Thank you.. and goodnight

Almost exactly two years after my first post, I've decided it's time to put SalesItch to bed. Thank you to everyone who frequented my humble blog.

With best wishes,

Ed

Sales bloopers : No 3

As mentioned in my last sales blooper post, I started my sales career in, effectively, telesales. As that company is long-gone I feel I can now share with you some of the funny/cringe-worthy moments of that first job…. this and the following stories are all 100% true, though names and details have been changed to protect the innocent.


Me : “Good morning, this is Ed McLean from Company Z. Is Janet Hawley available please?”
Gatekeeper : “Have you spoken to Janet before?”
Me : “No, I haven’t, but..”
Gatekeeper : “Oh, actually, yes I remember, I think she was expect a call from you. I will give you her direct line. It’s 00 2023…33”
Me : “Errr, thank you”… (that’s strange….)
(Calling new number)
New gatekeeper “Good morning, Samaritans”

More bloopers soon….

Sales bloopers : No 2

Sales bloopers : No 2

As mentioned in my last sales blooper post, I started my sales career in, effectively, telesales. As that company is long-gone I feel I can now share with you some of the funny/cringe-worthy moments of that first job…. this and the following stories are all 100% true, though names and details have been changed to protect the innocent.

Me : “Good morning, may I speak to Mike Wright please?”
Gatekeeper : “No, I am sorry, Mike doesn’t take calls”
Me : “OK, no problem. Perhaps you can help, I saw that Mike recently made an announcement about the Hertford project. I have been working on a similar project and wanted to make contact. Is Mike in the office at the moment?”
Gatekeeper : “Err, he is here, but he doesn’t take calls”
Me : ”Yes, I appreciate that, but this…”
Gatekeeper : “Mike won’t take your call because he is deaf.”
Me : ”Oh……… I’ll send an email”

More bloopers soon….

A Friday treat

It's Friday! Time to watch some funny videos somehow related to sales.

Enjoy!

Sales bloopers : No 1

I started my sales career in, effectively, telesales. As that company is long-gone I feel I can now share with you some of the funny/cringe-worthy moments of that first job…. this and the following stories are all 100% true, though names and details have been changed to protect the innocent.

Me : “Good morning, may I speak to Monsieur Lafarge?”
Gatekeeper : “No, it’s not possible to speak to him. Why do you want to speak to him?”
Me : “It’s regarding your company’s announcement about the DGT launch, we’re involved in a similar project. Could you put me through please?”
Gatekeeper : “No, I cannot put you through...”
Me : ”I appreciate that Monsieur Lafarge is busy, but…”
Gatekeeper : “Monsieur Lafarge is dead”
Me : ”Oh………”

More bloopers soon….

So.. you do... what?

I'm currently researching a new market segment for my employer. Obviously, part of this is understanding what individual companies do and how they fit into the industry. I have only a decade's experience in business, but I think that should be enough to understand what it is companies do. However, decoding what these companies do is incredibly difficult. I am not just talking about jargon, but about clear attempts by companies to avoid saying what they do (usually by listing benefits, "we help companies to maximise workflow efficiencies..").

Are you really that scared to admit what you do? Surely if you what you do isn't different/better than others, then the way you do it is? Otherwise, what is your value proposition in relation to the competition?

If you don't want to tell me what you do and how it will help me, I can click elsewhere in less than a second. And if I do, your sales people miss out.

Rant over.

Sales questions : Confirming understanding

Understanding is one of the least acknowledged fundamentals in selling. If we don’t understand what our prospect means we are likely to shape an inappropriate solution. Try these questions – you might be surprised to discover that your understanding is way-off. These questions also work well when a prospect is very vocal and shooting off in many directions and you need to isolate the core problem and get them to refocus.
• (Repeat your understanding) Does that some up the situation?
• (Repeat your understanding) Have I got that right?
• If I understand correctly, you were saying that…. is that right?
• Would it be accurate to say (phrase problem)?
• So, essentially, the most important point for you is… is that right?
More questions for you to use in your selling coming soon. Bookmark/RSS SalesItch now…. And don’t forget to add a comment to share your favourite questions with the community!

The pessimistic sales person

Optimism is seen as one of the most important qualities of a sales person. You have got to have the ability to experience a string of losses and still be able to walk into your next meeting feeling certain that your proposition is strong.

That is certainly true, however, I’d like to argue the corner for pessimism. When the optimist is sure the meeting will go well, the pessimist is anticipating problems and preparing for every eventuality. Where the optimist skips around the office with joy at a complementary line in an email from a prospect, the pessimist thinks “it may be a negotiating tactic” and prepares for tougher negotiations. Where the optimist is sure the opportunities in her pipeline will pretty much all come in, the pessimist is on the phone tracking down new opportunities because he’s sure those pipeline opportunities are going to drop out.

Seeing the worst case scenario and everything in between allows you to prepare.
Unbridled optimism, like unbridled pessimism, is a disaster. But the right combination of the two provides the sales person with a more robust approach to his job.

Interestingly, research by Martin Seligman discovered that pessimists are much better predictors of what will actually happen than optimists. A rather depressing discovery, but it supports my point that reality is often trickier than the rose tinted view we would like to have.

Sales questions : Investigating problems/pains

We all know that prospects’ problems are the starting point for successful selling, but once you discover a problem, where should you take it? Here are a few of my favourite questions for exploring, quantifying and measuring problems.
• Why/how is that an issue?
• What is this costing you?
• Who else is affected by this issue?
• How does that impact the business/ department/ you?
• Why does that matter?
• What’s driving this?
• What’s motivating you to take action on this?
• Where does this initiative come from?
• Where (in the organisation) did this problem start?
• "How do you think (industry) vendors, in general fail the market?" (then drill down on what unsolved problem they are searching for help with)
• "Which means...?" (use to encourage the prospect to explain the problem more deeply)
More questions for you to use in your selling coming soon. Bookmark/RSS SalesItch now…. And don’t forget to add a comment to share your favourite questions with the community!

Blog post - Fancy a change?

You do? Good, because there's a hell of a lot of it coming up. I've been rather smug in the past in considering the sales profession a very safe and secure place to be. My thinking went that there will always be stuff to be sold, whether it’s products, services or ideas. That side of the buying/selling equation will stay near enough the same (aside from the shift that has already happened from sale people to internet based sales for commodity goods). On the whole, the changes have been and will be in the market side – what buyers are doing.

Think about it:

• The sales practices of 30 years ago won't cut it today
• The sales practices of 10 years ago would be pretty borderline in acceptance and effectiveness - selling has moved from being about convincing and persuading, towards adding value to the customer
• Less and less of the buying cycle is done with a sales person present
• A CSO report I read (sorry, lost the link) indicates tha sales cycles are lengthening and therefore sales is becoming less efficient
• Most buyers research online before talking to a sales person
• Some (not all) people are finding new, better ways to get that information : blogs, forums, web 2.0 services, conferences. These are all ways to circumvent the sales person. If these methods are more effective they will take on and spread.
• In general in society the pace of change is quickening (you can see that all around us) and we are all going to have to learn to adapt.
• Anecdotally, I would say that increasing numbers of organisations have formal procedures for buying (designed to limit your power to influence). The organisations that have / use these seem to be getting smaller

What are the consequences of these changes? What will our jobs look like in 10 years time? Personally, on one hand I am excited. The job-for-life concept sounds awful to me and change brings fresh opportunities. On the other, there have been and will be casualties and we will all have to adapt or die. Quite how we adapt is another question.

Not a good salesperson? Really?

I had a conversation with a management consultant friend at the weekend. “My boss wants me to 'sell' more in my day-to-day work, but I'm not so great at all that selling stuff. I tend to just listen to what they need and then try to solve their problems as best I can.” I think there’s a great irony that my consultant friend has a better attitude towards selling than about half the sales people I know – and he doesn’t even know it!

Plane good sense

My friend Cam at Veritape forwarded me something interesting recently:

"Last night, I watched an episode of Air Crash Investigations - it's a great programme which dramatises the unfolding events of classic air crashes. Not overly sensational, honest. Quite a bit of detective work involved, and they mostly concentrate on the _investigation_ side of things.

Anyway, last night I watched about an American Airlines Boeing 757 jet that was flown into the side of a mountain in Columbia. Very _very_ experienced crew, no fault with the plane, good visibility (a clear moonlight night) and yet they just flew straight into a mountain.

One thing which puzzled the investigators: with nothing obviously wrong, how on earth did the accident happen? The determination was that the crew agreed to a change of runway fairly late in the descent, and as a result had too much work to do inside the cockpit (reading charts, punching routes into the autopilot, etc) that they didn't FLY THE PLANE! The quickly-changing circumstances meant that they didn't consider the mountains, the local area, the risks in last-minute changes, etc. In other words, they didn't think ahead.

And here is the classic line, from a pilot being interviewed as an expert: "In aviation, you shouldn't fly your plane somewhere that your brain hasn't already travelled 5 minutes beforehand."

Whose fault is it really?

I sit across from a certain member of the management team in my company. Every day she receives a number of cold calls.

Here’s a summary of one from this morning (and you don’t even need to hear the salesperson to know exactly what’s going on.)

“Good morning, (company name)”
(sales person speaks)
“Well, we run our own databases inhouse.”
(sales person speaks)
“Err, OK, my email address is….”

So the sales person was obviously leading with the product, had failed to do even basic research (the company I work for is a leader with respect to databases in a specific industry) and had then given up and decided to fill up the manager’s inbox with more rubbish. Conclusion? This is a bad sales person… or, maybe not.

I think, most likely, this is a newish sales person doing what they have been told and encouraged to do (I think this because anyone operating in this way for many years is very unlikely to hit any remotely ambitious target for sometime and would be looking for a new career pretty sharpish). Why has this newbie been told to employ such hopeless tactics?

Anyone who has been on the front line in the last 5 – 10 years knows that the market has moved dramatically over that period and so therefore have the methods sales people need to employ to make sales. The issue is that management’s sales experience (if they have any at all) often comes from the days when such cold calling methods still reaped rewards. Worse still, if they don’t have direct experience, then the activity they demand from their team derives from stereotypes and assumptions, e.g. “Never give up!”, “Never take no for an answer!”, “You’ve got to have the gift of the gab!”, “It’s a numbers game!”, etc, etc.

What I am saying is that poor management – rather than the sales person themselves – is likely to have been the cause of this pitiful cold call.

In the case of this particular cold call, this failing of management might be the downfall of a potentially great sales person. It’s not only wrong in that it’s poor sales practice, it’s wrong for that individual sales person who will pay a high emotional price from the failure that he or she will, after a long and unpleasant period of cold calling, eventually experience.

Sales questions : Test closes

Is the prospect ready to buy / move on to the next step? Have you covered all the key points? Do any barriers exist towards the deal being done? Use these questions to find out!
• Does that sound fair?
• Does that sound sensible?
• How does that sound?
• What’s your feeling on this right now?
• Is that approximately what you are looking for?
• Is that what you expected to see/hear?
More questions for you to use in your selling coming soon. Bookmark/RSS SalesItch now…. And don’t forget to add a comment to share your favourite questions with the community!

Getting Things Done

Strangely, considering every person on earth has at least some organising to do, we put very little emphasis on finding and using a consistent, method of keeping yourself together. Getting Things Done is an organisational methodology (like Solution Selling, but for keeping yourself organised!).

It’s based on two main principles :

1. Capturing everything that needs to be done - now, later, far in the future, big, small - and put it into a trusted system outside of your head and mind

2. Disciplining yourself to always make immediate decisions about everything that comes in, so that you have a plan for the "next action" that can be applied at any moment

Getting Things Done places great importance on collecting all “stuff” (tasks, incoming post, emails, etc) and put into a trusted system (i.e. one the you know will work and “stuff” will not get lost in). When stuff come in, do one of the following:

(if it doesn’t need to be done now)

• Trash it
• Incubate (something may need to be done about it in the future - put in your calendar at a specific date so that it doesn't get lost)
• Reference (useful info you might need in the future)

(if it requires action)

• Do it : If it takes less than 2 mins it should be done at the moment it is defined.
• Delegate it : If it takes longer than 2 mins, ask yourself "Am I the best person to be doing this?". If "No", delegate it (to the right entity - marketing, another person, group, company, etc)
• Defer it : If the action will take longer than 2 mins, you are the right person to do it you will have to defer it until later and track it on a "next actions" list

Group/list your tasks by “context/resource”, that is to say, one list for all phone calls, one list for everything to do specifically at home, one list for everything to do specifically in the London office, one list for everything to do in town, one list of everything to do at your computer, etc, etc.

If you have a task that you are waiting for someone else to perform, keep it in a list marked “Waiting for”

Do a weekly review of all your tasks to keep everything tidy

In a nutshell, that’s it. I would strongly recommend reading the book yourself. As a formerly chaotic sales person I can strongly recommend Getting Things Done.

Sales questions : Selling your vision

These are the questions to make the prospect dream and “experience” the benefits of your solution. Enjoy!
• How do you think our service could help you?
• What do you see the payoff of implementing this being?
• How much do you think this could save you/make you/reduce errors/ , etc?
• What differences do you think using our product will make?
• If we can (supply the capabilities they are looking for) what would you do with that? How would that impact the business? What would that mean for you?
• What does success look like for you?
• What’s the “vision” here – what situation do you hope to find yourself in when this project is complete?
• What do you see the potential rewards of doing this as being?
More questions for you to use in your selling coming soon. Bookmark/RSS SalesItch now…. And don’t forget to add a comment to share your favourite questions with the community!

Emails : don't get deleted!

I spoke to a sales person last week who promised to send me information via email. He did. 3 times. Each time he sent it and called me to ask “so what did you think”, to which I replied “I didn't get it”. As it turns out, I deleted it, mistaking it for spam each time. The title he had given was his product name. Even with spam filters on full blast, I get 60% spam in my inbox. If it's not from someone I know or has a subject line mentioning something relevant to me or my company, I delete it.

The lesson for me (and that salesperson). Always include the prospect's name in the title (at least for first contact). My favourite subject line, “[Prospect's first name]/Ed conversation : [subject]” e.g. “Mike/Ed conversation : 2008 targets”

Sales questions : Getting past stumbling blocks

Inevitably, stumbling blocks appear during sales negotiations. Here are a few simple ideas for helping your prospect get past the problem and get the opportunity back on track.
• How do we get past this?
• If we could find a solution to this issue, would you want to proceed (check that the issue is not just an excuse/objection)
• Have you ever come across issues like this before? How did you solve these issues last time? Is that a possible solution here?
More questions for you to use in your selling coming soon. Bookmark/RSS SalesItch now…. And don’t forget to add a comment to share your favourite questions with the community!

Future Shock

I've done a few different sales jobs in my time (he says stroking his old salesman's beard) and the most difficult to get to grips with was the one which involved selling solutions that cost a lot, but offered little gain to the prospect's present position.

So, how can that be? Surely buyers only buy to gain on their current position? Stop and think - that's actually not correct. The situation was that the industry in which they worked was changing significantly. It was necessary for the prospects to invest heavily to, at best, maintain their current business avoid future loss. The pain/problem was in the future and they knew they had to do something about it.

There are 3 important points to make here:
1. When the pain/problem is in the future, it is not there to be inspected and studied by the prospect as a currently existing pain is. This means there is a good deal of flexibility in how you describe and help the prospect envision the issues they have to face, which means great opportunity for you to present the appropriate solution (i.e. yours).
2. When selling in this way, prospects often really don't want to know. They will be deep in denial. It's a case of "don't shoot the messenger...". The very best question for selling future pains/problems, "Let's say you decide to proceed as you currently are. What impact is (future pain/problem) likely to have had in X years time? And X years?"
3. The biggest challenge here is to get action and commitment now. Future pains/problems can struggle to motivate present investment.

Sales questions : Discovering buyer’s process

If you have ever had an opportunity stall for X months when your prospect tells you of some new board/procedure/process, you’ll know that having a good knowledge of their buying process is vital in helping you plan actions, forecast close and provide the appropriate support to your sponsor. Here are a few ways to ask your prospect about their processes.
• What happens from here? How do you go about coming to a decision?
• Do you have an internal process for making decisions on issues like this?
• Could you take me through what’s going to happen on your side from here?
• Can you run me through the process you would use to buy from us?
More questions for you to use in your selling coming soon. Bookmark/RSS SalesItch now…. And don’t forget to add a comment to share your favourite questions with the community!