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!