The sales field is full of people who consider themselves to be experts. They have many years of experience and they have amassed a great amount of product knowledge. In spite of that, many of them consistently underperform, and in many cases this problem is caused by the fact that they believe themselves to be such experts that they don’t feel any need to expand their skill sets or learn anything new. This not only leads to complacency, it also leads to the real possibility that they will be passed by others who constantly sharpen their skills and leverage new technologies to create advantages where others find obstacles. We call these other people “highly successful sales professionals.”

In too many sales organizations, the focus of sales training begins and ends with product knowledge. Sales team members are required to become experts on every aspect of the products and the solution sets the company has to offer. The training program may also include some indoctrination into a sales process, but the sales process is too often seen as a vehicle for guiding any sales conversation back to a discussion of the products and solutions the sales professional wants to push. The problem with this approach to sales training is subtly deceptive, because it leads the sales professional to assume that selling is all about his products and solutions; all he has to do is find a way to convince the customer to think the same way.

This assumption is wrong. More than ever, the sales conversation must be focused on the needs the customer has, the outcomes he wants to achieve, and how the sales professional can help the customer achieve those outcomes. Especially given the present market conditions, customers will not stay in relationships with vendors who don’t know how to uncover their needs and partner with them to find creative solutions that will deliver outcomes tailored to meet those specific needs. Customers are no longer just looking for someone who is an expert on products and solutions; customers today are looking for vendors who are willing to become experts on them and their business challenges.

Here is the problem even experienced sales professionals run into when they put their faith in their expertise. In his new book, How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer cites a research study done by U.C. Berkeley professor Philip Tetlock. Tetlock questioned 284 people who made their living “commenting or offering advice on political and economic trends,” asking them to make predictions about future events. Over the course of the study, Tetlock collected quantitative data on over 82,000 predictions, as well as information from follow-up interviews with the subjects about the thought processes they’d used to come to those predictions. 

His findings were surprising. Most of Tetlock’s questions about the future events were put in the form of specific, multiple choice questions, with three possible answers. But for all their expertise, the pundits’ predictions turned out to be correct less than 33% of the time. Which meant, as Lehrer puts it, that a “dart-throwing chimp” would have had a higher rate of success. Tetlock also found that the least accurate predictions were made by the most famous experts in the group. 

Why was that? According to Lehrer,

“The central error diagnosed by Tetlock was the sin of certainty, which led the ‘experts’ to impose a top-down solution on their decision-making processes.”

In other words, they considered themselves to be EXPERTS, so they didn’t ask enough questions or do enough research to confirm their opinions.

Sales professionals are subject to making the same mistakes when they begin working with customers. Instead of making assumptions based on their “expertise,” they should set their opinions aside for the moment and focus instead on the customer and do everything they can to gain a full understanding of the customer’s situation. Unfortunately, any sales professional – and there are too many of them still in this category – whose training is product-centered, simply will not have the skills to effectively conduct customer-centered interactions. If they don’t acquire these skills in a hurry, their productivity will soon enter into a steady decline.

The highly successful sales professional is able to adapt and grow in any market environment precisely because they aren’t satisfied with their present level of competency, as useful as that may be. Instead, they constantly ask themselves two questions: 1) what do I need to learn that I don’t know now, and 2) what do I need to do to be more effective? With these questions as a backdrop, here are a few principles sales professionals can follow to stay in the habit of learning and developing their skills:

Refine your ability to ask good questions and be a good listener in every situation: This is the best defense against the sin of certainty, but it is more powerful than you can imagine. Effective questioning skills can be used to open conversations, build rapport, identify needs, clarify desired outcomes, differentiate between options, uncover more needs, introduce proposed solutions, set up benefit statements, and test for agreement before closing. It is almost impossible to ask too many questions, and every answer has the potential for unlocking more opportunities. In addition to being experts on products, sales professionals should make a career-long effort to become experts at asking questions.

Read, read, and then read some more. Read as much as you can about trends and news of the industries into which you are selling. This is perhaps one of the most important and easiest professional development exercises a sales professional must engage in. Customers expect their sales representatives to know more about their industries than they do, not less. Customers don’t want to educate you on industry or company trends, this is information that any sales professional must know. If you do nothing else, do this critical step. 

Become a life-long student of the art of selling: Read books on sales effectiveness, participate in regular coaching with your sales manager, attend seminars and training events at least annually on sales effectiveness, and immerse yourself in the culture of sales effectiveness and transformation. NFL quarterbacks are among the highest paid and most respected players on their teams, yet they attend training camp right along with the rookies, and they take five times as many snaps during each practice as all the back-up quarterbacks combined. They do this not because they aren’t good at what they do; they do it because they want to be the best at what they do and they know there is always room for improvement. The future success of the whole team depends on it.

Always be on the look-out for skill gaps – Just because you are pretty good at something doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try to become even better at it. For instance, most top sellers report that they may rely on up to eight different closing techniques during the course of wrapping up a deal. If you only know three or four, and you are only really comfortable using two, what does that say about your chances of becoming much more productive? Fill the gaps and grow your business.   As soon as you think you know everything, that’s when trouble shows up. No one ever knows everything and there isn’t a single person on this planet that can’t improve or develop some area.

Become highly proficient at using technology – The Sales 2.0 revolution has rewritten the book on selling. Customers are now able to access almost as much information about your company and your products as you can, and they can definitely access what the blogs and customer ratings are saying about you. Your only defense is to become just as good, if not better, at leveraging technology to better prepare you to interact with customers.

·         Leverage the resources of the Internet – First of all, this means using the wealth of information available on the Internet to do things like conduct research on specific companies and prospective accounts to learn as much as you can about them before you even make the first call. Customers are always impressed to learn that you cared enough to do your homework. However, these days you will also quickly lose credibility with busy executives by asking them basic questions that anyone with some initiative would have answered already by doing simple Internet research. Also, track what the blogs are saying about your company and your products, as well as what they are saying about your competitors. The Internet is also the best place to get a quick pulse for what is happening in the markets your customers are focused on, and help you spot trends so you can discuss them with your customer, and possibly help them prepare to address them.

·         Become an enthusiastic adopter of CRM technology – Many sales professionals have a built in suspicion of their company’s CRM because of the perception that is only used as a sales accounting tool, and thus a way to monitor their performance. A lot of companies have still failed to grasp the power of the CRM to drive revenue, but those who have are experiencing unprecedented increases in productivity because of the efficiencies and opportunities that can be leveraged through the CRM. Once you learn how to configure the CRM and enter and track activities, you will be able to do track things like:

§  Lead conversion ratio

§  Lead response time ratio

§  Pipeline to revenue target ratio

§  Year over year pipeline trend ratio

§  Time per sales stage ratio

§  Average Revenue per sale

§  Account share ratio

§  Account profitability ratio

§  Year over year sales trend ratio

§  Win-Loss ratio

§  All contacts on every account opportunity

§  Number and nature of interactions with each contact

§  Marketing info pushed out and response to each

§  The list is almost endless, and each action and activity allows you to be more responsive, more knowledgeable, and more able to deliver real value to your customers.

The customers are more demanding than ever and the competition is better than ever; you can no longer rely on doing what you have always done and maybe just working at it harder. The burden is now on you to work smarter. Today, if you are not in the habit of continually learning and developing your skills, you are losing revenue and customers to the people who are. They are the ones we call highly successful sales professionals.

Action Items:

·         How often do you find yourself approaching a customer feeling like you have a pretty good idea of exactly how the call is going to go? What can you do to guard against the sin of certainty?

·         Do have a sales effectiveness improvement plan that pushes you to regularly grow and update your skills? If not, use the principles raised in this article to help you design one.

·         Are the Internet and the CRM a major part of your strategy for working with customers? What can you do to make sure you are leveraging your CRM to the fullest to help you drive revenue?

Even in the best of times, sales is a challenging way to earn a living. When economic conditions are uncertain and business cycles slow down, the pressure on sales professionals to perform is very intense. Competition becomes ferocious and margins shrink. Some sales professionals, looking for an edge to help retire quota and drive business, may be tempted to generate leverage any way they can, if it will help close deals. Unfortunately, in this drive to succeed, it becomes easy to cut corners, bend the facts and rationalize a host of unethical behaviors. The sales professional may win a few deals this way, but he is not likely to win many long-term customers.

Highly successful sales professionals realize that it takes openness, honesty, and a distinct lack of self-interest deployed over time to create the level of trust with a customer necessary to build a solid relationship. This includes not only delivering great products and services, but it also includes avoiding questionable – sometimes downright unethical – tactics that might help produce a short-term gain but which are almost certain to have a long-term negative impact on the relationship. Customers don’t appreciate being manipulated, and when they discover they have been taken advantage of by a sales professional, not only will the account be lost, but the reputation of the sales professional may be lost right along with it.

If you want to stay in the habit of doing all things with integrity, pay close attention to these guidelines:

Avoid selling a solution that isn’t in the customer’s best interest –   Sometimes you just don’t have the right solution at the right price. If that is the case, it is always best to be honest with the customer, instead of proposing something which might be in their price range, but which you know will not fully deliver the outcome the customer is looking for. If you can’t find a creative solution that will meet all of the customer’s needs, consider introducing them to someone you’ve partnered with that can help fill their need.  This introduction can come in two forms. The first is to a company where you have a formal referral revenue sharing agreement. The second is to someone you know that can help, but with whom you don’t have a revenue sharing agreement.  Either is better than doing nothing and walking away.  The customer will appreciate your sincere care for their requirements and remember you next time they have a need.  The person you are referring to the customer will also appreciate it for obvious reasons and one day will more than likely repay the favor. No matter what, never do a deal just to earn a commission if it is going to hurt the customer in the long run.

Never misrepresent the features, advantages and benefits of a product or service – This issue is very closely aligned to the previous one. To a certain degree, the customer depends on you to be the expert on your products and services. If you say it will perform to certain specifications, they expect you to tell the truth. Also, if there are known issues with the product that make it unsuitable for certain applications, they expect you to reveal those, too.  Customers don’t want a product or solution that comes close to meeting their needs, or that usually functions properly. Give them the whole, unvarnished truth, and let them decide if the proposed solution will work for them.

Don’t promise anything you can’t deliver – Logically, the more promises and guarantees you are able to give to a customer, the more secure they will feel in doing business with you. For that reason, some sales professionals find it very difficult to say no to the customer about anything. Overpromising resources – in which a sales professional tells the customer that a certain solution with specific features and benefits will be delivered by a specific deadline - is a common problem. The customer may walk away in happy anticipation of the exciting solution that will soon be deployed, the sales professional may walk away in happy anticipation of adding this commission to his total for the quarter, but back at the home office the people who are actually charged with building and delivering the solution may be furious because there is no way to develop and deliver something that will meet the customer’s elevated expectations in time to meet the deadline. The simplest way to avoid this problem is to coordinate with all departments before making customers promises, especially when their requests are out of scope with the normal fulfillment parameters or your company.

Accepting or offering bribes or gifts is always unethical – There is perhaps no brighter ethical line sales professionals must not cross than the one prohibiting off-the books inducements. Bribes and gifts corrupt the process and the players, leaving an unbalanced playing field that puts everyone else in the market place at a disadvantage. This is not only a rule of best practice, it is also spelled out in laws that regulate many industries and markets. In spite of that, the temptation to play this game is extremely strong, and the rationalizations to break the rules are insidious. After all, it is “only” tickets to the game, or a night at the theater, or a few rounds of golf, or a weekend at Aspen. Not only do these inducements create an unfair advantage for the parties involved, they also establish a pattern of behavior for doing business going forward. If the only reason the other party is doing business with you is the extra “value” you have offered to him, it is likely that the only way to hold on to the account is to continue to offer these inducements, and that can create even greater problems going forward. Most companies have specific policies in place that address gift giving and receiving. It is important to know these policies and adhere by them.

Keep pricing consistent to all departments within the same company. – In many large corporations, the procurement process for different business silos is often handled by separate purchasing entities. This could present the sales professional the “opportunity” of pricing the exact same products and services differently to various departments. Is this illegal? No. Will it poison the relationship and kill the account if the discrepancy is every discovered? Absolutely!

When problems develop after the sale, don’t make excuses and don’t place blame; fix the problem – It is not unusual for problems to develop after the sale. Maybe it is a delivery issue; maybe there was a problem in the production or development process. Perhaps there were supply chain disruptions in another country. It doesn’t make any difference what caused the problem, the customer is only concerned about when the problem will be corrected. Don’t waste the customer’s time blaming someone else, even if someone else dropped the ball. The customer isn’t interested in your internal process issues. You are the face of the company, you are the person he trusted, you are the one he is depending on to make things right, and you are the one that needs to “own” making things right, and not because you don’t want to lose the commission or next sale, but because it is your duty as sales professional to delivery on the promise you made.

Don’t withhold bad news – This is related to the previous principle. The sales professional may often become aware that there is a problem with the propposed solution for a particular account before the customer is, especially if it is a delivery, supply chain, or production issue. Bad news never gets better by hiding it. As soon as you know there is a problem, contact the customer immediately. His plans and maybe even his business is going to be impacted by this delay. You must respect him enough to alert him quickly and work with him to find and creatively address any difficulties while the bigger problem is being solved. If you think the customer will be upset when you tell him the bad news, just imagine how much more upset he will be when he finds out you found out the bad news three weeks ago and hid it from him.

If and when you must speak of the competition, be respectful at all times – Some sales professionals seem to think that “trash-talking” the competition will make his own products and services look better. Usually, it only makes him look petty and immature in the eyes of the customer (especially if the customer happens to have friends working for your competitor). Believe in your products and services; be enthusiastic about them and offer the customer real value. Don’t waste time reminding the customer about your competition. It is always okay to respectfully ask about the competition and find out as much as you can about their products, services, prices, terms, etc., but that is as far as you should take the conversation.

Always honor the relationships that other sales professionals have with their accounts - Stealing accounts from your team members is just that – stealing. It is taking money out of their pocket and bread off of their table. There are numerous ways that you can insinuate yourself into a relationship with someone else’s account; taking a phone message, helping out as an SME, responding to an urgent request because you were already in the neighborhood and could get there faster than the account owner. However you should only and always see these encounters as opportunities to serve someone else’s customer for what they are – opportunities to serve, not opportunities to build your own customer base. Even if the customer continues to reach out to you after the fact, graciously refer all calls to the account owner.

And finally: make promises and keep them: Above all, you must do what you say, when you said you would do it.  This one skill alone will put you head and shoulders above your competition. With deadlines shrinking, email out of control, and work life spilling into home life, it is easy to forget or delay commitments made to others. Don’t do it!  If you tell someone you will deliver a proposal on specific date, do it. If you tell someone you will introduce them to someone they want to meet, do it.  Don’t make excuses for yourself or try to justify and rationalize your inability to follow through; that’s what everyone else is doing. Don’t let yourself believe for one minute that missing deadlines and breaking promises is acceptable, because it is not.  Do what it takes to follow up and follow through. 

From time to time, an unforeseen circumstance will prevent you from keeping your commitment, a death in the family, perhaps, or an unplanned trip or illness. In circumstances like these, and only when it is unavoidable that you miss your deadline, inform the other party as soon as you know that you won’t make the deadline.  Don’t let the deadline pass and then inform them, do it in advance. It will be an appreciated gesture that won’t be forgotten, and in fact will be forgiven easily since you’ve always met all your other deadlines in the past. The ability to make and keep promises forms the basis of rock solid relationships that are more valuable than gold in today’s volatile economy. Nothing evokes trust and respect – and inspires repeat business — like being a person who keeps their word.

Action Items:

·         Take an ethics inventory: Go back over all the principles in discussed in this article. Have you ever violated any of these principles? Which ones? How often? How long ago? How did that work out for you?

·         If you have ignored one of these principles in the past, take a moment to reflect on the outcome. Was that the only way to win the business? Are you sure? Did you ignore other options because they seemed too hard or too slow?

·         Which one of these principles do you find it hardest to adhere to? Said another way, which of these principles are you most often tempted to ignore? How do you hold yourself accountable to high ethical standards when the pressure to cut corners and produce more is so strong?

According to legendary New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra, “90% of baseball is mental. The other half is physical.”  Clearly, Yogi – despite his fractured math - could have also been a legendary sales professional if he had wanted to be, because that is exactly the same formula that highly successful sales professionals live by every day. To be perfectly clear, there is a physical, functional, tactical side to selling. Product knowledge, presentation skills, proficiency in the use of the CRM and other Sales 2.0 strategies – these are all vital for achieving sales success. But in the end, Yogi hits the nail square on the head; the biggest key to success is 90% mental.

We all know that selling can be a tough business. When the economy is down or the competition is tough, sales professionals start hearing a lot of “Nos,” which can be devastating. It is not unusual for the average sales professional to lower their aspirations, and begin to doubt their abilities at times like this. Highly successful sales professionals, however, don’t allow temporary setbacks to define them. That is what makes them highly successful. It is also what leaves the rest of us wondering, “How do they do it?”

First of all, let’s clear about one thing: Highly successful sales professionals are human, just like everyone else. It is not that they never get frustrated or experience a let-down when a promising deal falls through; they are subject to those inner voices that try to plant discouragement and doubt, just as are we all. However, what separates highly successful sales professionals from the rest of the herd is the mental and emotional discipline they are able to bring to bear at such times that helps them to stay focused and constructive. The good news is that anyone can learn to apply this discipline and focus in their own lives, and reap the benefits as well.

To achieve Yogi’s 90% mental benchmark, highly successful sales professionals lay a strong foundation built on four solid pillars:

Believe in your product – Some sales professionals see selling as just a job. It pays the bills and it is better than being a door greeter at a discount retailer, and with that attitude, they are able to make an okay living selling anything to anyone. On the other hand, highly successful sales professionals are passionate about the products and services they sell, and are unabashedly enthusiastic about the value and benefits they bring to their customers. Yes, they also care about closing business and driving revenue, but it is also very important to them to know that what they offer their customers is exceptional in every sense of the word. The confidence they have in their product helps to motivate them, even when the market is rough, because they know they have good news for someone today.

Believe in your training – Effective training is a key component of selling success, and we are not just talking about product training or being able to run a demo. Anyone who can read a brochure or a spec sheet can come away with a decent grasp of product knowledge. What we are really talking about here is solid, in-depth training in sales process, consultative skills, customer relationship strategies, sales effectiveness with CRM, and a host of other skills and capabilities to help the sales professional feel confident in any customer-facing situation. When a sales professional receives this kind of training, and when it is reinforced by regular, focused coaching, it delivers a steady boost of positive mental energy that the highly successful sales professional can leverage to overcome temporary setbacks.

Believe in your company/organization – This is not exactly the same as believing in your product. If the company culture doesn’t have a strong commitment to treating customers well, and also treating sales professionals well, then a lot of the joy of selling evaporates as the sales professional spends too much time fighting the organization and its policies, either on behalf of himself or his customers. The resulting burn out can quickly lead to discouragement, lower productivity, and, ultimately, to the sales professional leaving the organization in search of a place where the opportunity for success on their terms is greater.

These first three pillars are certainly important keys to helping a sales professional maintain a positive attitude. If you believe in your product, your training, and your organization, then your emotional energy can be channeled into being proactive and creative in the face of market adversities, instead of being flamed off as frustration in other areas. However, these three pillars alone can’t consistently deliver a positive attitude. In many ways, the fourth pillar is the most important attitude pillar of all:

Believe in yourself – Entire books and sales courses have been built around this topic. It is huge; it is the holy grail of creating and maintaining a consistently positive mental focus. Right now we will focus on a very important principle:

Situations don’t cause emotions. It is what we believe about the situation that causes our emotions to it, and our emotions usually determine how we will react.

This is a universal principle of human behavior, but here is a very simplified example of how it applies to sales.

Bob, to sales manager: “This economy is terrible. No one is buying. My customers hate me. I can’t get past the gatekeeper at my biggest opportunity. There is too much competition. I can’t sell anything. I give up.”

Sales manager: “Really, what makes you say that?”

Bob: “Over the past week, I bet I have made 200 calls and I can’t get anyone to set an appointment. Obviously, I don’t have a chance.”

Sales manager: “Hmm, that’s odd. I was talking to Amanda this morning and she was actually excited today. She told me that, even though she had made 200 calls this week with no luck yet, she was convinced her luck was about to change. She refocused her strategy, refined her presentation, and has narrowed her target prospect set to maximize the impact of her new presentation. She was really pumped when I talked to her.”

Bob and Amanda both had the same situation: 200 calls and no appointments. Bob believed this meant there was no opportunity for him and no option but to fail, so he was ready to quit. However, Amanda, rather than blaming the economy or the prospects, believed this to be a temporary slump that could be rectified by changing her approach. To her, the situation represented an opportunity to succeed by learning something new, so she got right to work on a new strategy.

Respected motivational speaker and life coach Tony Robbins would say that Amanda has learned to “tell herself a different story” about her situation and her options. Bob looked at his slump and told himself that he was going to fail. Amanda looked at her slump and told herself that if she would change her strategy and learn to do some things differently, her chances of success would go way up. It isn’t hard to predict which story will have the happier ending.

Highly successful sales professionals never let the situation – i.e., the economy or the competition or the customer – define them or dictate their attitudes and emotions. Instead, they believe in their product, they believe in their training, they believe in their organization and – most of all – they believe in themselves and their ability to adapt, grow and learn from any situation to achieve greater success. That is the story they tell themselves, and they stick to it, no matter what.

Take me back to the ball game

Returning to the baseball metaphor in closing, what pitcher has won more games than any other pitcher in the history of Major League Baseball? The answer is Cy Young, who won an astonishing 511 games between 1890 and 1911. As a matter of fact, his name is on the award that is given every year to the best pitcher in each league. Now, this next question is a little trickier. What pitcher LOST more games than any other pitcher in the history of Major League Baseball? The answer is Cy Young! Between 1890 and 1911 the winningest pitcher in the history of baseball was also the loser a whopping 316 times! And just to add insult to injury, this pitcher — whose job it is to get people out — also gave up more hits than any other pitcher in history – 7,092 to be exact. That brings up another record held by Cy Young – most runs given up: 2,147.

Okay, so where are going with all of this? We are simply trying to point out that the most revered and honored pitcher in the history of baseball also holds all the records for being the biggest LOSER! But in baseball, just like in sales or in life, even when you lose some, you still have a chance to recover and come out a winner. Cy Young didn’t quit the game because of a few losses. He loved the game, he loved to play, and he knew he was good. But most of all, he knew that the key to being a winner is 90% mental, and went to work every day expecting to win. Highly successful sales professionals believe – and act – in exactly the same way.

Action Items:

·         Take an attitude inventory: On a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the highest, do you:

§  Believe in your product

§  Believe in your training

§  Believe in your organization

§  If you score a 3 or below on any of these, you are likely to have attitude problems. If your cumulative score for all three is less than 10, you are definitely likely to have attitude problems that will make it hard for you to keep a positive mental attitude and become a highly successful sales professional.

·         Thought experiment: What kind of stories do you tell yourself when you hit a slump when deals aren’t closing or margins are too low? Do you make excuses, rationalize, blame the economy or the customer? What would happen if you told yourself a different story? What could you tell yourself that would help you reframe the situation and focus on actions that would lead to a different outcome?

Typical sales pros are excited (and a little relieved) whenever they close a deal. Highly successful sales professionals are usually just as glad, but they understand something that a lot of less successful sales pros don’t realize: closing the deal is simply one step along the road to even greater success if they will only stay committed to following through with this customer.

Highly successful sales professionals spend 10% of their resources educating the universe, promoting the business to the community at large. They spend 30% of their time cultivating relationships with prospective customers. But they spend a whopping 60% of their time and creative energy continuing to cultivate trust and explore opportunities with existing customers. According to the Harvard Business Review, it costs five times as much to sell a new customer as it does to make the same sale to an existing customer. Also, typically, the 10^th purchase from an existing customer is 80% larger than the first purchase. For this reason, successful sales professionals will stay in regular contact with their existing customers to make sure that the solution they bought is working well, and to quickly address any questions or problems that arise. They treat customers more like friends than as sources of revenue.

The question then becomes a fairly simple one: What can sales professionals do to consistently model commitment to their customers in a way that will reinforce trust and credibility, and create more opportunities to drive revenue going forward. Sales teams often deploy a variety of strategies in hopes of accomplishing this goal, often with limited effectiveness. When all else fails, it never hurts to ask your customers how they view this idea of commitment and what they value in a vendor relationship. A few years ago, a major Fortune 500 company actually took the proactive step of asking their customers these questions, and they were surprised by the depth and the honesty of the answers they received. They distilled the responses down to five major behaviors customers look for in vendors that demonstrate commitment and help build trust:

1. Anticipating potential problems and acting to avert them – Customers depend on account representatives to be their eyes, ears, and advocates to monitor issues related to their account – anything from billing to fulfillment to delivery – and make sure that any issues are dealt with quickly and equitably. Customer do not like surprises, and they expect for their account reps to take care of them, rather than disappearing after the contract is signed and only surfacing again when it is time to renew.  

2. Keeping the customer informed of trends and issues that are relevant to his or her business – It is certainly true that the customer has a significant responsibility to monitor trends and issues in the market place that could impact their business. However, in these days where markets and public policies can shift almost overnight, it is extremely difficult for a customer who is totally consumed with running his business to stay on top of everything. Customers always appreciate it when the sales professional contacts them with timely information that could either protect their business or help them take advantage of emerging opportunities and solutions.

3. Planning with the customer in order to meet his or her business objectives – Sales professionals are uniquely positioned to provide insights and strategic advice to their customers, based on the fact that the sales professional has a broad range of industry experience and can draw on insights and ideas gleaned from working with a variety of customers. This wealth of information makes the sales professional an invaluable resource to a customer who is trying to refine goals and create strategies to move forward and solve for critical business objectives. Even though it might not result in immediate new business, a sales professional who is willing to sit down and lend his expertise to a customer in a way that results in clarity and provides tangible benefits to the customer is demonstrating the type of commitment that always pays off in the long run.

4. Offering the customer innovative ideas and solutions –A surprising number of sales professionals are too often content to simply offer standard, out-of-the-box solutions to customers, based on whatever is in the catalogue or on sale at the time. In the new economic paradigm, customers are more sophisticated, more informed, and more demanding. They are no longer content to passively accept whatever the sales professional has to offer. Instead, customers expect – and often demand – that sales professionals work with them to create unique solutions tailored to help them achieve the exact business outcomes they require. When a sales professional demonstrates that level of creativity, collaborative initiative, and patience, the customer reads that as an indicator of the sales professional’s level of commitment to help him succeed, instead of simply being interested in making a sale.

5. Adapting products and services to meet the customer’s specific needs – In some ways, this is an extension of the previous behavior, with one important addition. Once the customer and the sales professional have collaborated to develop an innovative new solution, the sales professional may then have to go back to his company and advocate for this unique solution with his manager and possibly even senior executives. While sales professionals must be careful not to promise solutions they can’t deliver, they must also be willing to engage with the home office and create buy-in for solutions that are possible, even though they might require others to think outside of the box, too. Nothing says commitment to a customer like a sales professional who is willing to “go to the mat” for them back home.

When sales professionals demonstrate this kind of committed behavior with customers, it is almost certain to enhance credibility, cement trust, create more and larger opportunities, and drive new revenues. Given the higher rate of return on these types of customer relationships, it is absolutely essential for sales professionals to devote significant time and energy to the commitment-building process. The challenge, though, is that not all of these behaviors are going to immediately lead to revenue opportunities. They are important for preserving and strengthening the relationship, but it will not always put something in the pipeline for this quarter. So, while you are staying engaged at all levels with existing customers, it is also important to continue prospecting and developing new accounts.

This is where things start to bog down. In the urgent pursuit of new accounts, the sales professional may tend to “back burner” any activities with existing customers that don’t have the potential to drive immediate revenue, and over time his commitment level, along with the customer’s trust level, will begin to diminish. For this reason, sales professionals must PLAN commitment activities for all their key accounts, even if these activities aren’t mapped to an immediate income opportunity. Remember, highly successful sales professionals spend 60% of their time cultivating existing relationships, because that is where the big money is.

A few suggested best practices to keep you focused in this area include:

·         Build time into your regular cadence of activities to review your relationship with your key accounts

·         Be on the lookout for any issues or trends in the marketplace that could have impact on the success of your key accounts

·         Plan regular check-in visits with each of these customers. Have an agenda of questions to ask or issues to discuss that can help identify issues within the account relationship or within the market space that could have an impact on the customer’s success or the health of the account.

·         Map all of these activities in your CRM so that they are regularly tracked and updated. Don’t trust your success with these accounts to your memory, your good intentions, or notes you scribble down on the back of an envelope.

·         Be focused and intentional to demonstrate commitment to these accounts at all times. Don’t make excuses, don’t hope for the best; be present and proactive and it will result in greater success for the customer and for you.

Action Items

Review all of the above best practices and make sure they are all implemented in your regular account activities.

Some sales professionals become a little uneasy when it comes to measuring performance. They are uncomfortable with pipeline reviews and evaluation sessions (unless they have had a good month and the forecast is positive). When the numbers are low, their anxiety usually begins to climb. Why? Because poor performance feels like failure in the minds of most sales professionals, and the fact that many sales managers tend to react negatively to low numbers only reinforces that feeling of failure.

This anxiety over measuring performance is one reason some sales professionals are slow/resistant when it comes to CRM adoption; after all, why go out of your way to create a data trail that can be used against you during your next review? However, this anxiety is not only misplaced, it could also reinforce a cycle of poor performance that could eventually lead to truly bad news.

If you are a sales professional who dreads dealing with sales metrics, here is a piece of advice: don’t shoot the messenger. The fact is that – seen from a certain perspective -  sales metrics are simply neutral indicators that help track underlying processes that have intrinsic value. Sales metrics function in the same way that the oil light does on the dashboard of your car. If the light comes on, the problem isn’t with the light, the problem is with the engine. It doesn’t help to say, “I hate that oil light; it really bothers me. I don’t see why I should have to look at that light all the time.” By looking at the light, you are being given important information about the condition of your engine, so that you have a chance to find and fix the problem before it is too late. That is exactly what sales metrics do; they point you to activities and issues that are vital to the engine that drives your revenue, and not only should they be taken seriously, they exist to provide you a roadmap to future success.

Highly successful sales professionals understand that the secret to success is in the metrics – whether they are trending up or down – because those numbers always have something to teach us. Are the numbers up? That is good, but don’t stop there; find out why they are up so you can replicate those behaviors or conditions and keep leveraging them for more success.

Are the numbers down? Don’t panic, everyone – even a highly successful sales professional — has a poor quarter occasionally. In this economy, a lot of people are struggling and it is nothing to be ashamed of. The good news is that even when the numbers are down, they are still pointing the way toward success. Study the numbers and make sure you understand what they are measuring, so you can find out where the problem is and address it. The more closely you follow the numbers, the faster you can identify issues and the sooner you can implement new strategies that will help drive you to greater success. To ignore the numbers is to guarantee the problematic trend will continue, and there is no way that will end well for you.

So, the most important question is, “What should you measure?” Highly successful sales professionals measure everything, not just the number and margin of the deals at the end of the quarter. Those numbers only tell one small part of the story. More importantly, those  numbers alone won’t explain how you got there or where to go from here. For that, you have to look at the numbers behind the numbers. Quantifying and evaluating every sales activity related to every opportunity will uncover the truth and point the way to more success in a way that simply counting the money can never do.

If you want to produce accurate sales forecasts, manage the forward pipeline, develop better account plans, or develop a targeted performance improvement plan, you must track a variety of sales performance activities on a regular basis. In this way, you will be able to adjust to rapidly changing market conditions and implement effective new strategies that will help you close business faster, at higher margins and drive greater revenues year over year.

Here are some of the key sales performance activities you might want to track on a weekly basis in order to determine how effective you will be at reaching your goals:

·         How many times do you convert a lead into a Meaningful Interaction

·         How many times do you advance the first sales appointment to the next stage (demonstration, send information, survey, proposal, etc.)? Are you doing it often enough to create solid streams of new opportunities that will help you meet your goals?

·         How often, or how quickly, are you able to penetrate an account and build relationships with decision makers? If you aren’t making progress fast enough, do you know why? What are the roadblocks? Where do you need to improve your skill set? If you have recently seen improvement in this area, what have you started doing that you need to keep doing?

·         When you do win a new account, what’s the average revenue achieved? Are you on track with what you forecast? If not, are you leaving money on the table? What do you need to do better to get pick that money up next time?

·         How do any of the above metrics relate to your goals and account plan? Are you on track to achieve the results you projected? If not, where do you need to make adjustments to get back on track BEFORE the deal is done and the money is counted?

You can ask similar questions around:

·         Lead conversion ratio

·         Lead response time ratio

·         Pipeline to revenue target ratio

·         Year over year pipeline trend ratio

·         Time per sales stage ratio

·         Average Revenue per sale

·         Account share ratio

·         Account profitability ratio

·         Year over year sales trend ratio

·         Win-Loss ratio

The point is, the more you measure, the more you learn about what your strengths and weaknesses are, where you need to adjust your game plan, where you are consistently most successful, where your best opportunities are, and what skills you either need to use more often (because they really work) or what skills you need to work on (because you will drive more revenue if you do). Above all, don’t resent the CRM; the CRM is your friend, as well as your best tool for putting all of this critical information right at your fingertips.

You have probably heard this said numerous times: information is power. Nothing could be truer when we think about achieving exceptional success as sales professionals. Maybe you are happy with what the metrics tell you; maybe you are not. That doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that the information woven into those numbers will help you map your way forward. Once you have evaluated that information, you will have the power you need to change your professional DNA and push your success to the next level. And keep it there.

Action Items:

·         Make sure you have a plan in place to measure a set of key performance indicators on a weekly basis, even if your sales manager doesn’t require it. In this area, your expectations of yourself must be higher than theirs.

·         Do you have your CRM configured in such a way that it will deliver you timely information on all of your performance indicators? Do you know now to access and leverage this information to drive behavior change for yourself? If you aren’t already, become the resident expert on how to leverage the information in the CRM to help you change behavior and drive revenue.

·         If you don’t have a set of performance indicators that you follow regularly, sit down with your sales manager and create a set, and establish a cadence for regularly reviewing and adjusting your account plans, goals, and behaviors based on the information you find there.

In a typical sales process, the emphasis is generally on identifying the decision maker and doing whatever you can to get in front of them with your offer. Certainly, it is true that it is hard to close a deal without the support of the decision maker. However, in most organizations, the decision maker is connected to and supported by a larger network of team members, many of whom can have an impact on the outcome of the deal. Highly successful sales professionals never underestimate the need to build relationships and trust with this larger network in order to gain insights into the organization and create credibility for their offer when they finally get in front of the decision maker.

At the heart of the practice of strategic account management is the ability/necessity to go deeper and wider inside the target account, developing relationships with, and understanding the needs of, an ever-widening network of contacts. This network of people will often cross functions and departments within the customer organization. However, your relationship with each of them will contribute to your ability to grow the trust level you have with the decision maker, which means you must keep the quality of your interaction consistent with each of them. This widening network of contacts is sometimes referred to as the Circle of Influence, and it can be broken down into four categories.

1.    Financial focus: This person is usually a decision maker with financial responsibilities (purchasing/procurement manager, CFO, etc.) who can give the final ‘yes’ for the purchase; they are looking for savings and focused on budget constraints. If they don’t trust your ability to deliver a solution that is within the budget, they can usually block the deal from moving forward, even if the Decision Maker likes some aspects of your offer.

2.    Functional focus: This person might be in charge of manufacturing or some other production related activity. The Decision Maker may be the one to green light the purchase, but this person may be primarily responsible for implementing the solution and using it every day. If you want them to support your proposed solution to the Decision Maker, you will need to spend time building trust with them and understanding their needs, so they will be assured you can deliver the consistency, productivity, quality and reliability they need.

3.    Technical focus: This person could be associated with any team or department within the organization, though they are often found in IT. Wherever they are, they are highly concerned about the fine points of any proposed solution option. They will want the specs; they will compare all options; and they usually prefer the latest and best technology. They are not particularly price sensitive; they could be willing to pay top dollar as long as they are convinced that your solution is delivering the absolutely best value.

4.    Gatekeepers: These persons are admins who support any of the key people you need to talk to, including any of the above, along with the Decision Maker. They are primarily interested in making their boss successful. They provide services that will help the boss be more efficient and reach important goals. For that reason, one of the things Gatekeepers do is limit access to the boss. Keep in mind that when Gatekeepers block your way, it isn’t personal. They are doing their jobs, that’s all. So, even though the Gatekeeper may seem like a small cog in the machine, it is critically important you build trust with them first, because if you don’t, you’ll never get the chance to build it with the decision maker. The best way to build trust with a Gatekeeper is to communicate through your attitude and actions that your goal is to help their boss be successful. It may take some time to build this level of credibility and trust, but once they understand that you can provide value to the boss, they will be much more cooperative with you.

Expanding relationships starts with the account plan

Developing an effective strategy for building relationships across the organization starts during the account planning process. It is here that you must begin to map out everything you possibly can about the structure of the customer’s organization. Don’t just limit your research to the Decision Maker; develop as much background as you can on everyone in the Decision Maker’s Circle of Influence who could have an impact on the sales process.

The obvious question becomes, “how do I generate this information?” In the old days, this might require you to spend a lot of time on the phone, or even time burning shoe leather moving from department to department, but not anymore. Highly successful sales professionals have learned to leverage the technological advantages of the Internet to speed up the process of mapping out their contact list.

You might consider an application like Jigsaw, which maintains the largest searchable database of business contacts in the world. Do you need to reach the VP of Procurement at a potential customer organization? Do you want to begin a conversation with the IT manager at a fast-growing company? The chances are very good that up-to-date, highly accurate contact information is available for these people, and anyone else you want to contact, through Jigsaw. The good news is that the information might be available at no cost to you! All you need to do is provide contact information for new listings to post on Jigsaw. For every listing you post, you can download an existing name for free. If you are short on contacts, you can purchase the contact info for a very reasonable price.

There are also applications that allow you to build associations and networks that can help you get introduced to potential prospects. For instance, LinkedIn allows you to create a business profile for yourself, and then allows you to invite others to join your network by creating profiles, too. Soon, you are connected to thousands of other potential contacts as your network becomes linked to other networks. LinkedIn, for a very reasonable fee, allows you to tap the resources within these networks to gain introductions, recommendations and access to key people who might become strategic, long-term customers.

A large number of businesses are now using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to drive new business. With Facebook, you can invite prospects – and even current customers – to become a “friend” on your site. Once they are “friended” you can post initiate all sorts of interactive contacts with them, post marketing information, post pictures and updates, solicit comments and suggestions, etc. Twitter, allows you to send, short text messages about any issue, announcement, offer, or content you would like. After you set up your account, the only other thing you need to do is to invite your prospects and customers to “follow you” on Twitter. Just keep in mind that messages sent out via Twitter will go to everyone of your followers at the same time. Twitter messages can’t be targeted to individuals.

Build the trust relationship the old fashioned way: Earn It

Once you have developed a comprehensive contact list for your target account, you go about building relationships with these people in exactly the same way that you would with the Decision Maker. Indeed, in this series, we have already discussed several important strategies that work just as well with Influencers as with Decision Makers:

·         Focus on Helping instead of Selling

·         Ask good questions and be a great listener

·         Discover what they value, and make sure they receive that value

·         Be flexible and creative

An important caveat

You must keep your behavior consistent during all your interactions across the customer organization. If you neglect to treat a gatekeeper or an influencer with the same level of consideration that you provide the decision maker, it will get back to the decision maker. At that point you will lose your credibility with the decision maker and you may also lose the account.

Action Items:

Evaluate the top five opportunities you are working on right now. Are you confident that you have a thorough map of the Circle of Influence for each account? What relationships need to be stronger?

During the sales process, what percentage of time do you allot to developing relationships with the Influencers that surround the Decision Maker? How much time do you think you should be devoting to this task?

Do you have Jigsaw, Facebook, LinkedIn and/or Twitter accounts? Do you know how to use them? If not, why not?

“Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants, so long as it is black.”

This famous quote by Henry Ford reveals his strategy for mass producing the Model T automobile and launching the great industrial juggernaut of the early 20^th century. For almost 100 years, this attitude also defined the baseline strategy of most sales organizations: “The customer can have any product or service they want, as long as they let us tell them what they can have.”

People have been buying and selling since before recorded history, and during all that time, the sales process has rarely varied. Sellers have identified a profitable opportunity and pushed their product or solution to a likely customer, along the way doling out options and information only as needed and trying to control the process so that the customer was dependent on the sales person and the company for everything.

However, the cumulative technological advances of the past 20 years – not the least of which is the way the entire business culture has been transformed by the Internet - has turned the tables; the customer is beginning to take charge and drive the sales conversation. The Internet supplies customers with immediate and highly detailed information about your company’s products and services, along with information about all of your competitors. The advent of social media accelerates this process by giving buyers real-life and near-real-time reviews and opinions of your product and service.  Now, rather than waiting for a sales person to approach them with something that they might find helpful, customers are proactively leveraging the Internet looking for the product or the company that appears best suited to meet their needs. In addition, these web-savvy customers prefer to do business online, using the tools, interfaces and amenities available through the Internet to do business their way, according to their schedule, to meet their specific needs.

Because today’s more sophisticated customers have a sense of power and entitlement, they are likely to be fully aware of the options and solutions available to them. They are no longer willing to settle for a product just because a sales professional says it is a good choice. Most customers these days aren’t necessarily looking for products at all. What they are interested in finding is a specific outcome. (Most sales professionals think that customers are looking for solutions. They are wrong. Customers generally don’t care what solution they get, as long as it delivers the outcome they need.) For this reason, sales professionals must stop thinking about simply pushing products or solutions. The way to close more business and drive more revenue today lies in first being sensitive to the customer’s needs and then adopting a flexible, creative approach to customizing products and solutions that will help customers achieve their desired outcome.   

Even in the most commoditized industries, highly successful sales professionals understand that when you can create options that are aligned with the customer’s needs and desired outcomes, you will differentiate yourself from a competitor who only sells widgets, and you will be able to sell on value and not price.   For this reason, it is vitally important for sales professionals to refocus their efforts on exploring ideas and options with their customers that may be outside of the normal box.  And all of this can only happen if the sales professional is creative in their thinking, curious about their customer’s business, and flexible in how they structure the product and solution mix to achieve the only thing that matters: the customer’s desired outcome.  

Where does creativity come from?

Because creativity is such an important component in being able to work with customers to develop the outcomes they need, we need to stop and take just a moment to address it directly. Most of us would probably say that we are not particularly creative, because we don’t write music or novels or create visual art. Creativity is so much bigger than that. Creativity really refers to the ability to generate something unique that didn’t exist before, and you can apply that to literally any aspect of life. We were all born with the drive to be creative. When we were kids we were given a box of crayons and creativity flowed out of us in ways that were unique to us and which gave us joy.  We asked lots of “why” and “how” questions. We used our imaginations to bring life to toys and invisible friends. Eventually, though, that box of crayons was replaced with a geometry book and our creativity was replaced with rules and memorization and regurgitation. This “memorize and regurgitate” paradigm became the means to help us reach certain ends: pass tests, fit in with the system, meet acceptable standards, etc., but it came at a price; it suppressed our enthusiasm for creativity, because creativity didn’t seem to fit in with the way the rest of the world functioned.

This memorize and regurgitate process extends even into professional sales careers, as sales professionals are continuously exposed to product and service announcements, value propositions, and endless lists of features which are designed to be easily memorized and regurgitated.  We quickly accept the proposition that in order to become successful sales professionals, we only need to thoroughly memorize all these items and then effectively regurgitate them to our customers in order to make a sale. However, as we have already pointed out, today’s customers are much too sophisticated to have any patience at all with sales professionals who “show up and throw up.” Instead, you must “create and collaborate” to deliver the outcomes your customer is looking for.

Doug Conant, CEO of Campbell Soup, has built a highly successful leadership philosophy around the following phrase: “You can’t talk your way out of something you behaved your way into. You have to behave your way out of it.”[1] In a nutshell, the point here is that there is no shortcut to success and no substitute for clear, comprehensive, creative behavior change. If you want to truly succeed in helping your customers achieve their outcomes in ways that differentiate you from everyone else, you must change your behavior: stop regurgitating pre-conceived solutions and start creating options that make sense to the customer. To accomplish this, you will need to dedicate yourself to re-building your creative muscle and apply it religiously in every customer interaction.  

Here is a specific list of actions you can take to re-build that muscle. Like anything else, you have to work at this consistently:

Expand your horizons.

·         Broaden yourself to more than one field.

·         Read widely.

·         Work on different projects at the same time.

·         Use visual as well as verbal representations.

·         Don’t follow “the pack”.

·         Use multiple methods.

·         Seek novel approaches.

·         Find new ways of making problems soluble.

Build enthusiasm.

·         Pursue projects that are fun.

·         Play with ideas and things.

·         Ask interesting questions.

·         Take risks.

·         Have a desire to understand the “why”.

·         Build different cognitive muscle

Associate and Communicate.

·         Associate with smart collaborators.

·         Organize good teams.

·         Study how others are successful and learn from winners.

·         Communicate your work to others.

·         Have confidants to rely on

Persevere.

·         Focus on key problems.

·         Be systematic and keep records.

·         Confirm early, disqualify late.

·         Concentrate tenaciously on a subject.

·         If someone says it can’t be done, do it.

More than anything else, the suggestions above demand that you get out of the selling rut you have plowed for yourself and learn new ways of doing things. The late Senator Harold Hughes was fond of saying: “The more you do what you always did, the more you will get what you always got.” If you are tired of getting what you have been getting, it is time to learn to do things differently.

As you start freeing up your creative, collaborative side, you will be able to integrate that creativity with these six best practices to connect with customers in new, exciting ways:

1.      Stop thinking about what you can sell the customer and start focusing on how you can help the customer reach his goals. – We have already thoroughly addressed this topic in previous articles, but it really is the only way to keep you grounded in today’s highly competitive selling culture. By thinking in terms of helping the customer meet his needs, you will avoid getting locked into a product mentality and maximize your ability to stay flexible and creative.

2.      Start thinking of your product as only one aspect of the value you can provide to your customer. It seems that almost over night, the philosophy of selling has shifted from a focus on products or services to a focus on consultative interactions to create outcomes. Highly successful sales professionals today want to be valued for their expertise, experience and ability to collaborate with customers and design customized solutions to deliver specific outcomes. The product or service is definitely a part of the solution, but the highly successful sales professional will also work with the customer to uniquely position and deploy that solution within the organization to produce maximum benefits, which adds extra value for everyone.

3.      Get used to a longer sales cycle. – The nature of this more creative, collaborative process may necessitate a longer sales cycle than you are accustomed to, even for products that might be considered commodities. You need to allow time to really get to know the client and understand their situation. This might require several conversations spread out over a few weeks or – in some cases – even a few months. You also need to devote more time to asking questions, processing answers, researching solutions and developing customized recommendations. These recommendations will then need to be socialized throughout the customer’s organization to get feedback and buy-in from key players. However, the longer sales cycle generally leads to a higher trust level between you and the customer; it also very often leads to bigger deals that close at higher margins, with a higher potential for developing into long-term relationships that drive greater revenues year over year.

4.      Focus on real discussions about real concerns, and steer away from cookie-cutter solutions. – The customer must feel absolutely comfortable throughout the sales process. Unfortunately, some sales professionals may feign interest in the customer’s needs and goals just long enough to steer the conversation in the direction they need it to go to position the solution they already want to offer. Customers won’t tolerate being manipulated like this. Once they sense that you are setting them up so you can deliver your preconceived solution, without spending the time to listen to their needs and understand the outcomes they hope to achieve, they will withhold their trust and become more resistant.

5.      Tell the truth, even if it means telling customers what they don’t want to hear. – This is a hard practice to follow, but it may be critical to helping you develop the kind of credibility with the customer that will pay off in the months and years to come. As a rule, sales professionals are very competitive, and they work very hard at winning new business. However, never let this desire to win tempt you to promise something you can’t deliver, or – what might be worse – agree to a solution that won’t really produce the outcome the customer needs, even if the customer asks for it and even if it will make you a lot of money. It is one thing to be flexible and creative; it is quite another thing to overpromise and then fail to deliver the outcome the customer expects. You and the customer may both be disappointed if, in the end, you aren’t able to recommend a solution that you feel will effectively meet their need, but when you face that fact honestly with the customer, you will be reaffirming that your true motivation was to help him instead of just sell him something. Without a doubt, the customer will remember your integrity the next time you call on him.

6.      Know when to assert your expertise and when to defer to the customer. – As a qualified sales professional with many years of experience within your industry, there will be times during the sales process when it is not only appropriate it is also important for you to respectfully assert your expertise when recommending solutions. Usually, these times will come towards the end of the process, after you have built a strong relationship with the customer and have patiently, carefully developed a thorough understanding of the outcomes the customer desires and the solution options he prefers. Ultimately, though, the customer is the expert on his business needs and the solutions he feels most comfortable with. After you have made your recommendation, you must be willing to trust the customer to make the choice that he feels is best for him. If you have maintained your commitment to be flexible, creative and collaborative during the rest of the process, you can usually trust the customer to make the choice that works out best for both of you.

Action Items:

·         Think back to your five most recent customer calls: did you already have a preconceived solution to offer, or were you focused on gaining a clear understanding of the customer situation in order to help design a solution that would meet their expressed needs?

·         How effective are you at presenting value to the customer based not only on the product you have to sell but on your ability to create customized, collaborative solutions that go beyond the features and advantages of your product?

·         As part of your planning for your next customer call, create a set of questions you can use to demonstrate to the customer that you are not just interested in a selling them a product, but you are even more interested in collaborating with them to design a solution that will effectively provide the outcome that will meet all of their needs.

The challenge faced by most sales professionals is that customers cannot recognize (presale) the value of your solution without your help. When the customer does not clearly understand your value, they will focus on the one thing they do understand, which always comes down to price. Highly successful sales professionals understand this, so they work to bridge that understanding gap by focusing the conversation on the things that truly matter to the customer.

Many sales professionals are not very effective in this area. If they attempt to discuss value with the customer at all, they tend to say things like:

·         This product will help you stay on time and on budget

·         This “feature” will do this, and that “feature” will do that

·         This product or service will improve your process by doing X

As important as these points are to make, they don’t go far enough because they don’t clearly spell out the ultimate value of what is being offered. Selling value requires that salespeople have the ability to justify – in terms that the customer cares about – how the customer will benefit from their solution. Unless the sales professional can deliver this message and connect the dots very clearly, they leave the customer no choice but to view their solution as just another commodity where price becomes the only consideration.

Remember, the only reason a customer buys anything is because he has goals and problems that affect his business, and he needs solutions.  Most concerns that become buying forces fall into three main categories, known as PPI:

·         Productivity – expediency, efficiency, increased output

·         Profitability – making money, return on investment, increased profit margin

·         Image – style, reputation, public relations

Never forget: The customer is focused on one thing, his own priorities.  It doesn’t make any difference how wonderful your product is or what a nice person you are. Your customer isn’t looking for a new best friend, he is looking for specific solutions or benefits that resolve the gaps in his business.  The key question he wants answered is:

“WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?”

Now, if you have done an exceptional job of asking good questions and listening carefully to the answers, you should have a very good understanding of what the customer is looking for. Actually, if you did a good job of clarifying and confirming the customer’s answers, you have essentially gotten explicit agreement from him regarding what he is looking for. When the customer explicitly states his needs, the chances of having a successful sale increase.  Therefore, it is vital to obtain explicit needs statements from the customer.

However, even when you obtain confirmation from the customer regarding his explicit needs, your job is just beginning. Now you must help him see that your proposed solutions are perfectly aligned to meet those explicit needs.

Feature – Advantage – Benefits (FABs) make all the difference

In order to create this alignment, you must create and deliver clear Feature-Advantage-Benefit statements (FABs) that will help the customer see the whole picture.

FABs have three parts:

A FEATURE is a particular design or performance enhancement. Features relate what the product does and especially delineates those characteristics that make it special. For instance, an automobile might have features like a 3.2 liter V6 engine, anti-lock brakes, and side-curtain airbags. Since these things don’t come standard on all cars, they become features of a particular model.

This is step one in explaining your product to a customer. Features are very important, but features alone won’t sell a product. Sales professional too often get bogged down in explaining features and sometimes lose customers in the process, for the simple reason that a customer also needs to understand the advantage that a feature provides.

An ADVANTAGE defines what the feature accomplishes, and why that is a good thing. For instance, a 3.2 liter V6 engine will generate very good acceleration if you need to merge onto highway traffic. However, it might not be attractive to someone who wants the absolutely highest gas mileage, or who only toodles around city streets in light commuter traffic, so not every feature and advantage will appeal to every customer, no matter how cool that feature may seem to the sales professional.

Finally, the advantage has to offer a BENEFIT that the customer identifies as valuable to him. At this point, you, as a sales professional, must be careful. Just because a benefit seems valuable to you is no guarantee that the customer will see it the same way. A huge part of sales success revolves around making sure you clearly understand what the customer cares about. Then – and only then – can you connect your product’s FABs with those needs in a way that might interest your customer. Simply put: a BENEFIT states how the ADVANTAGES of a FEATURE relate to the customer’s concerns and expectations.

Let’s say you are a car salesman, and you are working with a customer who told you he had recently skidded on slick streets while driving a carload of kids to a birthday party. At this point, you would be wise to politely ask if safety was an important concern in his new car purchase. The chances are very good that he will say yes! This gives you the opportunity to point out to him that among the FEATURES of the car under consideration include anti-lock brakes and side-curtain airbags, which offer the ADVANTAGES of being very effective at eliminating skids, while also providing better protection for passengers in the event of a collision. Now this ADVANTAGE becomes a valuable BENEFIT to him, because he sees that his family is going to be much safer whenever they are traveling in their new automobile.

Here is how you would set up a FAB statement in this situation that would help the customer see the value of your solution:

Sales Professional: “It sounds like the safety of your passengers – especially your family – is very important to you. Am I right? Well, if that is the case, I would like to show you this model over here:

Feature:          “This model has a special inertial dampening bumper system, plus side curtain air bags and anti-lock brakes.”

Advantage:      “The car will stop faster and more safely, even in dangerous driving conditions, and all of the passengers will be much better protected in the event of an accident. Also, the government has awarded this model a 5-star crash safety rating, which is only awarded to about 10% of all vehicles tested every year.”

Benefit:           “If safety is your primary concern, there is not a vehicle on the road today that will keep your family safer than this one.”

Until you know what BENEFIT (or outcome) is important to your customer, and until he clearly sees that your product offers him that benefit, you don’t usually have a chance to make a sale. He may agree that you have wonderful features and advantages, but those things have to meet his needs and fit his motivation for buying. Your challenge is to ask good questions, listen to his needs, understand his motivation, and then and ONLY then, recommend solutions that offer real value to him because they solve his problem or meet his need. However, when you do this, your ability to sell value over price increases dramatically, along with your ability to drive more and more revenue with this customer year after year.

Action Items:

·         Try writing two or three different set of FAB statements that will connect your products and services to the typical needs of the customers you work with. Make sure that you provide a very focused benefit component that specifically defines how the product will solve the problem or meet the specific need of a customer.

·         Review your current questioning and listening strategy. Are you asking enough questions with every client to be able to build a set of FABs that will clearly address their needs?

·         Make a list of 5 more questions you could ask that would help you create more effective FAB statements.

Experienced sales professionals already know that asking questions is the best way to uncover customer needs. However, you can be good at asking questions and still never be highly successful, and here is why: A lot of sales professionals only ask questions so they can steer the customer to the solution they already had in mind when the conversation started. This approach to using questions may lead to a sale, but it may not create the level of trust, intimacy and understanding that is necessary to build a long-term relationship. This approach - because it is still grounded in the sales professional’s needs and goals - may not uncover all of the customer’s needs or create a complete understanding of the customer’s situation. Remember, the question you must keep asking yourself is not “what can I sell,” but rather, “how can I help?”

This process is very similar to the doctor who asks, “where does it hurt?” The doctor usually doesn’t stop there. He will also ask things like:

• How often does it hurt?
• Is it hurting now?
• When was the last time it hurt?
• What were you doing when it hurt?
• How long did it hurt?
• On a scale of 1-10, how much does it hurt?
• When did it first start hurting?
• Does it hurt when I do this?
• Do you also have this symptom or that symptom or these symptoms when it hurts, or before it hurts or after it hurts?

And even after asking all these questions, the doctor may order several tests to clarify or confirm what is or isn’t going on with the patient. The point is, it takes a lot of investigation, probing, listening and learning to get the full picture of the patient’s situation. When you are talking about a person’s health, you don’t want to take shortcuts. A headache could be anything from eyestrain to a brain tumor. It pays to be careful, caring and thorough. A careless diagnosis can prove fatal.

A highly successful sales professional has learned that it doesn’t help to take short cuts when trying to understand his customer, either. It is not enough to just ask questions; you have to ask the right questions and you have to ask enough of them to get the full picture of your customer’s situation. How many is that? However many it takes. It is like peeling an onion. Each time your customer answers a question, this automatically prompts an opportunity for a follow up question.

• What top priorities are you engaged in now?
• Why were these selected?
• How are you tackling them?
• What roadblocks are you facing?
• How are you overcoming those roadblocks?
• What timing have you established to tackle these initiatives?
• Who is on the project teams?
• How were they selected?
• Are they on track with the schedule?
• What will happen if you don’t meet your timelines?
• What is the back-up plan if you don’t make the timelines?

The options are endless; it all depends on the answer you received to the previous question. Remember this: every time you ask a thoughtful, insightful, supportive question, you are demonstrating your desire to help, and most of the time you are also subtly showing off your expertise without ever calling attention to it, because you are asking the right questions in the right way. But be careful; this is a conversation, not an interrogation. Be careful to adapt to the customer’s pace and style of interacting.

Open and Closed Questions

Customer-centered interaction uses two distinct types of questions. They have different functions and are used at various times to accomplish different purposes.  The first type of question is referred to as an open question, because of its open-ended nature. The structure of this question invites the listener to speak freely and share his feelings, insights or opinions on a variety of subjects without limiting him in any way.

Open questions usually start with words like:

• Who
• Where
• What
• When
• How
• Why
• Or maybe simply, “Tell me about …” or “Could you explain … “

Use open questions when you want to find out more about the customer’s needs, problems, concerns, or experiences. Someone who is skilled and practiced at asking open questions can obtain a great deal of very important information. Here are some examples of open questions:

“What happened when you switched to the upgraded product?”

“Why do you believe re-thinking your plan is important to do right now?

“Would you mind telling me what it is that is causing you the most frustration right now?”

Open questions are very effective at building trust because they establish rapport between you and the customer. Most people like to talk about themselves and their situation. Open questions give them permission to do just that. All you have to do is sit quietly and pay attention. Don’t interrupt, distract or correct; just be quiet and soak it all in.

Open questions can also be used at any point during the conversation when the customer expresses doubt, resistance or apathy. For example:

Customer says:           I just don’t think your plan solves all of our problems.

You say:           Can you tell me a little more about what concerns you?

Once you receive his answer, you can use this new information to construct a solution that better suits his needs.

The second type of question is the closed question, so called because it tends to close off conversation by eliciting a short, clear, direct answer – sometimes as simple as yes or no. Some examples of closed questions are:

·   “Do you have any problems with the way this was handled?”

·   “Who is responsible for this project?”

·   “When is the deadline for implementation?”

·   “Did the product worked like you expected?”

Closed questions are useful when you need to receive quick, basic facts from the customer about some aspect of his situation. They can also help get the conversation moving when the customer appears reluctant to respond to open questions, or when he replies with only vague, confused answers. For instance, if your open questions about the customer’s general situation or goals don’t provide any insights that help you understand how to help him, you might try asking closed questions to prime the pump:

·   “Is on-time delivery ever a problem for you?”

·   “Is the product you are using now meeting all of your processing needs?”

Okay, hopefully your closed question received an answer. This then opens the door for asking another round of open questions. Such as:

·   “Oh, I see. Well, can you explain a little more about where your experience with previous solutions has not been adequate so I can understand what would help you the most?”

One final note: our experience over the years indicates that most sales professionals don’t ask enough open questions, especially if they are only interested in selling instead of helping. If you are not happy with the size of the deals you are getting, or if too many of your deals get stuck in the pipeline and die, asking more open questions might uncover more opportunities and keep things moving.

Listening: the other half of the Helping Equation

It is not enough to just ask good questions; you must actually listen to the answers and make sure you understand exactly what the customer is trying to say to you. Again, sales professionals too often only ask the questions that will give them the answers they want so they can sell their products. Therefore, they tend to not really listen to what the customer is saying, unless it takes them in the direction they have already decided they want to go. Of course, failing to really listen will limit your ability to help the customer and grow the relationship. A highly successful sales professional listens to ALL aspects of the answer – the words, the tone of voice and the body language – to glean important clues that will help him understand the problem and frame the possible solutions that will meet the most needs in the best way.

Clarifying and Confirming says you are here to help

Never assume that you fully understand what the customer is telling you until you have clarified what you have heard and confirmed that you understanding is what the customer meant. After all, what does “as soon as possible” really mean?

• Clarify whenever you do not have enough information to understand what the customer needs and want. “Could you tell me more about …?”

• Confirm by stating to the customer your understanding of what he wants and why he needs it, and ask him if your understanding is correct. “If I understand you correctly, Peter …”

Best practices for asking and listening*

·         Probe for clarification

·         Listen for unvoiced emotion

·         Listen for the story, not just the facts

·         Summarize well

·         Demonstrate empathy

·         Listen for what is different, not what is familiar

·         Take it all seriously (Don’t say, “You shouldn’t worry about that.”)

·         Ask, “How do you feel about that?”

·         Keep the customer talking (What else have you thought about?”)

·         Keep asking for more detail

·         Ask what you could that would help the most, and let the customer answer

·         Ask what the customer has thought of before saying what you are thinking

·         Maintain eye contact

·         Demonstrate supportive body language (nod head, lean forward, etc.)

·         Provide occasional affirming verbal cues (“I see what you mean;” “I hear you;” etc.)

*Adapted from Maister, Green and Galford, The Trusted Advisor

Going Deeper

·         In a typical sales conversation, about how long do you spend asking questions before you move to presenting your solution recommendation?

·         Are you confident that this is enough time to uncover all the opportunities and develop sufficient understanding of the customer situation?

·         Have you ever sold a customer on a solution, only to discover later that if you had only known a little more, you could have created a bigger, better deal?

·         Review your sales process strategy and identify places where you could ask at least 5 more open questions that might help you uncover more information.

·         Review your sales process strategy and designate the key areas where you could do a better job of clarifying and confirming the information you receive from your customer.

When focusing on the 11 habits of highly successful sales professionals, the most important habit to establish is also the hardest one to master, because it requires a complete, profound shift in attitude. Most sales professionals approach customers looking for opportunities to sell something; this is the main challenge most sales professionals face and the main reason that the sales profession is so poorly understood. However, highly successful sales professionals have discovered that by adopting a different perspective they can take their business to the next level. Instead of seeing the customer as an opportunity to make a sale, they see an opportunity to help the customer meet their personal and business objectives while building a relationship that transcends the sales professional’s personal interests. It boils down to this:

In order to grow a relationship with the customer that will not only lead to a sale today, but will continue to drive revenue year after year, you must stop asking yourself “What can I SELL?” and start asking, “How can I HELP?”

This shift in attitude creates an immediate shift in focus. A relationship based on selling focuses first on products, price and terms. It can also lead to a battle of wits between the customer and the sales professional, in which the customer is subtly put on the defensive as he tries to avoid being taken advantage by someone who is “just here to sell me something.”

A relationship based on helping the customer will focus first on the customer’s needs, challenges, concerns, problems, goals and dreams. Therefore, before you can truly help the customer — by providing solutions and support that will impact the things they care about — you must find out what they really care about. This process requires a level of patience, sensitivity and skill that doesn’t always come naturally to sales professionals who have been trained to think first about things like value propositions and closing skills.  In fact, often times, “Helping” your customer may have nothing to do with what you sell!

Customer-centered Interaction

For this reason, highly successful sales professional have developed the ability to practice something called Customer-Centered Interaction, which is the art of talking to the customer first about the things that are important to him, instead of the things that are important to the sales professional, and continuing in this vein long enough to gain a clear, comprehensive, and in-depth understanding of every aspect of your customer’s situation.

This sounds like a tall order, and it is. It is actually even more difficult than it sounds, because there are significant and often unrecognized obstacles standing between sales professionals and their ability to authentically connect with the customer.

What is it they say about assumptions?

One of the biggest obstacles to practicing customer-centered interaction is the set of assumptions and expectations we bring with us into the sales conversation. We pride ourselves on being experts on the industry, the market and our products. Because of this pride in our expertise, we assume we already know what is best for the customer, so we begin the conversation with our minds already made up regarding the solution we want to offer. Right from the start, then, our interest is on selling them our preconceived solution rather than learning what their needs are. This tendency to assume and jump to conclusions kills our natural curiosity and our willingness to be open so that the conversation can go where the customer needs it to go. It can also escalate into what are known as “killer assumptions,” because making these assumptions can lead to killing a great opportunity.

Sales professionals take at least two significant risks when they focus on trying to sell their preconceived solution instead of helping meet the customer’s real needs. We have already touched on the first, which is to make the customer feel pressured and defensive. You might still end up making a sale, but you may miss the opportunity to build a long-term relationship that will lead to increased sales year after year.

As unfortunate as that sounds, the second risk is even worse. When you focus on selling your solution instead of helping the customer find the solution that they feel good about, you will almost always leave money on the table. It is only by patiently building a relationship with the customer that you can uncover all of their needs. In doing so, you will very often discover opportunities you didn’t know existed, and the customer may discover that you could provide solutions that he didn’t know existed. Either way, by making your top priority that of helping the customer instead of just selling them something, you are often able to grow the size of the deal and create more value for both sides.

Here are three best practices to help you stay focused on helping over selling:

Check Your “Expert” Attitude At The Door

Of course you are an expert regarding the products, the market and everything else about your industry. If you aren’t, you should be. Your customer expects this level of expertise. When the time is right, you will be able to draw on your expertise to help the customer create the best solution to meet their needs. However, during the discovery and relationship-building process, it is very easy to undermine the trust process and fail to fully meet the customer’s needs if you inject your “expert” opinions too soon.

Most people don’t appreciate being told what to do – even if the advice is absolutely the best they could ask for – until they have had a chance to tell their story. As they tell their story, they are gauging your reaction, reading your body language, trying to see if you “get it” - all of which contributes to their willingness to trust your advice when the time comes for you to share it.

This “No Expert” rule applies even if the customer begins the conversation by begging for your advice. Whether you realize it or not, you don’t have enough information yet to really understand the problem. Resist the temptation to diagnose too quickly. Take the time to understand all the facts, especially the ones not in evidence yet.

Be Sensitive to the Customer’s Point of View

Most sales professionals are only interested in closing a sale, but the customer usually has a lot more on their mind. They are probably dealing with many interconnected issues which impact their situation and determine the full set of needs that must be met. However, not all of these needs will be immediately obvious. In fact, most customers don’t even fully know and understand all their needs or issues. However, all of these other interconnected issues have a part to play, and they can impact the scope of the solution that will resolve whatever issues the customer is dealing with.

No matter what issues are involved, you can be certain that the customer is dealing with a level of uncertainty that creates emotional filters and obstacles that influence how you and your solutions will ultimately be perceived. You must assume that there are many unknowns waiting to be revealed, understood, and factored into the final solution. Don’t be anxious to push your solutions; instead, be patient and let the customer tell their story.

Asking the Right Questions Will Lead to the Right Solution

Highly successful sales professionals are in the habit of asking plenty of questions and then listening carefully to the answers. This is the sales professional’s only defense against killer assumptions. It is also the only way to encourage the customer to tell you their story. This is such an important skill that we will devote the next article exclusively to the art of asking questions and listening effectively. In the mean time, just remember this: asking questions signals to the customer that you want to help, and pushing your products communicates in no uncertain terms that you are only there to sell them something.

Going Deeper

·        Do you think the idea of building relationships with customer around “How can I help them?” rather than “What can I sell them?” is a new idea to most sales professionals? Is it new to you?

·        How often do you approach conversations with your customers with an attitude of “How can I help this person today?” instead of “How is this conversation going to affect my ability to continue selling things to this person?” 

§  10% of the time _____  25%_____  50% _____

§  What should this percentage be? _____

·        Are the questions you currently use with your customers designed to set up opportunities to sell a preconceived solution or are they intended to uncover the customer’s pressing needs so you can find opportunities to help him?