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I Hate Losing
As many readers know, I coach college baseball. Last week the coaching staff got together because our team had hit little bit of a slump. We were trying to figure out why we had so much talent, but that talent wasn’t translating into the results that we expected on the field.
As the conversation progressed, I couldn’t help but get the déjà vu feeling that I had this conversation before, in the sales management arena. So often, too often for many small and mid-market companies, sales people who have talent and core ability to be extremely successful, yet they never meet their potential. This is a riddle that has confounded managers, trainers and consultants for years.
As we discussed the issue about the team, we came to the realization that not enough of the players truly hate to lose. And when I say hate to lose I don’t just mean that they don’t like losing, I mean hating to lose more than you enjoy winning.
Top performers in virtually any endeavor, share a common attribute – they loathe losing. Be it basketball, football, baseball, business or sales, top performers work hard, pay attention to the little things, learn and constantly improve because the feeling of a loss is simply detestable.
Everybody enjoys winning, and there are few people that I’ve met that dislike losing. The question to ask when assessing your salespeople is just how much, and what, are they willing to do to stay out of the loss column.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about how losing is part of the growth and success process. Since that post, I’ve received a lot of feedback. The vast majority of it has been absolutely on point and I’ve been excited to hear some of the stories that have been shared with me.
The post, however, is not an excuse to accept losing. When interviewing, managing and motivating salespeople, be on the look out to determine which camp they fall in – the ones who just enjoy winning or the ones that abhor
Successfully Hiring Salespeople
For 25 years the most frequent question I’ve gotten about sales efforts deals with successfully hiring salespeople. For small and mid-market companies (SME), hiring salespeople is the single, toughest and highest risk hire you can make. It’s what led me to write The 10 Most Common Mistakes Made When Hiring Salespeople.
Studies show that the mis-hire rate is as high as 75%, and that the total cost of a mis-hire is between 10 & 20 times the expected compensation rate.
My philosophy has always been that I’d rather have a bad salesperson than a good salesperson.
- When a salesperson is bad, letting them go is an easy decision and doing so minimizes the risk and cost implications.
- When they’re good, it’s almost (key word – almost) impossible to let them go. You constantly see the potential they have. Plus, there’s the feeling that having someone out there is better than having no one.
The problem is that good salespeople is that they commoditize your offerings. They never achieve that trusted advisor status that makes customers, clients and prospect truly value the salesperson or your company. The opportunity cost with good is huge.
The reality is that SMEs need great salespeople to grow and thrive. The problem is that most SMEs are not positioned to attract, recruit or retain great salespeople.
It is for this reason that I’ve put together my best thoughts, experiences and process that I’ve developed over the last 25 years.
I’ll be sharing my insights in our March 27th webinar: The Secrets to Successfully Hiring Salespeople.
I’ll be sharing:
- The 5 deadly myths that destroy your ability to hire salespeople successfully.
- The 4 sales roles, and how understanding those roles will multiply the effectiveness of your sales hiring.
- How to develop a system that will make you company a manufacturer of great salespeople.
- Develop effective measurements and metrics to ensure the wrong person doesn’t stay.
So join me on March 27th at 2 pm EST, and learn how to make the sales hiring process successful and predictable.
A Critical Approach to Effective Selling
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If you’re bringing something valuable to the market; something that will allow you to break away from your competition and sustain both growth and expanded marketing, then you need to realize that you’re in the change business.
This means that the primary focus of your sales and marketing efforts is to change the way your customers and prospects buy. At this point, a reasonable question to ask yourself is, “Why in the world would I want to change a customer’s approach to buying?” After all, it’s a tough, timely and complex thing to do.
There is only one reason to even think of taking on such an effort. That reason is that if the way your customers aren’t buying in a manner that drives your economic and business model, then you must embark on the effort. As marketing icon Geoffrey Moore once said, “To succeed with innovation, you must take your value proposition to such an extreme that competitors either cannot or will not follow.”
What you must understand is that changing your customer’s approach to buying takes time. You can’t expect to adequately influence your customers when your salespeople to show up near of the point that your customer is making a purchasing decision. While this is the default approach for businesses, it only results in increased operating and sales costs and increased pricing pressure.
You sales and marketing system must be designed for the long haul. In my experience, it takes a 12 – 18 month incubation period to effectively educate and influence target prospects. This is true regardless of what you perceive your typical sales cycle to be (and in reality, if you have a longer sales cycle, than the process takes even longer).
This incubation period is the primary reason the small and mid-market companies fail to implement effective sales and marketing systems. They fear that 12 – 18 months is simply too long to get a payoff. When I meet them, I always respond, “Well, sure it’s a long time. Where are you planning on being in a year or two?”
Companies that embrace the challenge, and develop the systems to support such a process enjoy disproportionate rewards. Will you be one of them?
Finish Your Sales Year Strong
Sure enough, a day after I present our webinar 5 Keys to Getting Your Sales Year Off to Fast Start, my friend and advisor happens to send her newsletter out reminding everybody that if you think that nothing happens the next two weeks – you’re thinking just like your competition.
Master Door Opener Caryn Kopp, shares several valuable thoughts on making the next two weeks productive. It’s well worth the read.
My favorite point: Often time that hard-to-reach decision maker who never has time for you, is probably more relaxed and chatty than normal.
Download her article, act on it and you’ll enjoy a head start.
The Difference Between Good Salespeople & Great Ones
Yesterday, as I was conducting some sales training for a client, we were talking about the importance of understanding your customer and I was sharing some tools we use to help companies and salespeople gain a better understanding (feel free to download it).
I could tell from the look on a few people’s faces that this was something they hadn’t done before. So, I shared a fundamental insight I’ve gain through 20+ years working with thousands of salespeople.
The biggest difference between great salespeople (who earn 2 – 10x what good salespeople make, and take far more time off as well) and good salespeople is the work the great ones do when they’re not in front of the customer. It’s just like athletics – the great ones practice harder, study more and constantly work on their craft. When you watch how hard someone like Drew Brees works before the game, it’s no surprise that he breaks records and wins Super Bowls (even though physically he’s not an ideal quarterback).
Great salespeople realize that a single small insight, gained from doing discovery work before they meet someone can be the difference between landing a multi-million dollar sale, while bypassing the RFP process, and failing to make the first cut.
Good salespeople work hard, often harder than the great ones. The problem is they dedicate all of their work during and after they meet with someone. They don’t like the pre-call practice and work required to gain those insights.
As you make your 2012 resolutions and goals, resolve to put more effort up-front in your sales efforts. Your income and vacation plans will appreciate it.
By the way, if you’d like to get a jumpstart on this resolution we’ll be sharing 5 insights into getting your sales year off to a fast start on Tuesday. It’s a free webinar and there’s still space to register.
Sales Webinar: 5 Keys To Starting Your Year Fast
If you’re a salesperson you know how special the months of January through April are. Four uninterrupted months, when your customers and prospects are back at work, focused and ready to do business.
Your performance in the first four months of the year will determine how good 2012 is.
The 5 Keys to Getting Your Sales Year Off to a Fast-Start
Join us on Tuesday, December 13th at 2pm EST, we’ll share the secrets we’ve learned working with the best salespeople in the world that allow them to get their year off to a tremendous start. Once again, we are waiving the registration fee for this program.
In this 35-minute webinar we’ll share:
- How to hyperfocus on your best opportunities
- Identifying “target rich environments”
- How to break through the noise, stand out and get heard by your prospects
Plus, we’ll share a secret to access the tough to find “ultimate decision maker.”
The Best Way To Fill The Sales Funnel
If you want to leverage your sales efforts; if you want to grow revenues faster than expenses; if you want to lower your sales costs, you must – MUST – invest in developing valuable content to support your sales and marketing efforts.
The most frequent conversation I’ve had following our webinar last week on Successful Lead Generation for B2B Companies is about the critical role content plays in successful lead generation. From the comments I’ve received, it’s probably the biggest surprise attendees left with.
I’ve learned that content is not something many small and mid-market B2B CEOs think about. They spend a lot of time thinking about their strategies and tactics. They spend countless hours working with and addressing their people. They worry about pricing and competition, and they’re always tinkering to improve their products and services.
However, with overwhelming neglect, they seem to ignore content. Content is the glue that enables a business to leverage its sales and marketing efforts. With valuable content (the keyword being valuable) you give your prospects a reason to pay attention to you. You are able to distinguish yourself. Without it, you are like every other peddler chasing down sales. If you are different, content showcases your difference.
I understand that developing content is difficult, complex and, at times, painful. I realize that it’s typically not in the wheelhouse of senior team. I appreciate that the task can feel overwhelming.
But, so is building a highly profitable businesses that consistently grows and creates wealth for owners and employees.
The Toughest Lesson
Without question, the toughest lesson I’ve every learned in sales (or life for that matter) is that you can do all the right things and still not get the outcome you want. You can ask the right questions, make the right connections, zig when you’re supposed to zig, and zag when it’s time to zag…and you still may not win the sale.
When you lose, you want something to blame. You want to fix something. It can be demoralizing to look at a lost sale and not find where you went wrong.
That is why it’s so important that you keep activity levels up. I always caution CEOs and salespeople that a 99% probability of success still leaves a 1% chance of failure – and in a world with 7 billion people, 1% events happen to 70 million people A DAY. And, unless the contract is signed and the check is cashed, there is ALWAYS a chance things will fall through.
Sales, especially in The Drought we’ve been in for 3 years and counting, is a marathon run at a sprinter’s pace. You can’t assume anything. You’ve got to keep things moving.
I remember a speaker who told an audience of CEOs that you’ve must grow by at least 15 – 20% per year. If you didn’t grow at that rate, you would fail to account for the “oh shit” factor. The same is true in sales. You can never become overdependent on any single opportunity, because even if you do it everything right…you may not get the sale.
If you’re looking for some insights in making this approach systematic, I encourage you to download an article that I just published – The 5 Adjustments Every Sales Team Needs to Make.
Making August Productive
It feels like yesterday when I was saying goodbye to 2010 and hello 2011. In the blink of an eye, 2011 is more than half way over.
Tomorrow we welcome the “dog days of August.” As a salesperson, I hated August more than any other month. It seemed like the world stopped, no one was available and every day was hazy, hot and humid.
August is, in fact, a very difficult month for sales and marketing activities. It is also an opportunity for those salespeople who take advantage of the slower pace August allows. I can’t do anything about the weather (and all indications say August is going to be really hot for most of the US), but I can give you some insights into how to make August a productive month that can drive a profitable fall.
I asked my friend, and Get In The Door expert, Caryn Kopp to share an article she wrote a couple of years ago about August. She generously said she would. So, please review the keys to making August productive.
Sales Is Hard Work
Last week I wrote about how the counter-intuitive idea is often the right one. Yesterday I read one of my favorite bloggers share was of the best counter-intuitive sales thoughts: The best sales leads are people who are already happy working with someone.
Anthony Iannarino, author of The Sales Blog, shared this thoughts:
- You don’t want leads who are easy to get in.
- You don’t want leads who aren’t loyal.
- The best leads always have a partner.
- The best leads are hard to penetrate.
He advises that you play The Long Game.
“The long game means nurturing and developing relationships with the most difficult leads you have been given over a long period of time. It requires that you continually call and continually find ways to create value. You have to pay for your dream client in advance of winning their business, and that means you have to be waiting in the wings—and they have to know it.”
While I don’t fully agree with his third point, I completely agree with his conclusion.
Look, selling is hard work. It’s why the best get paid so much to do it. It’s why CEOs everywhere long for a salesperson who can “get the job done.”
Somewhere along the way, maybe in the late 90s and late 00′s, when the fish were jumping out of the water and there was more than enough fake growth for everyone, salespeople started thinking that sales was supposed to be easy. More often than ever I’m seeing salespeople turn away at the first sign of resistance,
Let’s not forget, a salesperson’s job is to sell. Selling doesn’t mean pushing or peddling. It means constantly:
If you want fast growth (and big commission checks) the long game is the only game in town.
Pricing & Safety
A very common challenge for salespeople occurs when a prospect starts asking pricing questions too early in the sales process. Ineffectively handling that question can hamper the rest of your sales efforts.
It’s important to understand that the price question is not always what it seems to be. More often than not it is merely a defense mechanism used by the buyer.
Salespeople who handle the price question effectively understand that the prospect does not really need to know precisely how much something will cost; what they need to know is that:
- They will be safe
- The salesperson will be honest
- The entire process will be fair
When confronted with the pricing question, you must follow the fundamental rule of improvisation comedy: Never Say No! It’s always, “Yes… and… “
When asked the pricing question, you must answer it. Failure to answer the question can kill your momentum and introduces fear into the process (the very emotion we are trying to avoid).
For example, answers like these sound good, but in the end your are just saying, “No.”
- Well it’s too early to answer that question.
- I’ll be happy to answer that question later in the process.
- You know I don’t really know enough about you yet, as soon as I know more I’ll be happy to share…
We recommend handling that question by providing a range. Confidently respond will the range your products and service may take – from the lowest to the highest.
Here’s an example:
Frank, it’s a little early for me to be specific. There are still several issues that I’m not clear about. I’d be happy to share the range we typically deal with if that would help?
Yes.
In some situations where just slight tweaking and structure are needed, something like this could be as little as $10-15,000. In far more complex cases where not only do we have to set up a new plan, but we ensure that the proper pieces are in place to support it, it could be as much as $75-90,000; and literally everywhere in between. In your case Frank, I’m pretty sure that we’ll be towards the lower end.
Don’t Be A Pigeon (Why Selling Is Dead)
Traditional selling techniques are no longer effective in the twenty-first century. A study conducted by Harvard Business Review revealed that only 1 in 250 salespeople actually creates positive economic impact for their companies, and less than 37% of salespeople meet a profile deemed to be “effective.” It is time to end the traditional approach to sales, where most salespeople are considered pests or peddlers and transform that approach so that salespeople are perceived as the valuable assets they can be.
Through 20 years of research, I have learned that the problem is a systems problem, not a people problem. To drive profitable growth, companies must adopt new systems, develop new skills and apply new disciplines to be effective. The good news is that companies that make this transformation gain disproportionate rewards – often 5 to 10 times average rates of return.
The fundamental problem with traditional selling is that it structurally places the focus on the commodity value. If your goal is differentiation and earning margin premiums, then you must work against traditional selling tactics. For six years, the focus of this blog has been to support the development of a better approach to selling. Consider this post a 30,000 foot review of six years of content (with the links to previous posts to support it).
Here’s the problem with traditional selling:
- It is solution-focused. When you begin with the focus on the solution, you are focused on the commodity portion of your proposition. As I’ve written before: solutions are worthless – until there is a problem.
- It views your difference as a “value-add,” rather than as core to your proposition (think IBM pre-1995).
- The playing field is defined by your competition, and the focus is “winning the business.” This make the process far more adversarial than it should be. From a customer perspective it makes it a hodgepodge of “sameness.”
- Because it’s solution-based, the go-to-market focus is broad; too broad. The approach is based upon “who can use the solution,” rather than on where the selling organization can be best.
- The sales and marketing approach are silo’d within the selling organization – leading to misalignment, confusion and brand degradation.
A new, far more effective model of selling flips these issues on their head. The focus is on creating value throughout the entire sales/marketing process. Rather than merely fulfilling demand (which is akin to being a pigeon trying to compete for a piece of bread) the focus is on creating demand – what I call Demand Creation Selling.
- It focuses on critical results – and the barriers that prevent those results – rather than on solutions. It focuses on the problem, and enabling the customers/prospects to better understand their problems and the causes and consequences of those problems.
- Rather than viewing your difference as the “value-add,” it focuses on your difference, your business’ intelligence if you will, as the core of your offering. I refer to it as making The Shift from selling stuff to selling your ability to create results.
- The focus is on creating demand (and markets), and as such, you eliminate competition and you own markets, rather than compete.
- You focus and allocate your resources where you can be the best, and you ignore areas where you’re a “me-too” company.
- Instead of focusing on the solution, Demand Creation Selling means that you manically focus on understanding customers – better than the customers understand themselves.
- Sales and marketing are fully integrated, and the company goes-to-market in a clear and powerful manner. There is no need to differentiate, because you are different.
- Expertise is defined by how well, and how deeply, you understand your customers and their issues, rather than how well you know and understand your solution.
Growth is tough enough as it is. Businesses can no longer rely on systems and approaches that work against them. The time has come to change the way you sell – and the rewards await.
Predicting The Sales Slump
I can predict, with a great degree of accuracy, when a new salesperson (to sales or to your company) will experience their first prolonged slump. When, you ask? When they become comfortable with the product or service they are selling.
That’s right – the first slump almost always occurs when a salesperson becomes comfortable with what they are selling. How can this be? It’s quite simple actually.
When a salesperson is not completely comfortable with their offerings, they are forced to pay extreme attention to the customer/prospect. They ask questions – lots of them. They don’t push. And, most importantly, they don’t jump to the solution. The spend time understanding the customer, because that’s the only thing they can do. As regular readers of this blog may remember, that’s right in line with The First Rule for Creating Demand.
Once the salesperson becomes comfortable with their offering, guess what they do? They start talking about it. Before you know it, they smack in the middle of the We-Do’s. They start asking fewer questions, they pay a little less attention, and, without realizing it, they start pushing. They jump to the solution – confident they can explain their way to a sale.
The point of this post is not that salespeople should not become comfortable with their products or services (though I would strenuously advise that they should never become too comfortable with the offering); it’s that product knowledge is secondary to focusing on and understanding your customer. What drives them, what worries them and what are the results they want to achieve.
The next time you go into a meeting with a customer or prospect – forget everything you know about your products, pretend you’re new and use the time you would have spent telling them about your great stuff to ask deeper, more powerful questions. You’ll be surprised just how effortless selling becomes.
It Ain’t Selling Until They Say No
There is probably no sales myth that angers me more than, “a salesperson must be able to get a buyer to say ‘no’ five times, before they say yes.” The myth manifests itself in a variety of ways. It overemphasizes closing, makes the process unnecessarily adversarial, and it wastes a tremendous amount of selling time, and therefore, wastes millions of dollars. To top it off, it’s probably the number one reason why salespeople have such a bad reputation.
That said, if the customer or buying organization doesn’t put up a roadblock, disagree in a meaningful way or attempt to cutoff the process at some point, then it is not really selling – it’s agreeing. After all, the definition of selling is making sales that would not otherwise have occurred.
Selling is all about influencing. It’s about changing mindsets and perspectives. If customers are already thinking what you are, then you don’t really need sales efforts. Anyone who has seen me sell knows that the situation that always makes me the most nervous in a sales situation is when the customer isn’t disagreeing or pushing back on anything I say.
When I’m coaching salespeople, I cheer them on with the reminder that, “the sale doesn’t begin until you get a ‘no.’”
- So when the customer says that they’re not really looking to outsource the function, and you know that outsourcing would have a dramatically positive impact on them; guess what? The sale has begun.
- When the customer says you’re priced too high, and you know that your “higher price” is what enables you to solve their problem in such a way that it can bring superior results; guess what? The sale has begun.
This does not mean that every time a customer says “no,” that you should attempt to plow through them. I encourage you to read my previous post on The Difference Between Barriers and Conditions.
What this means is that if you’ve done your homework, your business case is strong, and you believe in your solution, you cannot be frustrated by a prospect’s or customer’s inability to see it that way immediately.
Rather, you must be motivated by it – that’s why we call it selling.
I Screwed Up
Selling (the right way) is hard. As we train and lead salespeople and executives all across North America, I regularly try to remind them that selling is, in fact, difficult, and that it’s remarkably easy to fall back on old, natural habits that get in the way of making the sale.
Just today, I made a basic selling mistake.
I was introduced to the CEO (I’ll call him Mike) of a young, growing company by a fellow consultant who arranged the meeting. She set me up perfectly and my initial call with the Mike went phenomenally well. In hindsight, I think it went too well.
Mike got right into the growth opportunity he was pursuing. I asked some good diagnostic questions and we got deep into conversation. I was able to identify the problem he was having and that was preventing his desired result. I shared my observation with Mike.
Mike was very grateful for the insight, agreed with it and asked me the greatest prospect question of all time – “Doug, how can you help me solve this problem?”
So I floated some trial balloons, laying out some ways that we “might” be able to address the problem. Mike was eating out of my hand. I said give me a week or so to put some specific ideas together and he agreed. He finished the call by saying, “Doug, I really feel good about what you’re saying and I’m excited to be able to have a guy like you help me deal with everything.” If that’s not a buying sign – I don’t know what is.
Fast forward to my webex presentation. Executed flawlessly. Mike is loving everything that I’m telling him. Now it’s time for the closing question:
Mike, on a scale of 1-10 how do you feel about what I’ve shared so far and moving forward.
Mike’s answer – “15…
(Ready for the shoe to drop)
…I just need to talk with my two other partners and run this by them. Doug, would you be willing to share your thoughts with them?”
$%^&!! Partners?! Partners?! Mike never said he had partners. How could Mike let me do all this work and not tell me he had partners?!
Oh yeah – I never asked. I got so caught up in the “clarity” of the situation, I completely messed up some of the most basic tenants of any sales situation. Now to Mike’s partners I’m just a solution – and as I’ve written before, solutions are worthless.
I created a tremendous amount of value with Mike because we collaborated on diagnosis. Mike’s partners didn’t get to participate in diagnosis, so they didn’t get that value. No wonder they’re wondering how I’m different than other consultants.
I think I’ll save the sale. I’ve made mistakes frequently enough that I’ve also learned how to recover from them. The point of my story is selling is hard. We constantly make mistakes and, unfortunately, they’re often the same mistakes.
But remember, making mistakes is part of the game when you’re growing. The real story isn’t in making a mistake – it’s in adjusting and learning from the mistake.
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Resources
Doug's Washington Business Journal Columns- Intelligent Growth Articles
Third Wave Selling Blog
Products to Grow
