Articles
The seven strategies of the highly effective salesperson
by John GrahamFranklin Covey built a whole industry out of The Seven Habits of Highly
Effective People and others have followed in his steps. Of the books
that came along in a steady stream, perhaps Seven Sins for a Life Worth
Living is the most intriguing of them all and one that many may be
tempted to not only buy but to actually read it.
To carry it a step further, what about the strategies of the highly effective
salesperson? What makes them different and why do they stand out from the pack?
Here are the seven strategies:
1. Effective salespeople look to the customer for the solution. This
may seem like a ridiculous statement; yet, effective salespeople operate
by it intuitively. The major
“product” they bring to the table is what they know about customers,
not what they are selling.
While product knowledge is important, it’s only the baseline. It’s
customer knowledge that makes them different. Matt Oeschsli, who has expertise
in the financial services field, drives the point home. “For years,”
he says, “I have been saying to anyone who will listen, if you are
serious about working with the affluent, you must become a student of the
affluent.”
It’s the same in every industry. Too many of those in sales like to think
of themselves as “solution experts.” What they fail to recognize
is that the solution rests with the customer, not with the salesperson. The
customer knows the issues and understands the problems. What the customer needs
is a way to make the solution a reality.
TriFactor, Inc., the Lakeland, FL-based material handling systems integrator,
operates on this premise. In the company’s customer agreement, there is
a revealing sentence: “The customer and TriFactor, Inc. will jointly design
the particular material handling system.” The operative word is “jointly.” The
mission of TriFactor sales engineers is to bring their expertise to bear on making
certain the “solution”
meets the customer’s requirements.
2. Effective salespeople are committed to presentation improvement. Here’s
the skinny: most salespeople think they’re much better presenters
than they are. There’s a reason for this: facing up to the fact
that we’re poor presenters is threatening, even shattering.
Having said that, effective salespeople can be excellent presenters if they work
at it. Richard Valeriani, the long-time NBC correspondent, tells of being called
to work with GE CEO Jack Welch on his retirement speech. It was clear to Valeriani
that Welch was not about to let down the bar just because he was giving his final
presentation.
Carmine Gallo, a business communications coach and former TV journalist, analyzed
Steve Jobs’ introduction of Apple’s iPhone. One of the comments had
to do with practice. Writing in Business Week, he says,
“Jobs makes presentations look effortless because he takes nothing
for granted. Jobs is known to rehearse demonstrations for hours prior to
launch events.” And then he adds, “I can name many high-profile
chief executives who decide to wing it. It shows.”
Jobs demands perfection in the products Apple sells and nothing less than that
in the way he presents them. Highly effective salespeople hone their presentation
skills.
3. Effective salespeople embrace new ideas. We might say
embracing new ideas is the norm. In We Are Smarter Than Me, Barry Libert
and Jon Spector tells of A.G. Lafley’s arrival as chairman and CEO
at P&G in 2000. “He stunned his prideful researchers,” all
9,000 of them in R&D when he said that they were not producing enough
winners to meet the company’s growth goals. Then he shocked this
vaunted group when he told them that “by the end of the decade, fully
half of all new P&G products and technologies would have to come from
outside the company.”
Lafley set into motion a system of sharing information, leveraging retired scientists
and engineers, and tapping into Innocentive, the network of more than 100,000
technical people from nearly 200 countries who receive cash awards if their ideas
pay off.
According to one report, fully 35 percent of P&G’s ideas were coming
from outsiders by 2006. Equally important, the company’s R&D productivity
zoomed up 60 percent and 80 percent of the company’s new product launches
are successful, compared to the 30 percent industry average.
Here’s the point: salespeople don’t burn out; rather, they make themselves
irrelevant by failing to see change as opportunity.
4. Effective salespeople focus on helping. Customers today
know when they are being hustled by the salesperson whose sole objective
is to walk away with an order.
Toward the end of the year, a business owner received a call from a business
equipment company salesperson indicating that the cost of color copier supplies
would be nearly tripling within a few weeks. “If you want to order at the
current price, we have a supply in inventory,” he said.
Whatever the facts, how did the message sound? Candidly, like someone who was
trying to make his numbers by year’s end. There were no explanations, no
options, and no suggestions. There was no effort to be helpful.
Helping is the overarching strategy, the hallmark, of the effective salesperson.
5. Effective salespeople possess a customer relationship vision. The
day of “get the order and get going” is gone. If that’s all
a salesperson has to offer, the smart customer goes elsewhere.
If you’ve ever bought a life insurance policy, chances are you didn’t
hear from the salesperson again. This is an example of the “just get the
fish in the boat” mentality. Their focus is on making the sale, not on
creating a relationship that has a long-term potential.
Customers sense when they are being hustled; they catch on quickly and won’t
tolerate such tactics. Even though they may need what is being offered, they
refuse to buy from salespeople whose motives are so clearly transparent.
Without such a customer relationship vision, there is no future.
6. Effective salespeople see themselves as marketers. The holiday
greeting card arrived in the mail with a photograph of a group of employees on
the outside. Over the photo were the words, “Season’s Greetings From
Your Team.” Wait a minute. That’s their team, not mine.
Was the card anything other than a friendly gesture? Perhaps not. At the same
time, it may reflect the underlying attitude of so many businesses and particularly
a large group of salespeople. We say that it’s “all about the customer,” but
what comes through is quite a different message––it’s really
all about us.
It’s an overarching danger in business, including sales. While we say the
right words about being customer-centric, the real message comes through, one
that betrays our customer commitment: “We come first.”
The highly effective salesperson never falls into that trap.
7. Effective salespeople pull customers ever closer. Why does
Toyota sell more vehicles every year? The 2007 J.D. Power Customer Retention
Study offers insight into Toyota’s success. “Toyota maintains
its high retention rates by providing high-quality vehicles and service to its
existing customers,” says J.D. Power’s Neal Oddes, “which in
turn generates favorable word-of-mouth recommendations that attract new customers.” The
report indicates that 64% of Toyota’s customers say they are staying with
the nameplate.
If Toyota were to rewrite Chevrolet Malibu’s “The car you can’t
ignore” ad headline, it might go something like this––“The
car you’re glad you bought.”
This is exactly how the effective salesperson behaves every day.
When it comes to selling, the major task for the highly effective salesperson
is not to meet or beat the numbers, but to hone those qualities that deliver
the right results.
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.