a sales person.

What do you think?

I honestly don’t know if he meant that he wanted his team to be a mean, cold hearted group of SOBs when it comes to selling. He may have. However, instead I think it was a little deeper than that.

I think what he meant was, something that I’ve noticed with a lot of folks both young and old. From the younger sales folks it seams like many expect too much for little effort. And from the older folks…well many have been burned with what worked before not working now.

Believe me, I could understand that. Probably better than most (and I have the scars to prove it).  If you want to be in sales, its imperative to understand what being in sales is all about. Don’t get me wrong you can do things to make it better but the reality is: being a salesperson is about high risk for high reward. It’s about seeking the un-comfortableness of confrontation and rejection because you know that beyond that lies winning (sorry didn’t mean to conjure up images of Charlie Sheen).

I know this truth isn’t what you may want to hear. You don’t hear anything about “hard choices or doing the hard things” from Anthony Robbins or from politicians in charge for that matter. They make it seem easy. Just read my book or let’s just tax the “rich” and it will solve our problems.  While I’m here to say it is not that easy.

So to my friend the sales manager, I say I agree.

Your sales reps should and must be ruthless. Not SOBs but they must be ruthless in their action. They must make sales calls when others won’t. They must keep going when others stop. They must run right through walls when others prefer to knock, and they must keep going, going, going. Ruthless in their determination, in their persistence, in their voracious desire to fail, learn, and win, preferably in that order.

Let me know what you think. And I don’t mind if you disagree. Constructive confrontation is a great way to learn.

This person had sent some previous emails so I was somewhat familiar with what they wanted to offer but they made some serious sales mistakes over the phone. All of which, I warn my clients about.

Here are the two main ones:

1) Assumptions: As they began talking they made the assumption that I wanted what they were offering. They had helped other similar organizations like mine and they “assumed” they could help me.

We in the tech world do this all the time. We see a company similar to one of our current or past clients that we’ve helped and we assume we can help them as well.

But from the buyer’s perspective they may be thinking, how do they know me? Do they know my problems? Do they know my challenges? As a buyer, it can be quite insulting when a salesperson assumes that one solution fits all before even knowing or doing the due diligence of discovery or asking questions to determine what my problems are before assuming there solution will solve my problems.

Have you ever done this?

2) Need-to-Sell: As this person continued, I suddenly realized I didn’t want to talk to this person (ever get the feeling?). (Note: I love the sales profession and sales people. But I don’t like to be sold to; ever notice how the best sales people don’t sell you instead they solve your problems.) The biggest reason is that their “Need-to-sell” was greater than their “Need-to-solve” my problem.

Everything they said, even down to their tone was all about them. They didn’t care or even pretend to care about me or my company or my clients. I got the distinct impression that there main goal was the sale they wanted to make.

As a buyer this was a complete turn-off. I found myself raising that “sales resistance wall” (if your sales you know what I mean) and was not going to let it down.  As sales people, we have to remember that people can sense your intention much of the time by not just what you say but how you say it. So your desires to help solve your client’s problems need to be genuine.

At this point she had only spoken for 3 minutes but like the Jerry McGuire movie, “she had lost me at hello”.

At this stage in our economic recovery our clients and prospects require that they “trust you” in order to do business with you.  Take a look around you. People don’t trust their banks or financial institutions or advisors, the housing market, their employers, and the list goes on. Why in the world would they trust you if you haven’t earned it.

So unlike the sales person in this tale you should approach your clients and potential clients instead with:

First, “No Assumptions”. Keep human nature in mind when understanding that people want to feel unique. Never assume that what you have whether a product or solution is what your clients need. You know the old saying about when you assume: you make an @ss out of you and me (excuse the French).

Second, think “How to solve their problems” not simply how I can turn this person in to a commission payday (believe me, the sale will follow if you help solve their problems). Sure you can still make some sales by being aggressively salesy but think about how many potentially great customers would be turned off who would never become long lasting customers.

I personally believe that we are entering a new era where the tactics shown by the salesperson in my example just won’t fly anymore in technology sales.

Let me know what you think?

So use those precious ten seconds to show your prospect that you care more about them than about your sale. It is critical in building a strong and trusting relationship with someone. There are no shortcuts or magic tricks here; you simply need to show your client that you care.

One way you can show you care is to  stop selling and start becoming a problem solver. Stop creating sales pitches and start creating conversations. Begin focusing on your clients’ issues, and not yours.

But most of all, avoid making assumptions.

As part of my coaching program I often host role-play calls during which other salespeople can practice the techniques they have learned. Of all the issues we address during these sessions, one of the most frequent mistakes they make is that they assume.

If you are doing a cold call, you don’t know your client. You are unaware of their particular situation or their specific problems, so you can’t tell them that virtualization or deduplication will solve all their IT problems. Stop making assumptions.

Instead, simply forget about the sale (momentarily) and stop pushing or trying to persuade people. Not everyone you call will become your customer, so stop acting desperate to make that next sale.

Your call is going to be an interruption in someone’s day there is no way around it. So I suggest,  Be the welcome guest, not the annoying pest. Use your time to build trust with your prospects and to develop this into a foundation for furthering the relationship. You should be calling them with the mindset that you are going to share intellectual capital, share ideas and have a pleasant dialogue, not race to ram your sales pitch down their throat.

Let me know what you think.

And worse yet it, it can affect your sales results and your sales people.

As an owner or sales/marketing executive, you have do everything you can to avoid the following attitudes and their related actions among your sales team:

1)      Assumption that nobody is buying. If you accept this than you figure “why try” or psychologically your giving yourself an excuse to fail.

2)      Absence of know-how, sales skill, or the ability to adapt to the new selling environment.

3)      Sloth or lackadaisical attitude (related to number 1 and 2 above). Not making enough sales calls, productivity slowdowns.

4)      Resentment. This attitude (related to 1,2, and 3 above) is one of the last ones underperforming sales people experience before they have completely mentally or physically checked out.

5)      Management/Monitoring. With everyone including executive and managers wearing a million different hats right now, some might find it convenient to offload monitoring or management of the sales team to a top sales rep, sales assistant, or other.  In order, to successfully combat the above, you need to have proper monitoring and management especially during these times.

I’m not an expert in psychology but I’ve been in sales both as a performer and a manager enough to see this time and time again especially during tough economic times.

In short, the best way to combat these attitudes and their related actions is through proper management and providing your team (or yourself) with the necessary skills and tools (adapted for today’s market) and the much needed motivation to keep going.

There are people buying and there are sales people selling. The world has not come to an end.

Let me know what you think?

For instance, in our experience IT decision makers have 5 main priorities both from a business and IT perspective. They are:

Business Priorities:

1)      Business process improvement

2)      Reducing enterprise cost

3)      Improving enterprise workforce effectiveness

4)      Attracting and retaining new customers

5)      Increasing the use of information/analytics

IT Priorities:

1)      Business Intelligence

2)      Enterprise applications (ERP, CRM and others)

3)      Servers and Storage technologies (virtualization)

4)      Legacy application modernization

5)      Collaboration technologies

So again, the real question for you is, given this information, how will you respond? If IT leaders are spending differently then that means they are buying differently.

If they are buying differently then what you offer and how you sell and market should change.  You can ask yourself:

• Am I listening closely enough to my customers to know how they are buying, what they are buying, what their priorities are and what their challenges are?
• Am I processing and making the appropriate changes to my business? Do my offerings match the needs of my customers or am I trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

The real problems come about because we don’t change and adapt to the market. I spend a great deal of my time now, showing my clients how to sell and market differently.

What everyone needs to understand that there is basically two approaches you can take in a post-recession economy that is still shaky: 1) you can panic and lower your prices and compete on price alone (instead of your value, expertise, and thought leadership), or 2) you can do the opposite.

I say you should focus on being different than your competitors who compete on price. Those who compete on price don’t compete for very long.

Let me know what you think?

In the good old days when sales were a plenty many organizations felt the route was to purchase sales automation software or get neat little gadgets to help you become more efficient.

Now that our sales flaws and foibles have show themselves in the last few years and each new sale is harder to get, companies are beginning to re-examine their people’s sales skills?

Sure you can “force” your field team to reach their numbers and they’ll go out and be aggressive but customers will only take the aggressive approach so long. Then what will you do?

Unfortunately, no amount of software or gadgets is going to help you out of this one. There is only one thing you can do: It’s time to get back to the basics of solution selling 101.

In case you are not sure if you need solution selling 101 skills, ask yourself the following questions:

• Can your sales team identify potential opportunities before a client initiates a project?
• Can your sales team be consultative?
• Does your sales team know the right questions to ask?
• Does your sales team practice the art of listening?
• Do you have a process for gathering critical information from customers and prospects that can initiate or further a sale?
• How is your sales team engaging new prospects to increase their sense of urgency?
• How is your sales team establishing credibility with cautious prospects and fending off competitors who have become even more desperate?
• How is your sales team minimizing objections and moving the sales process forward toward closure?

If you are uncertain about any or all of these you are not alone. However, it is critical right now to get your sales house in order. Times have changed and your sales skills need to be updated and sharpened.

Let me know if you agree.