The sales process- Help or hindrance?

Far too frequently, competent salespeople are expected to channel their own activities into the areas that will produce the quickest wins. Unfortunately, left to their own devices, they don’t develop and pursue a formal strategy for moving a sale tangibly forward during each prospect interaction, neither do they have a clearly defined set of goals against which to measure the progress they are making. Typically, their judgment is based on gut reaction and is purely subjective i.e. “Oh yes, I’ll get that order, he likes me” because salespeople have to be optimistic by nature. They end up dancing around with prospects, in the hope that eventually they will get to their chosen point on the dance-floor i.e. -the sale. In this scenario, the prospect has complete control.

This lack of a plan is often fatal, because, as recent research from The Results Corporation PLC shows,
60% of clients buy after five “No’s” and yet …
44% of salespeople give up after the first “No”
22% after the second “No” and
14% after a third “No”

A well-known oil company discovered that it took their best salespeople an average of three visits and five follow-up calls to convert a prospect into a client. Yet, their average sales performers only visited prospects twice and then gave up, costing the company millions of dollars in wasted sales effort and even more in lost potential sales opportunities.
When their efforts don’t pay off immediately, even experienced salespeople tend to become discouraged. They spend more and more time struggling to meet their sales quotas and working less and less efficiently.

Feeling increasingly powerless to influence prospects, they may also begin to press for a sale in ineffective ways – for instance, by arranging full-dress product presentations to prospects that they have not even qualified or who haven’t yet agreed that they need the solution being presented. They allow prospects to milk them for information without getting a commensurate commitment first, and even worse they fail to defend margin and make unprofitable sales in order to achieve quotas.
The details of what goes wrong differs for each individual salesperson, but the net result is always the same, a discouraged sales force, diminished sales efficiency (i.e. wasted investment of sales time and resources that fail to produce high quality sales) and, consequently, increased cost of sales which inevitably drastically reduces net profit.

What’s the bottom line? Sales never result efficiently and with maximum revenue unless the sales process is continually and closely managed. But before the sales process can be managed, it must be manageable.
However, a word of caution …
But, and this is a very big BUT, it is not uncommon for an organization’s sales process to restrict and even stifle success by being far too rigid. In many scenarios, creativity is discouraged, and the rules are very black or white.

I have encountered many companies who insist that the sales team must achieve certain goals on a daily/weekly/monthly basis: They place great emphasis on quantity rather than quality, and as a consequence, they typically attract lower margin business.
In my opinion, a sales process should act as a “guide” particularly where activity is concerned, and always be flexible enough to accommodate individuals who sometimes need to work outside of the “boundaries”
With apologies to Jonathan Farrington

Does ALWAYS BE CLOSING work this day and age? I don't think so....

Sales Tips: The ABC’s of Selling

I love the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. It’s tough times for the Chicago Real Estate office. Blake (played by Alec Baldwin) challenges the sales team to a contest. The prizes? 1st place gets the Cadillac El Dorado. 2nd place gets a set of steak knives. And 3rd place- you get the sack – you’re fired! Blake sports his Rolex and preaches to the team the ABC’s of selling – Always Be Closing!

Does Always Be Closing work in this day and age? I don’t think so. Daniel Pink’s book “To Sell is Human”, customers are more knowledgeable than ever before. All they need to do is Google what they want on the internet and in no time they can be experts in their search for a solution. Plus, they have more options. Supply has overcome demand in this day and age.

Daniel Pink suggests that ABC should now be the acronym for Attunement, Buoyancy and Clarity. Let’s look at what each of these mean.

Attunement is focusing on your customer from their perspective. As Daniel Pink says it, “attunement is bringing one’s actions and outlook into harmony” with the customer. We need to identify to the customer’s personality style? How do they like to be approached? How do they make decisions, how do they prefer to communicate and what is the perceived value based on their personality?

Attunement is adapting to what’s comfortable for them. Another way to say this is to mimic or mirror how they behave. People tend to do business with people like themselves. I like me; therefore I would do business with me. It’s always better to view the customer from their perspective. This way we are more aware of what they are saying and how they are relating to us.

Another key point to attunement is realizing that customer’s make decisions with their heart as much as their head. Another way to say it is that perspective is just as important as empathy. But then again some personality styles (Orange and Blue being right brained) are more attuned to empathy and (Gold and Green being left brain) are more attuned to perspective.

Buoyancy is the ability to role with the punches. How do we handle concerns and objectives?

Even more importantly, how do you handle rejection? Buoyancy is the ability to bounce back from a setback. The best sales people are buoyant. Part of buoyancy is being optimistic and customers are more amenable to sales people that are upbeat.

The last point is clarity. Clarity helps the customer decide. Clarity is contrast. Your customer says your price is too high. Our response is compared to what? How do you make your solution standout as the best? How do you differentiate yourself from the competition?

Daniel Pink tells a story of how a blind man is sitting in a park and has a sign saying “I am blind”.

No one throughout the day stops to put money in his cup. Someone stops by and asks the man if he can add a few words to his sign. The blind man says sure. After adding the words the man comes back to check on the blind man’s cup and finds that it is overflowing. What did the man add to the sign? Just 3 words. It is springtime. This is not just clarity but context. By adding it is springtime to I am blind, it created empathy by those that walked by for the blind man. How beautiful to see the blooming flowers and trees and this man cannot see it.

How to you bring clarity to your solution? Are you buoyant in dealing with your customers? DO you adapt to their style. All 3 of these are critical to your sale success.

Apologies to S. Shulack.

Six bad sales habits you need to eliminate in order to be successful RIGHT NOW.

 

Let me tell you about six bad sales habits you need to eliminate in order to be successful RIGHT NOW.

1. Avoiding difficult challenges to win clients

The prospective clients that have the greatest ability to help you make your 2014 number are the most difficult clients to win. They already have a partner who provides them with what you sell. They already have deep relationships. And everyone and their brother is calling on them. But because these difficult-to-win clients can totally change your results, you have to focus your effort and energy on winning them.

2. Chasing receptive, non-opportunities

Honestly, much of what is in your pipeline isn’t really an opportunity. It’s a zombie. It looks like it’s alive, it looks like it’s breathing, and it stumbles around. But it’s dead. Just because someone is receptive and will take your call doesn’t mean you really have an opportunity. The best thing that you can do is dispatch the zombie opportunities and move on to the more difficult to win, but higher value prospective clients.

3.Waiting for marketing to generate leads

Any lead that you receive from marketing is a gift. I know it is their job to generate leads, and I know that you complain about not getting “ready-to-buy” leads. In 2014, you need to forget all that. You never want to rely on anyone else when it comes to making your number. Don’t wait for marketing to generate leads. Instead, do the prospecting work and build your own pipeline. Waiting isn’t a strategy.

4. Living in your inbox

Email is a place for other people to share their priorities for you. Nothing will kill your results faster and with more certainty than living with your inbox open. Waiting for a new email notification trains you to be reactive instead of proactive. It kills your initiative. Close your inbox. Do your real work.

5. Skipping steps in the sales process

In sales, like many other things in life, fast is slow and slow is fast. Salespeople can sometimes find this confusing, skipping ahead in their process to where they believe the action is: the presentation of their solution. But this isn’t where opportunities are won or lost. Opportunities are won and lost much earlier in the process. They are lost in discovery when the salesperson doesn’t spend enough time understanding and developing needs. Opportunities are lost in the mushy stage between discovery and presentation where consensus is built. Skipping past these stages ensures a loss. Spending time here greatly improves your chances of winning. Go slower to go fast.

6. Believing customers buy on price.

You don’t win opportunities on price. You win them on the value that you create. I know that there are some prospective clients that will challenge you with their inability to understand the difference between price and cost. In fact, I know some of them will downright refuse to believe that there is a difference. But this is the role of the sales professional. It is your job to change their mind and show them the difference between price and cost. It is your job to find people within your prospective client accounts who understand and support making the necessary investment to get the results they really want.

Stop these bad habits today and you'll be on your way to a goal-crushing 2014.

Apologies to A. Lannarino

Home buyers… are you waiting for prices to correct?

Home buyers… are you waiting for prices to correct?

 

There are a group of future buyers out there that are sitting on the sidelines waiting for the rumored price correction in the Toronto real estate market to occur before they will put pen to paper and buy their dream home. Are they making the right decision? Maybe, but maybe not.

One thing that is probably fairly certain is that a dramatic increase in mortgage interest rates would cause a decrease in home prices. Why? Because buyers DO NOT buy a home for $650,000 (although they think they do), they buy a home for $2,875 a month for their mortgage, taxes, utilities and insurance, which is what they really pay to live there.

So let’s do the math. A $650,000 purchase price with 20% down and a 5 year fixed rate mortgage at 2.99% with a 30 year amortization will cost about $2,184 per month principal and interest.

If mortgage rates go up to 4.5% and this causes a reduction in prices by 10%, your $650,000 home will now be $585,000 and with a 20% down payment and a 5 year fixed rate mortgage at 4.5% and a 30 year amortization, the monthly payment will be about $2,359 per month.

So now they have had the pleasure of living in their rental apartment for an extra year or two while waiting for prices to fall, and have ended up paying more each month for the same house.

Finally, what if all the supposed experts are wrong and prices do not fall and interest rates do not go up? Well in keeping with historical price increases in Toronto, you can expect prices to rise at approximately 5% per year, so your $650,000 home is increasing at over $30,000 per year.

The message is clear, just like the stock market, it is very difficult to time the real estate market and those that try often end up on the losing end. You are buying a home that will also prove to be a good tax free investment, but remember that it is primarily a home and the sooner you can cross that threshold, the sooner you can start enjoying all of the benefits.