salespodder: sales blog with musings and tips from inside sales

Interestingly when I held a chat at one of my customers about ‘credit crunch’ busting sales tactics, I mentioned that one way was to raise a cheeky price here and there.  There’s I guess a pretty famous marketing blog by a fella called Seth Godin which I stumble across every now and then during recreational surftime via links on sites I regularly read.  Although I don’t really class myself as a marketeer, there’s clearly overlap between what such people (whom reps often think of as lowlier than other competitors, battling over the title of Sales Prevention Dept) and I do.  Here’s a cracking recent musing from him:

“No such thing as price pressure”

Your sales force and your customers may scream that you need to lower your price.

It’s not true.

You need to increase your value. If people don’t want to pay, it’s because you’re not delivering enough value for the money you’re charging.

You’re not selling a commodity unless you want to.

I couldn’t agree more.  Whatever obstacle may arise, there’s general acknowledgement that you get what you pay for, so if you charge a higher price than alternatives, then surely you must be giving back more in return?  The key is to select a genuine usp, one that should be in demand, and create the buzz that you need through the price differentiation of it.

In the example from my recent experience, the sales team in question had a new product.  Management were keen to push this as a unique, new-to-the-market offering.  Initially the reps were disengaged.  All the typical reasons applied; scared of cannabalising existing sales, worried it would take too much time to get results, anxious that it’d be tricky to sell something ‘new’ first, disappointed at marketing ’support’ somewhat unaligned to how selling works, antipathy to being told what to do by management.

Yet I felt their rush of excitement as the dawning began to spread around the room.  Could it really be that they could make serious money with the provocative stance of being proud at the seemingly ‘high’ launch price?

I gained recent exposure to the current big-buzz right-wing think tank concept of Nudge.  Rather than telling people to do things, it advocates instead that you let them make their own journey to where you suggest they go.  Key to the concept is the use of influence as a Choice Architect.

Each time we provide options, there’s a chance to increase desired take-up by judicious presentation of said alternatives.  When doing so, it is crucial to understand that “there is no such thing as a “neutral” design“.

As sales people, we constantly offer choices to potential buyers.  The most common format is likely the “PLOF”.  Such a ‘Price List Order Form’ is, as the name suggests, acts as both a price list and order form combined.  The idea is that buyers can simply tick off what they want.  The columns are straight-forward; product code, product description, price, tick the box or fill in the quantity.

In the wholesale-distribution trade they’re omnipresent.  Yet whoever creates them should be shot.  Better still, asked to re-design them.  It’s not difficult to see a process could be relatively easily set-up that creates bespoke PLOFs for each client based on their buying behaviour, both actual or hoped-for in the light of identified gaps.

Then there are Proposals.  How often do even the biggest of tickets sellers need to put forward different options?  Pretty much every time a Prop is provided.  If for no other reason, it’s a way of trying to upsell a touch.  Usually, it’s because the precise nature of the eventual order remains unknown.  How are the alternatives listed?  There’s a great example from the Economist magazine’s subscription efforts, subsequently related to music CD and mp3 experiences, that suggests an intelligent approach to your job as a Choice Architect can bring richer rewards (an incredible 43% bigger in fact for this case).

So much has been written about how Team GB made Britain Great again at the Beijing Games, the past few days have enabled glorious reflection whenever I fancied a break here in London.  After recounting the manifold (and largely unexpected) successes, broadsheets have wondered how it was all so miraculously done.

Two strands stand out for me.  And they are two things that we’ve never had before.  Sure, Olympic competitors have had the drive to awake at 5am each day to swim for hours alone, like double-Gold winner Rebecca Adlington.  I’m old enough to remember how middle-distance titans Coe and Ovett, hardly on speaking terms at the time, were spurred on by the thought of what the other was doing to such an extent that Christmas Day was simply nothing other than a normal training day.  Gold medallists have always displayed a winning mentality, whether it be Linford Christie’s knowledge of having to run 101 metres to win, or Daley Thompson’s desire to “crush” his opponents.  But two strands build on mere individual dedication.  And they are a pair that sales people can similarly tap into.

Attention To Detail

The stories of the cyclists’ regimen are rapidly becoming the stuff of legend.  No wonder that many other sports are gravitating towards spending time at their Manchester base.  They famously re-created their Chinese Village quarters and climatic conditions.  Then there’s the Kayak ‘Paddle Project’, where they assessed all sorts of material and shape combinations within the rules to arrive at the best form of propulsion.  Consequently, next time I kick-off a solution-selling cycle, I’m minded to mention Team GB’s success, and suggest we follow an Olympian process to uncover all the needs and remedies.  How could a prospect turn that plan down?

Around The Edges

The other strand that appeals to my selling focus, is how all the things seemingly only remotely connected to competing are examined.  Sir Clive Woodward (now involved with the 2012 delivery) talks of improving 100 things by 1% each.  ‘Distraction Control’ is a new phrase I’ve picked up to allow all energy to go into winning, rather than allow some to get diverted onto ultimately fruitless paths.  Also, a key reason for the cycling dominance is their team-bond.  Rebecaa Romero didn’t feel part of the team until she’d won her Gold.  A touch extreme perhaps, but what a fantastic culture to develop if each of your sales team members didn’t feel they belonged until surpassing 100%.  And there was also the fact that Team GB riders and support staff couldn’t work out why they were the only country who all stayed en masse to cheer on every single athlete in each race.  Again, what an amazing culture to foster.

In short, current cycling supremo Dave Brailsford considers winning a process, rather than an end in itself, and this is something we sellers can readily adopt.  We all have the bsaic I guess, ie: a quota, and may well have targets within this, eg: profit split, account growth, new acquisitions.  Yet how many of us break this down further?  Here’s just a few off-the-wall ideas for starters:

• getting 10 prospects to talk to my ‘best’ client
• arranging a dozen meetings with people only affected by my solution indirectly or downstream
• asking my five largest client’s Head of Sales what their biggest issue is right now and relating that to our solution
• working out how to increase my funnel by 10% each quarter
• creating forums with 3 of my prospect’s suppliers/customers that would see an impact from my solution

It did occur to me that cycling’s domination by Team GB appeared out of character, bizarre even.  And I’ve just learnt why.  The Beeb give an excellent narrative of how the nation emerged to take over the sport through a decade of effort.  It’s a lesson for anyone trying to break away from apparent random sales success, or turnaround performance from the lack of it.  Whether sales individual or team leader, there are some marvellous insights into how to create sustainable results. 

I particularly liked the strive to avoid “alpinism”.  A great turn of phrase to mean that each accomplishment must leave behind a trail and ropes, so that the system/methods can be followed and improved upon (from the delicious example of Chris Boardman’s terrific, yet one-off, 1992 Barcelona Gold).

Here’s the heart of the vibe, as explained by the initial protagonist, Peter Keen, downbeat after a seemingly superb 2000 Sydney Olympic medal haul…

“We had some good results but we couldn’t really argue there was a system in place or that we had developed a culture.

In fact, it wasn’t until late 2001 that the penny dropped. I needed to clear out riders and coaches who weren’t obsessed with winning.

It was a very hard thing to do and a lot of people found the process incredibly emotional. It was our year zero.”

As aspirant pedal-medal eyes around the world looked enviously on the emerging British achievements, current team boss, Dave Brailsford, gave further insight.  Three parts of the plan stand out. 

Firstly, he visited Beijing an incredible nine times before the games.  One purpose was to build friendships with those due to organise everything.  This helped him get first dibs on which ‘pen’ Team GB would get (the team space inside the velodrome).  He was determined to grab the best one.  Awesome preparation to “leave no stone unturned”.

Secondly, he doesn’t talk about medal-targets.  The team don’t set them.  Instead, they set process targets.  This is a real game-changing idea for sales teams.  You know you want to win Gold, yet the end isn’t the focus.  It’s how you strive to get there that requires management and focus.

Finally, on the eve of the event, he held a team meeting.  He must have needed a large room, as the GB team have many more support staff than anyone else.  He asked the question, “is there anything we could have done over the past four years which we have not?”  Everyone said ‘no’, so the call was “let’s go racing”.

In researching companies to approach for my new service, I came across the kind of entrepreneurial success I love to hear about, and which constantly spurs me on.  It’s just a shame that the firm in question have so far refused to engage with me, in a manner that crosses the line of being both impolite and arrogant, and which also appears bemusingly against the ethos of their founder’s humble beginnings.

These were that no-one would give her a chance.  So to sell, she simply set about knocking on doors in The City. She got a brochure produced, sent out mail shots, and, “…basically hounded people on the phone until they gave me appointments”.

Three months in, and the first order was secured.  Educating a marketplace to a new way of operating unsurprisingly elongated the sales process.  First year turnover was a respectable £600k.  Today, they sell over £4m a year and have expanded internationally.  A healthy success story that reminds me the old rules still apply.  Shame these guys (and in particular, their female chief) have such sort memories…

Met up with someone influenced by over a dozen years of sales management and talked crm for a while.  We lamented how so many crm implementations go pear-shaped by virtue of attempting to re-build the space shuttle.

In addition, one key criteria gets left off specs by those leading sales teams.  Think about how to avoid being shown up in a Board meeting.  What are fellow Board members likely to ask about any specific one of the number of deals you’re working on? And how can you look good by having the answer at your fingertips?

Surfing the web for sales sites one evening, I happened across a couple of great blog posts ran by a sales training company.  One particular I wanted to comment on, but unfortunately they’ve turned off the functionality.

It was about how to handle the often thorny issue of telling prospects your price.  I loved the immediate response they recommend; “expensive”.

Their reasoning goes that if they baulk at that from the off, then they’d never appreciate the value so it’s best to qualify out at the start.

They also suggest you can be open with them when they come back with ‘how much?’.  My training on this back in the day prompted me with two approaches where you’re keen to brush the issue under the carpet for now:

Wide Ranging

By using your ‘range’ of pricing you can muddy the waters.  Eg: we have all sorts of products at different levels, ranging from $1,000 to $100,000 and it all depends on what you want…”  This also works well when you sell something ‘by the month’, as the figure can sound tiny.

Equate To Something

Favourable comparison to another figure works well too.  “For less than the minimum wage” is a line I’ve heard myself use.  “it’s a small percentage of the savings you’ll make” is another (albeit slightly corny) way of removing price as an immediate issue.

The people writing the aforementioned blog may well frown on such methods, as they could argue that you’re only fooling yourself if you don’t qualify hard.  Yet two factors influence my alternate view.  Firstly, these techniques work when you’re not speaking to the sign-off authority, ie: a minion that can only say ‘no’.  Secondly, for just about everything I’ve ever sold, there’s never been a budget, and for situations where you have to create both the value and urgency of your proposition, they seem to have served me well.

Most reps I know don’t get über-freaks.  Whether it be the billionaires that strike gold ten minutes after founding internet giants like Google, Myspace and Youtube, and the similarly vulgar-rich from pre-web software land-grabbers like Gates, Jobs or Ellison, or right through to the ‘kid’ that sits in a darkened room back at HQ that always seems to put you in your place without ever trying to, these people are just a different breed.

Our regular challenge is to harness the power of their knowledge, and use it (or them in person, if we dare!) to nudge a prospect closer to signing.  We ignore them at our peril.  In my very first sales role, I took to dragging along a techie as a closing routine, even leaving the room whilst a chat developed.  It was high risk, but when I thought the only differentiator was ‘people’, it got my close rates to a peer-whincing 1 in 1.7.

One of my projects right now involves so-called web 2.0 thinking.  As such I’ve surfed for pointers on how to best ‘pitch’, so that I can practice with everyone I know.  And I stumbled on a TechCrunch post aiming to pass on their 10 tips for presenting a start-up to hopeful investors.  It’s fascinating reading considering they state to have gleaned this analysis from hearing 200 pitches themselves and has stirred much debate.

I myself have for most of my selling life needed to ‘demo’ a piece of software.  So for me, all but one of their points stand out (re: the phone, as my such demos are always in person) from this as being of equal relevance to me in this field.

I would though advise caution with one.  That being the first regarding show the product within 60 seconds.  Clearly, a prospective customer demo is different to a potential funder in that the former requires you to show a solution to a situation they wish to resolve, whereas the latter seek to attribute what you offer to their financial return.  The difference may seem subtle, yet presenting a solution without first uncovering an explicitly agreed ‘need’ will get you nowhere, especially if you’re talking about a ‘problem’ that they didn’t even know they had.