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!