salespodder: sales blog with musings and tips from inside sales

Had a thoroughly enjoyable lunch in the first London sunshine of the Summer yesterday with the head of one of my customer’s sales teams.  He’d a process of “CCRs” (client contact reports) which unsurprisingly the reps never filled out.  He knew that his post-sales Services team became party to killer intel from their clients when going in for training and consultancy and the like.

My service in part makes it simple to capture this - critically without replicating the low compliance or necessity of CCR input - and so the boss can easily see what Leads may be triggered from around his base from projects that his reps can explore.

One current initiative involves selling a new add-on module.  A few contact reports showed there could be a need for it, so he asked the reps concerned if they knew anything about them.  Most times, they did not (which is actually alright).  Where they did though, he then asked what they were doing about it, and he said his experience was that “they entered the mumble zone“.

I love this expression.  He was saying that they tried to justify actions where no activity existed.  The clear lesson for sales people, is that if you become aware of a potential project, at least have one solid documented activity around something to do with exploring it further!

This was a question posed on a sales & marketing forum I wandered into the other day.  I had a few moments, so typed an answer away to help the fella, called Bjorn.  I was delighted when he later awarded my experience as “best answer”.  Thanks fella!  Here it is:

The cheeky clichéd answer is “never” A lot depends on whether you are making a usp of cheapness. If not, then the most successful reps I meet all defend their quoted prices vigorously. The longer they stick to talking about why any perceived premium is worth the extra, the more likely they are to succeed.

In addition, there’s common recognition that you only mention your figures once asked to by the buyer, and even then it can pay to be a little vague, as no-one ever buys a “price”, they should really focus on whether the offering is right for them first.

When someone negotiates with you on price, the chances are high they are interested. If you are a single bidder, then any price reduction MUST be conditional on something else going your way. Delivery times, longer-term commitment, payment terms, the list is endless.

In competition, should you establish you’re not merely being used as a stick to beat up a preferred alternative vendor, then where you are the dearer, it’s always worth planting such seeds as “what happened last time you bought the cheapest?”, “when you bought the last thing similar to this, did you buy the cheapest?”.

And here was Bjorn’s response:

Thank you for answering! Good to read that you keep the exchange principle in mind when dealing with (price) negotiation. I often see salespeople split up the pie in more pieces for them or the client, instead of making two, three or more pies.

Good sales to you!

Had one of those delicious moments of dawning earlier today.  Many sales teams I meet are disillusioned with their ‘crm’, to the point of jettisoning the whole shabang.  In their place, quasi-random spreadsheets or word process docs float around.

One omnipresent reason for such abandonment, is that reps simply hardly ever tap in (enough) relevant transactional data.  They make a call lasting an hour, and a single sentence appears in the crm.

Just now I came across one of the myriad sales training firms that are seeking to turn their training into a process that can be supported by software, thereby hopefully embedding it within their client’s sales fabric.  I generally support such endeavours.

One reason why these guys I’m talking with are onto a winner, is that one part of their process highlights the numbers of genuine ‘propositions’ that are made to prospect/customer organisations.

And naturally, this got my brain whirring.  I cannot recall seeing any crm that allows for an analysis of how many propositions are made and their outcomes.  On the simplest level, rather than focusing on the conversations you have with any given account, you should instead build on the number of propositions you make and their impact.  It’s a winner of an idea, and one I’m keen to help my training pals exploit.

Well, serendipity is a wonderful thing.  There I was in my spare time, googling for some stuff on ‘peak limiting’ (it’s a music production thang) and amazingly I came across a wealth of sales intel from a bloke called Mike Southon, writing in Britain’s best-selling daily quality newspaper (the Telegraph, who’s business columnist Jeff Randall I’ve blogged about before as I’m quite a fan).

I’ve already read a few of the several pages he’s been awarded.  As you can imagine, regular national press coverage on selling is something I warmly welcome.  One interesting piece read so far is on his so-called “magic email“.  There are several recommendations on the web for this kind of intro.  He reckons he gets an impressive response of around 1 in 6¼ agreeing to a short meeting. You can easily read the detail for yourself, but it’s worth highlighting a summary:

Line 1 - something you notice/know about their company

Lines 2&3 - elevator pitch extolling passionately about what you do

Line 4 - proof of the above claims

Line 5 - close (what you propose or want to achieve)

and subject line: something compelling, his example is the weakest explanation of his recipe, but you’ll get the idea; “The Best Quality Widget-Sharpening Service in the South West”

I wondered too whether I could adapt the 25 words approach I blogged about before?!

One reason why I like this kind of thing is ‘cos I’ve been toying with solutions for this conundrum myself lately, and here’s part of a mail that earned me a first meeting recently, of which I think Mike would be pleased, although re-reading it now I know could cull a few words and make it flow better for next time:

“My purpose is to speak with you so that we can arrange a 20 minute meeting to determine how our breakthrough service can make your sales team even more effective by helping your sales initiatives. This is I’m sure not a definitive list, but should give ideas from my initial research for you:

• Continued growth and maintaining a value-for-money portfolio
• Dedicated account management to hopefully increase our share of customer spend
• Keeping focus of what the sales team should be selling given vast array of products“

And financial proof followed.  The email response (from the MD) was “call my PA to arrange a meeting”.  Yum.

With rain pumping down this washout of a Summer in London, I ended up watching the Open golf from Carnoustie on telly Sunday afternoon.  It was gripping drama, with Sergio folding under the challenge from Padraig Harrington up to and during the eventual play-off.

Commentators rarely offer insight of note.  Witness the risible Peter Alliss on the Beeb.  Pompous at the best of times, his ability to underhwlem was never more noticeable than when he called Sergio’s final put on the 72nd as missing before it lipped out, removing much of the tension.  What an idiot.

Luckily, the legend that is Sam Torrance was on hand to save the day.  Remember how he reacted to sinking that Ryder Cup winning put on the Belfry’s 18th in 85?  And then there was the interview with Steve Rider late on the Sunday night when clearly the worse for wear after he’d won the Ryder cup again, this time as Captain, also at the Belfry?!

As pressure was getting the better of most of the competitors, Sam recited a quote. He attributed it to 50s golf star Ben Hogan, said to Tiger Wood’s first coach (and also brilliant TV pundit), Butch Harmon, with the preface ‘ten two letter words’:

“if it is to be, it is up to me”

After all, who else can you rely on to make things happen…?

As an aside, Harrington attributed part of his success to US sports psychologist Bob Rotella.  During his commentary, Sam Torrance (who’s father coaches Padraig) mentioned that Segio needed to calm down and not swing too much with the highs and lows.  And that is precisely what Padraig reckoned Rotella had helped him with; dealing with adversity and not letting the emotion of winning take over him before it had actually happened.

May 2007 saw a chap called Jon Hunt earn £388m from selling his estate agency founded in 1981.  Most observers paint an unpleasant picture of this chap, which considering his achievements could be sour grapes, or an accurate description of how mere money alone is no indicator of individual ethical calibre.

What I did find interesting from a sales perspective, was how the firm, Foxtons gained a foothold.  They promised sellers 3% from any sale - double their competitors - in return for a promise they would indeed gain a better price uniquely from them alone.

Inspiration, if ever you needed it, that competing on price is not the only way to provide a bulging wallet.  One great thing about charging more, is it naturally means you get a shot at explaining what the difference is for.  Also, how many times do you hear stories about reps charging - and getting - more than list price?  It’s a tactic that can really work…..

Been enjoying working with a fella called Mike Turner, who sounds like a bit of a guru on the evolution of sales support.  He likes to draw joined up sales intel thinking as a pawnbroker’s logo, namely three circles in a triangle configuration.

The first two are fairly commonplace, being a marketing support system meant to uncover opportunities and feed leads in to salesguys (a combination of in-house Business Intelligence and SAS software) linked to their activity tracker and forecast generator (customised Goldmine kit).

Then the third is all about how to share the multitude of anacdotel messages, intimate success stories and abundant tactical best-practices that occur in barely-reported isolation.  With the challenge to ensure this is presented in such a way that it becomes an integral part of each sales person’s routine.

They toyed with the idea of running a blog that anyone can input experiences into, then realising sales people might not input (!) considered utilising marketing resource to ‘manage’ the flow.  This option was similarly discounted due to inevitable role-erosion in the light of alternative task creep.

The solution will involve doing all of the donkey-work of intelligence capture for the sales people, and linking the three ’systems’ in such a way that they become inter-dependent so that every week you’ll want to produce something or interact with each one to ensure a deal progresses your way.

It’s a cracking idea and one I’m looking forward to reporting success on at a later date.

I know a group of sales trainers/consultants that have a system for key account management.  They’ve ‘automated’ this by creating a spreadsheet to track every opportunity and account in their suggested way.

They sought to create something a bit more professional than a mere spreadsheet, looking at software development.  Then they canned the idea.  It was too difficult to work out how to cater for every customer having a slightly different take on what they wanted.  In effect, it meant each client would want significant ‘bespoking’, and that adds zeros to the bill.

There’s a lot of column inches devoted to incorporating sales methodologies into crm systems.  Yet won’t they fall into the same trap?  And we’re talking about requirements beyond user-defined field fixes and presentation/report-writer options.

Countless (not always small) firms I come across never progress farther than spreadsheets.  Compliance may be low, standards get meddled with, and collation never happen, yet how are these issues helped by ‘crm’? 

I read a summary of a recently released biography on abrasive Ryan Air boss Michael O’Leary last Sunday.  I heard not so long ago that the Irish low-fare pioneer was the 3rd biggest airline in the world by market capitalisation.  I was hoping the article would give an insight into O’Leary’s thinking;  he mostly favours incessant cost reduction. 

Before he joined the airline, he ran a newsagents in Dublin.  It made £1,000 in sales a day.  His philosophy was to treble the cash, he should open at 7am, close at 11pm.  Nothing particularly new in this.  Then as Christmas approached, he reckoned he could make a few extra quid.

He stocked up on things he thought people might want on Christmas Day.  He went out and bought loads of them.  Especially packets of 200s cigarettes, batteries and boxes of chocolates.  Then he marked them up to triple their normal price.

When he opened on the day itself (unknown in Ireland the 80s), he sold out by lunchtime, and had raked in a mind-blowing £14,000.

At a number of sales operations recently I’ve come across this great tactic.  A “call-off contract” estimates a total amount of spend over a period of time, and gains commitment that an amount of deliverable can be obtained in return.

Services that utilise this technique include such diverse items as outsourced office meeting rooms, long-run printing consumables and software training days.

The key element that makes these succeed, is that rather than someone having to go and seek authority for each individual ordering, a bundle is batched together so that authority over a certain time is gained upfront, meaning no delay or recrimination.  This helps the buyer reduce hassle and budget in advance, and of course the seller is aided by quicker aggregated sales cycles.

If this tactic can help you, then you can name it something that doesn’t even sound ’salesy’, like “Preferred Client Agreement” or “Possible Service Arrangement”.