Talk to Me

How are you changing your sales dialogues to encourage customers to open up to you and tell you about the impact the economy is having on their businesses and how that has changed their priorities? Customers won’t really open up unless they trust you. And gaining and keeping trust is not easy in light of what most customers are going through.

Preparation

Trust is earned over time. One way to establish and reinforce trust is to demonstrate extra-ordinary preparation. There has been a shakeout in salesforces and salespeople across industries are facing tougher competitive situations. Customers have raised the bar for what they expect from salespeople and many are cynical. “Normal” preparation just won’t do it. One sales manager provides his salesforce with daily up-to-date data. For example, a competitor advertiser just lost 18% of its readership — a fact that will help his salesforce take budget from that competitor. He also requires every week that salespeople on his team bring in an article or information to share with the team to raise their game. Extra-ordinary preparation is what it takes. You can do it and customers notice and reward it.

There is so much more for you as a salesperson to know today. Fortunately, the information you need is at your finger tips with a simple click. For example, you can learn more about customers as individuals and make connections with resources such as LinkedIn and Facebook. You can scope out your competitors’ messages and products to figure out how to position against them. The phrase “I know my customer” simply no longer exist without continuous dialogue and research.

Just how have you changed the level of your preparation?

• What kind of research/homework are you doing before every call? Do you reference your preparation to leverage it during the call to gain trust and credibility?


• What questions do you prepare?


• What ideas are you generating?


• How do you justify the investment in terms of savings or revenue generation and the customer’s new priorities?

The more you understand about customers and their needs, their businesses and industries before your sales calls the more likely you will be able to engage in meaningful change conversation to understand and satisfy new priorities.

Engaging in the Change Conversation

There is a lot of fear out there and the change question is not one you can ask head on. I have never been a proponent of the question, “What keeps you up a night?” I find that question intrusive, presumptive, and over used. But you can broach the subject by asking about the kinds of things that are concerning your customers in this economy. To get at what is worrying them. Start your questions indirectly. Ask how the economy has impacted their customers. Based on the response you get, ask the worry question directly if you have a good relationship and if not, take one step back and ask how your customer’s priorities have shifted and listen and probe.

Customers’ needs have changed. So has their level of trust. Talk about your preparation for the meeting. Showing you are thinking about them helps build and reinforce trust. The old solutions you’ve relied on in the most likely won’t fit. It’s time to be more creative in the solutions you provide. It’s time to generate ideas and carefully justify price in terms of savings, productivity, or revenue generation, and be prepared to provide pricing alternatives — for example, one salesperson got two-non-competing companies to share a resource and split the cost. It’s critical to be out there with your customers listening to them and bringing ideas to show you care what happens to them.

It is an understatement to say closing sales is tougher today. The changes your customers are experiencing demand changes, not tweaking, on how you approach them — your preparation, your dialogue, and your follow-up. When things are slow, spend your time talking to your customers to get them to talk to you. Where there is trust, there is business to be won.

Learn more about Richardson's" Sales Training Solution at http://www.richardson.com/

A Sales Methodology

Do you have a sales methodology that your team follows? Let’s step back. What is a sales methodology? Sales best practices? A sales process? Documented steps/procedures in the sale? Sales skills? Tools? All of the above?

A sales methodology is the system a sales organization follows to win business. In one sense (not the best sense), every sales organization and/or salesperson has a sales methodology whether it is the remnants of one that had once been put in place, the norm people follow, or what a particular salesperson has figured out for him or herself.

An effective sales methodology is one that a sales organization has thought out clearly and provides it to its salesforce. The differences between a sales methodology that just exists because a company or most salespeople pretty much operate that way and a highly effective sales methodology boils down to six critical success factors.

 Documentation: Map out clear steps as a guide for salespeople to follow/repeat.
 Best Practices: Embed it with what your top performers consistently do.
 Training: Prepare your salesforce to ensure they have the knowledge and skills needed to carry out the steps.
 Tools: Give salespeople and sales managers tools, such as easy to use CRMs, planners, access to research … to make them more productive.
 Execution: Follow it and coach to it.
 Assessment: Ongoing feedback, tweaking and refinement.

The goal of having a sales methodology is to win more deals and to win them more quickly.

The initial question was do you have a sales methodology. The second question is if not should you have one?

Take the time to map out the steps it takes to identify and convert a lead into a customer. Make it a collaborative process with marketing team and your top performers. It is more than worth the effort. 10% of your reps will do fine without a clear sales methodology. But 80% will do better with one.

Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com

NO BUDGET – UNLESS OF COURSE

Many of the customers we are talking to may be like your customers. Their budgets have either been cut or all but vanished.

They also have something else in common: their goal to increase revenue and save money in the short-term. You already know how important it is to justify your value to a customer. But — never before has value justification taken on such a critical role in closing business. It now is the key to finding, unlocking, and creating budgets. And the nature of value justification has changed. We are not only in a spreadsheet world but a world that is demanding creativity in finding rationale to buy and identifying non-typical pockets where budgets may be found.

I spoke with a salesperson who, in my view, is a master at conjuring up budgets even when the customer had been unsuccessful in doing so him or herself. It is said that “Necessity is the mother of invention.” This seems true for the salesperson. His product was so new and original that not only was there no budget for it (even in good times), there was no one with the responsibility for it.

After identifying who in the organizations were most apt to have needs for his product and then engaging in need dialogues with them and being told there was no budget, he leaned heavily on metrics and creative analysis to prove his product was a smart move and would help his customers achieve their objectives. He captivated and convinced one customer by showing that if his product increased the performance of one of the company’s 500 sales reps by 5%, that increase would pay the full cost of the investment. This brought not only a smile to the customer’s lips, it gave the customer a rationale to bring to his boss and get the OK.

He showed another customer how his product amounted to .0001% of their total revenue and compared that to the increase in productivity. For another customer who put money aside for replacement of full-time equivalents in anticipation of the company’s 10% turnover, he showed that by reducing that fund by one person, the cost of the product was covered, and this potentially reduced turnover and gave needed support to his team of managers.

In each case, he was able to close because he spelled out his value justification in a way that was graphic, concrete, tangible, practical, reasonable, and believable.

Today, it’s necessary to go beyond “normal” thinking about value justification. It’s necessary to really understand the company’s business, deeply probe the customer’s needs and find a direct link of your product to the customer’s shorter-term objectives, and then justify the price specifically. It takes searching every nook and corner for ways to illustrate value justification.

Closing starts in prep time when you think about the value you bring to the table and continues in the deep need dialogue you lead so you can graphically show dollars and cents value. While the value you show can be longer-term, today, the shorter, the better, and the more specific, the more compelling.

Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com

MAGNIFIED TRANSPARENCY

Your credibility with your customers is your number one sales credential. While your credibility has always been important to your customers, today it is not only foremost on a customer’s checklist for doing business with you, it is easy to measure.

The web has made it possible for customers, with a few clicks, to find out how accurate your every word is, whether about yourself, your products, or your organization.

Whether customers check blogs, social networks, etc. … they are checking. Faulty information won’t remain a secret for very long today thanks to the web. For example, flogs (fake blogs made to look as if they are generated by consumers) are easy to detect because facts are easy to check and expose in a matter of minutes. One salesperson lost a sale by making a less than truthful claim. He explained to his customer his mark-up was 5%. When the customer checked the web, he discovered a 7.5% mark-up. Armed with this, he not only had more negotiating power to get the deal he wanted, he chose another provider!

One candidate for a sales job was too casual about the pictures he showed on Facebook, giving his would-be employer insights better left for close friends. Magnified transparency is the new factor in the buyer-seller relationship.

So double-check your facts to guard your credibility and build on and keep the trust you’ve earned.


To learn more about Richardson's global sales training solutions, please visit our website at http://www.richardson.com

Not Business as Usual

Many salespeople are reporting that it is taking them twice as long to close a sale as compared to 2007. They also agree that there are fewer deals and, therefore, the need for them to close the deals that are in the pipeline is more acute. Certainly customers will not buy without clear value justification and trust in you. But what else can you do to increase your chances that you, not your competitor, get the business that is out there?

You likely have your closing checklist with questions such as, “Have you gotten to the economic decision maker?” “What is the budget?” and so on. Here’s another question to ask yourself to help you win the business and accelerate closing:

“What ADDITIONAL effort and resources can I put into this opportunity?”

You may be thinking that you are already doing everything possible and taking every extra step the opportunity warrants. And surely the resources you expend must be proportionate to the opportunity, but today, being creative in taking an extra step will pay off.

For example, can you involve a specialist or, to contain costs, arrange a conference call with him or her and your customer? Is there a senior from your team you can involve face-to-face or by phone? Can you add extra value without lowering your price? Can you do the project in stages? Can you demonstrate you go the extra step, for example, visit one of the company’s stores before your presentation to show your commitment to really knowing the customer? And how are you tactfully but clearly leveraging these extra steps and getting credit for your actions?

What is something you ordinarily don’t do that will dramatically show your customer you are there to meet his/her needs and add value? One retail salesperson whose day off was Thursday gave a customer and a prospect who wanted “to think about it” her cell number to be in touch with her if they had any questions. The prospect called her and she closed the sale on her day off.

Closing is taking longer and is more challenging. And one big reason is customers and being more careful so they don’t make a mistake. Therefore, your energy, effort, and creativity must be greater.

Following your normal process will lead to your normal results. Times are not all that normal. To bump up results, bump up what you are doing — more calls, more creativity, more ideas, greater responsiveness, more contact. It’s pretty clear that it takes more time and energy to get deals done. Do something your competitors aren’t doing. Help your customer feel safe and take the step to buy from you.

Please e-mail me at lrichardson@richardson.com and let us know what “extra” effort looks like for you and how it has paid off.

To learn more about Richardson's sales training solutions, please visit Richardon on the web at http://www.richardson.com

Bond Among Salespeople?

I watched Pioneers of Prime Time on PBS, a documentary on the early days of TV, with comic luminaries such as Red Skelton, Milton Berle, Gracie Allen, and George Burns. Each of the stars talked about the bond that existed among them because they were in “entertainment.”

It got me thinking about the “bond” among salespeople — Is there one? And, if so, what does it mean?

I think there is a bond — of the road warrior away from home, the pressure of the quarter, the relationship-building with clients. Whenever I meet salespeople, whether on a train or in a social setting, I feel a connection to them — their life, career choice, and life experience.

How do you feel? Is there a bond?

Lego Lessons for Salespeople

Over a sunny August weekend at the beach, I watched my 7-year old nephew, Dylan, assemble his birthday present, a Lego Aqua Raiders set. This Lego is way beyond what the simple Lego design I recall. It was aimed at 8 to 14 year olds and consisted of multiple plastic bags filled with complex small shapes, sizes, and colors and two instruction books, totaling 115 pages of small type and diagrams.

In the past, I’ve seen his dad help him with these difficult tasks but he wanted to do this one himself. Intermittently over the course of 3 days he sat whistling and working away at it.

I was astounded to see the concentration and methodology and I realized there was a lesson there for all of us in sales.

Just as he drew from his resources of among the dozens of the little plastic bags filled with tiny parts, salespeople draw from their resources, research, and experience. He used the instruction book to guide him piece by piece and looked ahead to see where each small design would take him. Salespeople’s set of instructions are their knowledge of the sales process, how to lead a call and follow a call plan. And they must think ahead to their goal.

Dylan would test each piece along the way. Salespeople must seek feedback from customers. Whether Legos or sales, tasks and sequence matters.

Dylan was motivated as he completed each piece by his sense of accomplishment and praise from all of us. When he ran into a snag, he backtracked and made adjustments. Salespeople too must get reinforcement and persist.

So some questions for you — When you are working to close a deal, how does your focus and commitment compare? If you run into trouble, can you regroup? Do you keep going to move forward to win the deal and build the relationship?

A note for sales managers: Aqua Raiders could be a good team building exercise. And if the team gets stuck, find a 7-year old.

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To learn more about Richardson's comprehensive, customize sales training solutions, please visit us on the web at http://www.richardson.com