salespodder: sales blog with musings and tips from inside sales

I’ve recently been trying to buy some new toys for my sales guys.  And I’ve become infuriated beyond belief by the lack of care, appreciation and genuine interest the sales guys selling to me consistently showed towards me.  For sure, they were all pally-pally.  Cracked the funnies.  Tried to establish rapport.  Asked (albeit in a fairly perfunctionary manner) what my requirements were.  Yet, a fundamentally vital element was missing in the subconscious transmissions I relentlessly receive from them.

Let me give you an example.  One guy was giving me a type of ’deadline’ close: “I need you to email me acceptance else I won’t be able to supply you”.  A lesson in how not to win orders.

Why do I give a toss about what ‘you’ want or need, mister salesman?

You can give off the right message though.  Here’s how: “… knowing you want … if you send through the order now … you can then guarantee you’ll … ” and so on.

Today I heard someone messing up, derided as a Magpie.  Not knowing precise characteristics of said bird, fortunately the speaker immediately explained to the embattled salesperson for all our benefit.

“You look from up on high, see something glisten and swoop down onto it, then move on when something else shiny catches your eye”

This is clearly a trait sales people do NOT want to be saddled with.  Many of the best - and by best I mean most successful with results and commensurate commission payments - sales people are not distracted by the most attractive glistening opportunity.  They often do their numbers, out-performing other reps, by focusing on and ensuring the more bread and butter appearing opportunities, become deals. 

I felt starved of genre-defining drama on TV since the turn of the new millennium.  The 90s gave us innovative gems such as This Life, Between The Lines and Cracker, with even the Americans rising above their normal moral evangelism with the first season of NYPD Blue.  But what’s been around to herald a new epoch since?

Then along came Life On Mars.

If you know nothing about it, it’s where 2006 policing crashes into 1973, with the major sizzle coming from the riveting abrasions between the two main characters.

After its stunning viewing figures success (forget the final ten minutes of the final series one episode) the beeb had a 1973 week on BBC3, which included a re-run of all eight shows.  After one, they aired a 20-minute interview with the 3 writers.

When they made their initial pitches to programme schedulers, no-one was interested.  In fact, this eventual ratings winner took 7 years and an incredible 36 re-writes to make it onto the screen.

And naturally, this got me thinking about the Life In Sales.  How confident are sales people that they truly, sincerely believe their product is tailor-made for their prospect?  I myself recently came across a situation with one of my guys where everyone was telling him that the Big Boss was crying out for what we uniquely provide.  Over two months of emails and phone calls failed to get commitment to a meeting and with dis-information seemingly of Sinophilic proportions, the email that moved the meeting into the diary began formally ”I feel puzzled that the facts appear to be distorted.  May I re-state them…..”

The message is clear, when you honestly feel you’ve got what will change someone’s life the way they want, do not relent from telling them.

I’ve been doing loads of interviews over the past ten days or so.  And it’s really starting to do my head in.  Spending a good while on the phone with potential candidates is a winner, yet even when they sound fairly good, it can all fall to pieces at the end of the resulting one-hour interview.

On the phone, everyone is savvy enough to ask something like “when can we get together then”.  Although one obvious word of warning, is that many people make this sound too formal.  Closing should be a natural progression with a flow to the language.  It’s almost as if some people put this phrase into a straight-jacket… “would you, erm, can we say, meet for an interview…erm…” and the like is not good.

Then we get to the ending of the interview.  Why do people not close when face-to-face?  It’s a sales interview, so I need to see some evidence they can sell.  They must close, and then have to handle a couple of objections.  But they often don’t.  I even had one guy try and joke at the end of one, “when can I start!” without any real conviction, or even proper follow-up.  Anyhow, it’s got me so wound up, I’m going to now pass on a new category of how you should perform in such situations, and what to look out for when you’re the recruiter.

Came across a salesguy called Stuart Glimstead at one of my customers earlier today, who had a response for when a prospect starts going on about cheaper competition. 

His first retort is simply “why do you think they’re cheaper?” 

He finds this begins to place a seed of doubt in how they perceive the competition. It gets them thinking in the direction that you want and that is all the negative experiences that they have had with things they have considered ‘cheap’. This is apparently called priming – they will start recalling their ‘cheap and nasty’ experiences and this will allow you to setup the qualification of your pricing. They will now have a negative association, at least for the time that you are there, with ‘cheap competition’.

I used this technique in the 90s with some pretty good success.  The way I went about it was asking what was the last item the prospect had bought for their home, like a microwave or washing machine or telly.  How many were on their shortlist?  Had they bought the cheapest?  Invariably not - so why not….?

I’ve long got frustrated at salesforces that have a boat-load of training, which then never seems to make a difference.  What typically happens, is that any info imparted goes in one ear and out the other.  Actual ‘Recall’ of what was run through can be pretty low even the day after, and practically zero a couple of weeks on.

I learned this morning that there’s a name for this; the Ebbinghaus Effect.  I just found lots of places on the web that describe it in more detail, yet only these three that offer any way of avoiding falling into its trap.

Slant from world of advertising & marketing

How to remember things

Psychological ‘consolidation’

For my money, two strands ensure you can avoid this in a sales learning environment; only focus on one area if at all possible, and constantly reinforce what you want taking board.