Articles
Dealing with the new world of sales
The story of desperate salespeople
by John Graham“I just don’t understand it,” said the frustrated president
of an employee benefits firm. “We get good, solid appointments and
our prospects like our proposals, particularly since we almost always save
them money or improve their coverage. Often both.”
What didn’t he understand? “When we follow up,” he said,
“We wind up in voicemail and our calls are not returned. This is
happening with increasing frequency. I just don’t understand what’s
going on.”
While the antics and urges of “desperate housewives” have captivated
the mind of the public, what about all those “desperate salespeople” who
are constantly being blown off by customers and prospects? Whether they’re
selling insurance, cars, medical supplies, software or health care policies,
the story is the same––getting the order is getting far more difficult.
Everyone is frustrated and confused, including sales managers.
One clue as to what’s happening may be found in the seemingly endless array
of sales techniques, seminars, courses, systems, lead programs, books and web
offerings. Each one comes with the “100% guarantee”
of being the sales solution. Taken together, they’re a
barometer of the desperate state many sales organizations and individual
producers find themselves in today.
Salespeople are looking for the answer that will make them super stars.
That’s the dream and the reason why both individual salespeople and their
companies reach for the latest and greatest gimmick as if it were a magic amulet.
As business conditions continue to tighten, there will be even more fantasies
to feed the hopes of desperate salespeople.
The major problem facing every salesperson and sales organization
today is the same: an extended and unpredictable sales cycle. Buying
decisions are made at the convenience of the customer. Nothing happens
until the customer is ready or forced into making a decision. More often
than not, this occurs at the last possible minute.
What happens occurs in three stages.
Stage one: The initial meeting is friendly and the prospect welcomes
proposals. This leads salespeople to conclude that a buying decision is imminent.
Stage two: Once the prospect receives the proposal, there is
a period of prolonged silence and no action. Emails are ignored and phone
calls go unanswered. Based on all this, salespeople conclude that the
order went to someone else or the prospect wasn’t serious. Either
way, they move on. In most cases, neither conclusion is correct.
Stage three occurs when, all of a sudden, the client makes a
buying decision. At that point, the purchase is almost a crisis and whoever
is last in line gets the business.
If this is the new reality of sales, what can salespeople and their managers
do to cope with it?
1. Focus on the prospect. Even though the question seems
basic to sales, salespeople rarely ask, “What do you want to accomplish?”
And even if it is asked, it almost always comes across in a less than
genuine way, as if the salesperson isn’t really interested and
wants to get on with his or her presentation.
Finding out what the customer wants to accomplish is the key to the sale. How
can there be a meaningful, compelling presentation that fails to take that into
consideration?
The test is how the prospect feels after the presentation. Was the focus
on what the salesperson wanted to get across or was it on obtaining the necessary
information to make an informed proposal?
2. Connect with what counts. Relationships are critical, to be sure,
but because of the Internet, buyers are much better informed and they can spot
incompetence quickly. Customers know when someone is just trying to sell something.
The other side of blowing smoke is being blown away by prospects who demand knowledge
and expertise from their suppliers and who are unwilling to settle for less.
The goal is to impress the prospect with what you know, not where you take them
to dinner.
3. Counsel the customer. The president of a life insurance
agency called in an insurance marketing specialist to help promote a
new business initiative. After working on the project for about a month,
the marketing person was less than enthusiastic about the assignment. “Why
do I feel this way?” he asked himself. The answer was easy: the
president was clearly only interested in pushing product. The shortcut
to success ended in a short circuit for the operation.
The sales task is to covet the customer relationship more than the order. The
privilege of being able to provide helpful, valid and valuable assistance to
a customer is what creates sales.
4. Communicate competence. Salespeople like to talk
about how their products or services are innovative, cutting edge and
far ahead of the competition. While that may resonate with some customers, it’s
far more important for the customer to see the salesperson as innovative.
The marketing consultant was asked to prepare a new brochure. “Why do you
want a brochure and how do you plan to use it?” he asked.
By drilling down further, he found that the sales force was actually looking
for support with prospecting and the one tool that came to mind was a brochure.
Needless to say, the brochure was scratched and a prospecting program was developed
and implemented.
The key to making sales is displaying competence in coming up with the right
solutions.
5. Take the sales cycle seriously. Everyone looks for
ripe fruit––the prospect who must make a buying decision now––but
that’s the exception and it’s mostly the result of luck,
not sales skill.
Although there are the lucky sales, they should never be thought of
as the norm. The extended sales cycle is the standard working environment for
everyone in sales.
6. Patient follow through. The anxious salesperson says, “I need
sales now.” Of course, who doesn’t? But the question misses the essential
issue. What salespeople really need are customers. And customers don’t
come quickly. Rather, they occur by patient, careful, thoughtful follow
through over time.
Those who say they need to make a sale are letting the cat out of the bag. They’re
announcing to the world that they haven’t identified and cultivated prospects.
They fail to see sales as one component of an overall marketing strategy.
Like too many of today’s hunters, they want to be driven in a Hummer to
the spot where the animals gather, bag the game and then return to the lodge
to share their “exploits” at the bar.
That isn’t hunting and it isn’t sales. Both require careful planning,
enormous persistence and extraordinary patience.
7. Plan for the long-term. “Making the numbers” is a Damocles
sword hanging over every salesperson’s head. Translated it means this: the
urgency of the immediate demands total attention. Today, that’s something
that never changes.
When CSO Insights surveyed 1300 sales professionals, only 49% of the reps met
or exceeded their quotas for the year (2003) and for firms with less than 50
employees, it was 46.6%. There are good reasons for this abysmal performance.
If salespeople must spend most of their working time attempting to find willing
prospects, they will certainly come up short at the end of the month, the quarter
and the year. This is what creates desperate salespeople.
The solution is to identify, carefully cultivate and manage a substantial number
of prospects over the longer-term. The more precise and efficient this process,
the greater the flow of sales.
8. Pull rather than grab. Desperate salespeople make
every effort to grab customers––by the throat, if necessary––failing
to recognize that sales is a matter of finding ways to pull the customer
ever closer to them.
In a Financial Times interview, Michael Keane, one of the founders of
XOU Solutions, talks about “seeing the light,” of having a solution
for many businesses but not recognizing it. “What customers often tell
you, in fact, all the time will tell you, is what they actually want. But if
all you are focused on is flogging them with what you want to sell…you
tend to miss those things.”
“Flogging” is another way to describe desperate salespeople. It’s
in the discovery process that sales are actually made, while salespeople who
lead with a presentation, don’t make sales.
9. Stay on track. Staying on track is the key to long-term
sales success. It’s easy to fall prey to the latest quick fix sales
gimmick and when that fails to go looking for the next one.
The answer is staying with sound principles––understanding the sales
environment, focusing on prospects, communicating your competence, planning for
the long-term and being the customer’s trusted advisor.
The discipline of staying on this track separates the top producers from the
wanabees.
Desparate salespeople are made, not born. They live and work in crisis because
they fail to take the time and make the effort to set in motion a process that
results in a stream of business.
John R. Graham is president of Graham Communications, a marketing services and sales consulting firm. He is the author of The New Magnet Marketing and Break the Rules Selling, writes for a variety of business publications, and speaks on business, marketing and sales issues. Contact him at 40 Oval Road, Quincy, MA 02170; 617-328-0069; jgraham@grahamcomm.com.