Competitive Excellence - "Superior Sales Results" with Stu Schlackman

Characteristics of the “A” Player Sales Professional

We’ve all heard the term “A” player when it comes to putting your All Star team together. The question I’d like to pose is this, is it possible to hire a sales professional who is good at every aspect of the sales process or environment? If you say that the answer is yes, find me twenty by tomorrow! Sales turnover of the last decade has been on the rise. Is it because the talent isn’t there or because companies have a wrong or broken sales process? Or maybe they hired the wrong sales talent for their sales model? I believe the answer is yes and yes.

If you take a look at the differentiating factor when it comes to winning new business, you will find that people always trumps process. Customers buy from sales professionals that take the time to build a long term relationship. I define that as a relationship that is based on solving their issues and delivering value. All customers know the difference between being sold to and having someone truly understand their issues and how they can best be solved.

When you are looking to recruit “A” players to your sales team, what are you looking for? Is it experience in your specific field; is it a great database of contacts, someone with a great track record and references? More specifically, what talents are needed to be successful in your sales environment? You know there are many responsibilities in a sales position. You will typically expect the sales person to do all of them including: prospecting (networking, cold calling, developing sales campaigns), presentations, proposals, qualifying the prospect, knowing the competition, overseeing the response to a request for proposal, handling objections, gathering the right resources, closing, account management and post sales support. Whew! While the sales person is the primary interface with the customer and acts as the team quarterback, many times they are treated as the water boy! Is it really possible to be good at all of these? No, yet all sales managers expect it.

Another question that needs to be addressed is what are the characteristics of your sales environment? Is it long sales cycle or short; are there multiple decisions makers or just one or two? Does the sales person need to be better at asking questions or presenting? You probably know the answers to these questions, but are you hiring the right talent for your environment?

Knowing the sales skills needed is a critical start, but as stated earlier, people trumps process which means we need to assess three key characteristics that “A” players bring to your sales team.

- First and foremost is relationship development. Customers buy from people they are comfortable with. So when you are interviewing a sales candidate put yourself in the shoes of a customer and ask yourself how attentive the person is to what you are trying to accomplish. Are they affable and would you take the time to develop a relationship with them. Do they appear to be trustworthy and sincere when addressing your goals and needs - that’s what every decision maker will be evaluating. Bottom line: are they focused on you?

- Second are they flexible? Are they open to new ideas and are they creative? Do they go with the flow of the conversation and balance asking questions with presenting their views? Are they displaying confidence when they bring up possible solutions to your goals and needs? How do they handle objections? Are they defensive or do they welcome customer concerns to better understand what’s really going on in their mind?

- Third point is, would you take their advice? Many sales professionals make recommendations but not all customers take them. Why? Because they haven’t proven their credibility. This can occur if there is pressure from the sales person to move the sales cycle along not understanding that it’s not their cycle but the buyer’s cycle that matters. We take advice from those we trust. Trust comes down to character and competence. We usually have no problem taking advice from someone we know is trustworthy and knows their business. Think about this, if a sales person gave you three options to choose from and they asked you which one you thought was best, I would say your fired! You should be telling me which is best for me since you’re the expert!

If you want to build an all star team, hire “A” team players. Understanding what your sales process and environment needs, and then finding the right match will get you over the goal line much more often.

Good selling!

---

Are You Customer Centric?

Many sales professionals start their sales career at new companies with training. Training is typically a mix of both skills development and product/services training. While this is not all that bad, it does set up the mindset for the sales person to lead with products and services when they call on customers and prospects. And why not? That’s what their comfortable with! Today selling is tougher than ever. There’s more supply than demand, more competition, longer sales cycles and most importantly customers are more knowledgeable than ever before thanks to the internet and the abundance of information. As Michael Bosworth says in Customer Centric Selling- “The traditional view of selling lays the foundation for confrontation, rather than collaboration when buyers and sellers interact.” I couldn’t agree more. We both believe that traditional sales training reinforces the sellers approach to manipulate buyers. The old mantra for sales professionals is “the selling begins when the buyer says no” and “every buyer objection is a selling opportunity”. Is this really true?

Many sales training programs miss the mark since it’s all about the company, their products and services and cookie cutter sales methodologies are taught without considering the specific sales environment. Is it a long sales cycle or short? Multiple decision makers or one? Complex solutions that span across the entire company or point solutions? How does this impact what our approach should be?

You can’t convey your value until you understand the real needs of the customer. When sales people lead with their solution all they can convey is product features. Features will lead to the same customer response every time “how much does it cost”? When opportunities are lost from the sales person’s pipeline, they’ll repeatedly hear the same reason - either wrong product or wrong price. Or as Michael Bosworth says, “Warning! Objects in the forecast may be further away and smaller than they appear.” This is what’s called being product or solution focused. Leading from our perspective and what the company has trained us to do. The close dates in the forecast have nothing to do with the buyers’ agenda, but correspond to the sellers’ agenda. There is a better way- being customer centric.

Let’s look at 3 key points that will help you be customer centric. The 1st is to understand the customer from their point of view. We all get excited about how unique our solutions are in the industry and we immediately want to get into presentation mode. Hold off! It should be the last thing we do. First ask the customer to share their goals and objectives. Once you understand those you can eventually ask what challenges they have. It’s easier for the customer to share their goals than to admit their problems. Now you can better understand if there’s a fit (our solutions that can meet their goals) so that you can convey what they value.

The 2nd point is to ask relevant questions. Qualifying is the easy stuff, but getting to the heart of the matter takes great listening skills and going deep instead of wide. Good questions will even help the customer discover their own reasons for not being able to achieve their goals. If you want better answers from the customer, ask better questions. The goal of the sales person is to guide the customer to what they think the solution should be-hopefully yours!

The 3rd point is to meet the decision maker(s). You cannot sell anything to someone who can’t buy. Many years ago I was building a relationship with the Chief Technology Officer of a large firm. We met each week and when it was time to present our proposal, he said he would not be the one making the decision. Shame on me! I’m supposed to be the sales professional. I guess you can say I was more of a “professional visitor”. Being customer centric means understanding who will make the decision to buy. The higher up in the chain of command that you call; the chances are your sales cycle will be shorter than starting at the bottom of the totem pole.

Remember that being customer centric defines the buyer’s cycle, while being solution centric defines the sales cycle. Customers don’t follow the sales person’s cycle!

Good selling!

---

Is Your Value Irresistible

How can our products and services become irresistible in the eyes of our prospects and customers? It seems as though we are in a new day and age of selling where the mantra of the customer is, “don’t call me, I’ll call you”! Have you noticed that too? They get back to you when they are ready, period. Why? Are they really that busy, or maybe their plate of priorities is so full, they feel your products and services can remain on the back burner until their load eases up. What can we do to move up the priority list? It’s like the standby list for first class at the airport. We ask where we stand and what are my chances of moving up the list and getting that first class seat? Membership and rank has its privileges. It also does with prospects and customers!

If we want to move up the priority chain with our prospects we must not just convey our value, but create the perception that our products and services are something they can’t do without. It has been said that perception is reality. No one ever got fired for buying IBM, so they say. Mark Joyner is the author of The Irresistible Offer and talks about the three necessary components of such an offer. They are a high ROI offer, a touchstone and believability. Let’s look at each of these.

A high ROI offer as Mark explains is 90% of the game. Giving the customer more than their money’s worth is a high return on investment. To the customer every purchase is an investment. So if your customers are not getting something from you that is perceived as greater in value than the amount they are investing, they are getting a negative return resulting in a short term unsatisfied customer-not good for your credibility! Bad news travels way faster than good news, so you need to not only satisfy our customers but delight them. When your customer is getting great value for the investment your marketing becomes a lot easier.

A touchstone addresses what you are selling, how much it will cost, what’s in it for your customer and why they should trust you. What the touchstone says is “here is such a great offer; you would be a fool to pass it up”. A touchstone is a very short version with little detail of your value proposition. Like your value proposition, it is tied to your corporate strategy. A touchstone must have the following four key elements to drive home your point.

- Clarity- don’t make it hard for the customer to figure out what you’re saying.
- Simplicity- it should be a simple statement that your customer can easily understand.
- Brevity- keep it short and sweet with just a few words.
- Immediacy- if your offer is strong enough you don’t need to pitch it.

The customer either wants it or not and if they don’t, you just saved yourself and the customer a lot of time. The touchstone gives you 75% of the high ROI offer. Mark mentions Domino’s that has one of the best touchstones ever created- “Pizza hot and fresh to your door in 30 minutes… or less … or it’s free”. In my own company, I use the touchstone - Superior Sales Results - clear, simple, brief & immediate! After all, who doesn’t want their sales results to be superior?
The last component is believability. How do you prove to your customer that you can be trusted? It’s good to be bold with your statements, but the bolder you are the harder it is to make yourself believable. There needs to be “proof” to gain credibility. There are three types of proof:

- Social proof - testimonials from customers
- Technical proof - the effectiveness of your product or service
- Factual proof - research that shows your value or popularity compared to competitors?

Lastly, believability must be credible - can you be trusted or do you have endorsements from a highly regarded authority who vouches for your product or service? As a process, your customers will first have their interest piqued by your Touchstone that should excite them to dig deeper. Second, they learn to trust you, your products and services because you are Believable - and now they dig deeper still. Finally with your High ROI Offer you show that your touchstone does capture the spirit of what you are offering and you get the sale.

I like the way Mark Joyner provides these simple steps to making irresistible offers. His ideas support my Sales Intelligence System, which is based on the premise that when we understand what our prospects value, we can more effectively serve their needs - we do provide that important touchstone - we are believable and we naturally offer a high ROI.

---

Contact Stu for Seminars / Keynotes

Purchase Seminar Materials from Insight Learning

Sign up for the Competitive Excellence Newsletter

Read Stu Schlackman's books and keynote lecture descriptions

Read all of Competitive Excellence's Testimonials