More sales trickery from Gitomer
I won't be using them, but you can't help but chuckle at sales comedian, sorry, I mean guru, Jeffrey Gitomer's two ideas for getting voicemails returned.
(Tell me if you find any funny/useful sales videos online and I'll post 'em here. Thanks.)
Bad behaviour from the Eighties
It's 8 mins or so but worth watching. By the way tell me if you find any funny/useful sales videos online and I'll post 'em here.
Using the word "pitching" puts us and our colleagues in the wrong frame of mind.
Isn't it time we dumped - or at least used more appropriately - the phrase "pitching"? Consider the real thing in baseball, where the phrase came from. We're likening our interactions with prospects to throwing a hard object, from us to them, at a hundred miles per hour! Quality sales interactions are a two (three, ten...) way affair and are rarely aggressive in any way.
There's no "P" in "itch" and it'll stay that way. Disagree?
Sales people can use fear (perceived future pain) to create results right away.
Marketing man Seth Godin understands a fundamental principle of sales in this post : fear drives buying action. As he explains, "Fear is a universal emotion, it's viral and people will go to great lengths to make it go away."
How can sales people use fear? "Buy it or Knuckles here will continue the negotiations" would probably be considered ethically dubious. Here's a better approach. Most of us already sell around "pain" or "problems" (i.e. identifying, drawing out and investigating problems that a prospect has right now). For example:
Buyer : "We are on time with 85% of our deliveries"
Seller : (spotting a potential pain) "What about the other 15%?"
Buyer : "Well, half our trucks are over 10 years old, so they're falling apart a little."
The sales person has spotted a pain to draw out and investigate further. So what is fear in the selling context? Fear is the threat of pain at some point in the future.
Buyer : "Well, half our trucks are over 10 years old, so they're falling apart a little."
Seller : "If you stick with those trucks for say the next 5 years, what would you expect that late delivery rate to be?"
With a little more work from the sales person, what seems like a small pain now becomes a huge pain in the future. Could the late delivery rate reach 30%? How would that impact customer satisfaction and repeat orders? How much lost revenue would that result in? Would it attract negative press?
There's something even more interesting about fear. It's a well documented phenomenon that the fear (i.e. the perception of the seriousness) of the pain in the future is often worse than the pain itself when it actually arrives.
The bottom line? If they are skillful, sales people can use fear to significantly increase the seriousness of pain in a buyer's mind, right now.
More pain = more need for a solution = more chance of a successful sale.
Ask a buyer :
Tough sales management from sales film Glengarry Glen Ross (bad language warning...)
Comments on how would this fly in your office?
(Read "Part 1 of 2 : Sales has an image problem" first!)
Today’s sales professional should be proud to be an important, highly-skilled value creator.
Sales’ current PR problem stems from stereotypes that were formed before “consultative” sales methods were introduced when, on the whole, sales really was a predatory, combatitive, money grabbing, win/lose affair.
Sales professionals as value creators
Things have changed today. Thorough buying processes and wary, savvy buyers have (thankfully) rendered yesteryear’s sales techniques near enough useless. Consultative sales methodologies like Solution Selling, SPIN Selling, Strategic Selling, Conceptual Selling and PSS teach sales professionals to add value by helping buyers understand the implications of both the problem and potential solutions.
Sales people create huge amounts of value for the organisations and the economy as a whole. Their performance is transparent so they rarely become a drain on the organisations.
All this contribution is made in the face of significant challenges – tough cold-calling, long hours preparing proposals, being grilled by prospects and having the courage to step outside of one’s comfort zone on a daily basis. Not only do sales people contribute significant value, they are also among the toughest, strongest-minded and most focused people in the modern company.
Sales skills
Sales professionals are required to display a huge swathe of skills, often in a board level environment – non-verbal communication, problem-solving, communication, territory management, presenting, conflict resolution, even financial and risk analysis. The truth is – it’s hard – really hard, and not many people can do it well (but the rewards – monetarily or in plain frontline excitement – can be high)
Sales really is an exciting, highly skilled and important job that is not only at the leading edge of business, but also the economy. Next time someone asks you what you do, be proud to tell them you are a sales person. I know I am.
Negative views of the sales profession cause damage to companies, economies and individuals.
“So, what do you do?”
“I’m in sales,” you reply.
“Ohh…” they say, looking slightly uncomfortable. “What is it you really want to do?”
We’ve all heard this before, or something very close to it. I wrote an article for the
A Major Role
Sales has an image problem. James Hammersley, the CEO of sales consultancy Win recently told me that, when visiting his old university to give a speech on selling, he asked the audience to describe the defining traits of a salesperson. The responses included ‘sleazy’, ‘untrustworthy’, and even ‘alcoholic’!
Walter Friedman’s excellent history of selling, “Birth of a Salesman” reveals a survey of mothers in the
So what?
Well, let’s face it, status and recognition are important to today’s professionals. Without them job dissatisfaction kicks in, leading to low morale, lower performance levels and higher staff turnover. Furthermore, as individuals opt for “cooler” careers the pool of new sales people is reduced and recruitment becomes even more difficult.
