I caught a chastening documentary on how the Allies managed to prolong the war in Europe and needlessly increase the pyre of bodies, due to internal strife, egos and mistakes of the commanders towards the end of 1944.

In a narrative where no leader escapes blame, here’s a quote from a letter sent by Northern front commander Montgomery to the movement’s co-ordinator 400 miles behind the action, Eisenhower.  There was evidently friction between the two men with Monty failing to accept the politics that effectively rendered him second-in command.  With three different fronts emerging, Monty wanted all resources diverted to his command to power through the Low Countries, Berlin-bound through the Ruhr.

“by pushing everywhere you fail to break through anywhere”

The ferocious battle at Arnhem over key Rhine crossing rights defeated his plans.  He would doubtless argue that despite being given 30,000 airborne troops, the lack of resources provided proved him right.  As ever with history, conflicting views also exist.

Yet the truth in his observation pervades.  One of my key mantras when talking to sales team leaders about knowledge management for instance, is that such initiatives traditionally fail because they are so desperate to capture anything, they try to capture everything.

When I discuss selling new products with the same audience, you often find that the array of initiatives that the individuals are charged with pursuing are bewildering.  This regularly starves the latest newly launched product of selling-focus oxygen.

So the key, clearly, is to reduce, rather than load up on, key sales initiatives to make the strategic ones truly count.

Or strictly speaking, ‘John Grisham’s The Rainmaker’. This gives it away a little, as this film looks at face value like it’s all about a newly-qualified, working-class-boy-making-good lawyer, who takes on the might of an unscrupulous insurance company, over wrongful claim denial for his first case.

Don’t believe the sleeve notes - it’s a sales masterclass.

I have to say, it’s a belter of a movie in its own right - David v Goliath, half courtroom-drama, heart-string tugs, wet-behind-ears mentoring by a street-wise hustler…

So, just to confirm, Matt Damon has to generate his own ‘fees’, can keep as ‘commission’ one-third of all said fees and receives a draw with the balance due by either side at the end of each month. Sound familiar?

The big deal being pursued is the Great Benefit insurance company paying out, but to pay the bills, smaller deals still need to be won.

Now convinced this is a movie about a sales guy, what little reminders can it give us?

Two major areas come across. The things you should do in front of people shine out at you, but first let’s look at the general process fundamentals:

• Think about intelligent prospecting. Danny DeVito pops along to hospitals to sign-up accident victims, from names ‘thoughtfully’ provided by his boss from police reports.  Granted, ambulance chasing may not be apt for us all, but can it fire off ideas?
• These ‘prospects’ come from a contact of the boss, and both appear to win from the sharing of info. Many sales writers preach the benefits of clubbing together with other salesreps, where you all sell to the same type of people, but not competing at all. Great idea to swap potential customer names and info in this way.
• In fact, DeVito is always on the prowl for prospects, even ’smokestacking’ a potential teenage claimant (”stick of gum, kid?”).
• Remember the buzz of the chase - “there’s nothing more thrilling than nailing an insurance company”. Landing that big fish is indeed awesome.
• Think of how to use every little piece of info, no matter how tiny or initially innocuous. Matt Damon makes notes too. And generally records everything.
• Don’t get hung up on the personal aspects of not winning the business. You do not necessarily have to fight the fear of losing your dignity and self-respect!
• Nerves are fine. The first time in the lion’s den of the courtroom was dodgy, but you overcome it.
• Don’t be afraid to set competitor traps. This doesn’t mean slagging them off, it means getting them led down the garden path. I love this kind of stuff and “Billy Porter” lights up a cracker here.

Then there are the tactical, one-on-one requirements:

• Trust is essential.
• Remember to speak to everyone that has an opinion. Giving a photo to the Dad was a great touch…
• Pause. Then Pause again. Then Pause some more. The added impact this adds to your vital points is stunning.
• Repetition is good.
• The star pair’s work ethic is great; Damon asleep at his desk in the early hours, DeVito being asked “don’t you ever sleep?”
• Isolate the key criteria on which the decision swings. (Bone marrow procedure legitimacy here)
• Outstanding Presentation Skills highlight and leave behind the killer error of the insurance company writing “You must be stupid, stupid, stupid.” (Better on widescreen). I always like to scribble all over flip-chart pads and leave a ‘message’ behind when I’ve left.
• Matt Damon never interrupts someone in his sale.
• Wonderful closing technique when the prospect complains about the 2 pages of terms and conditions to say what it is apparently just 2 sentences. Note that Trust got him through.
• The best ‘impact points’ in your case are when they are stated by other people on your behalf.
• A barrage of questions constantly come from Matt Damon’s mouth.
• Don’t give up at the first sign of trouble, and don’t be afraid to stand your ground.
• Matt Damon genuinely cares about the people he is dealing with, and when it shows, he gets results.
• Don’t try and shoot all your bullets. In the courtroom, the Killer Evidence is left until the very end. I know a handful of firms that only reveal their most gilt-edged when the Chief Exec’s pen is hovering over the order form.

So according to a Welsh psychologist, 19 June was the one day of the year when we should have all been at our happiest.  Did you feel the vibe?  I asked my chief developer in Cape Town this very question on the day itself and he wondered whether in fact it was destined to be his unhappiest day of the year - his worry was that being in the Southern Hemisphere could mean the opposite!

Anyhow, the aforementioned doctor’s less remarkable conclusions were that you get miserable millionaires because they have no friends, and paupers can inhabit boundless joy on account of their amazing friendships.

Delving into ‘happiness’ I surfed across a fascinating BBC microsite that led me to a Dr Seligman, who proposes that happiness relies on 24 factors.

Wouldn’t be interesting to see if encouraging your prospects to associate these with you during their buying cycle creates more success?

These two-dozen “signature strengths” can apparently be categorised five ways:

1. Wisdom
2. Courage
3. Humanity/Love
4. Temperance
5. Transcendence

How these align to a buying process is an entertaining quiz.

Wisdom can involve satisfying their inner drive for curiosity, improving their intelligence, being seen as open-minded and feeling ingenious.

Courage amounts to valour of course, and how often is bravery really needed by buyers to affect change?  Persistence is part of this.

The next pair may be trickier to assign, but leadership counts under Humanity and modesty under Temperance.

Then finally, under Transcendence are a raft of qualities that buyers benefit from feeling; hope, optimism, future-mindedness, zest, passion and enthusiasm.

For a couple of hours the other day I learned about agri-business planning. The first time I touched this industry was during a couple of years in the early 90s, with exposure to the logistics and sales operations of various meat and dairy producers. The next was to be on a project I completed this year, should you also consider Scottish distilleries to be of that ilk.

On this particular day, the issue concerned how to further take up of expansion business plans seeking outside funds.

During the discussion on barriers, incorporating the things that spring up to cause delay, one comment confirmed existence of a classic solution sale constraint;

“everyone has their own colour shades on”

Whilst info flies back and forth several times during the plan’s creation, the team I talked with concluded that chances of success are immeasurably improved when you truly know what the money men want.

Acknowledgment of this isn’t news I’m sure to most solution sellers. Yet not resting until you are beyond doubt that you know each buyer’s personal colour of sunnies is perhaps something that can on occasion slip.

Here’s a fella that strikes me as owning his niche. American Gregg Rapp says he’s specialised for two decades in helping eateries make more money purely from altering the presentation of their menu.

In the video clip accessed from his website you see the power of his experience.  In one restaurant he presents half the diners with his ideally designed menu, the other half with the most basic of old-school style listing.  The difference in order values was that his wisdom earned 15% more over the typical worst-case menu design.

What’s the difference between a menu and a proposal?  It feels like similarities exist.  Anyone that needs to present options with prices could do with a  touch of ‘quote engineering’ I bet.  Especially if you’ve a Plof (price list order form) or sell modular options with add-on component choices for instance, as it’s not Marketing that have to create them, it’s you the rep.

About The Price

The video link from the menu engineer’s website opens the lid on basic errors.  The biggest is in terms of displaying prices.  Never have leader dots showing all the prices neatly aligned, as the diner will choose the price first, then skip back left-wards to check the corresponding dish.  Instead, bury the price underneath the food, and banish the currency symbol to soften the price.

Decoys, Display & Descriptions

Other tips include having very expensive items as decoys. They then make other options that might normally be considered pricey seem more reasonable.  People are more inclined to buy the second-most expensive. You should heed too where the eye most often settles, so place your most profitable items in the double-page’s upper-right slot.  Also, you can apparently raise spend by 30% from mouth-watering descriptions that evoke an attractive taste sensation (the flavours and textures) - one example of dish title successfully changed included mere crab cakes to Maryland-style Crab Cakes.

More Hints

I recall a rare training day near the start of my sales career, where the tutor implored us to avoid making our quotes look like invoices.   A good place to begin your own quote engineering.  As well as adapting the aforementioned tactics, substitute the culinary terms for your own sales jargon and other ploys the menu guru discloses that can undoubtedly help are;

• make the items that can often be taken as cheaper alternatives harder to find,
• give yourself every chance to sell lucrative yet possibly small price-tagged add-ons,
• mix-up the order of dishes so that even when prices are not visually aligned they’re not shown in order of value,
• put essential extras in a box or different colours,
• use unusual titles and avoid both generic and hypberbolic description,
• list the same thing in three ways and the middle one will sell the best.

Definitely what you’d call an Airport book, this was given to me by my first close line manager in Sales.  How far have things changed since it was released way back in 1985?

I’m pleased to report it appears one of the few successful books to be written on our subject not penned by someone from North America (when first published in Britain, it cost less than £2).  Harry won’t exactly change your life, but here are the points pulled out well-worth a reminder:

• Conduct your sales presentations in the language of a 5 to 6 year old.
• You don’t have to get up early every morning and stay up late every night to be a great salesrep. Harry quotes from Sioux Indians: “he who hoots with the owls at night cannot fly with the eagles at dawn”. You can’t do both so you must frequently adapt.
• Keep a ‘Special Record Category’, holding unusual characteristics associated with each client and business. Harry reminds us that no scrap of info is too unimportant to ignore. You need to keep two-way contact on a non-business level. He advocates sending clippings of hobbies, sports interests and holiday destinations, saying “dear Jack, thought you’d not want to miss this…”
• He sort of has a selling process, where you always need to try and inject your personality onto proceedings. Then, individualise your product, and create a burning need for your product and satisfy it. Make it “as desirable as a raft to a drowning man”.
• He believes in the very Japanese concept of allowing your prospect to save face. When a client moans, let them have their say without interruption. He finds that once they’ve run their course, they’ll retract any negative feelings. Also, don’t be too quick to jump in with glib responses. He’s found you should never ‘trump’ them, even with a fantastic solution.
• Never talk about, let alone knock, the competition.
• The good old ABC of sales - Always Be Closing. Don’t forget to box-off any transaction to get you closer to where you ultimately need to go.
• His stream of consciousness about how misunderstood salesreps are, especially considering they pay everyone’s wages, is really worth the admission price. What he points out, is that too few firms understand how to reward their salesreps and we go around the old circles of what really motivates someone. Harry eventually plumps for a combo featuring lots of commission and reachable-with-a-lot-of-effort Target.

Unfortunately for our Harry, he looks the archetypal second-hand car dealer in his cover shot, complete with huge cigar, orange permatan and shiny suit, but he does provide a satisfying way to while away an hour or two.

I was treated to the humorous ‘confessions of a failed salesrep’ the other day by a friend of mine that, shortly after leaving uni twenty-five years ago, had tried three sales jobs.  He found it amusing that he’d left each one without selling a bean.  He explained that he felt exactly like the overly optimistic boy scout-style 9-year-old named Russell from the movie Up.  Watch the first 30secs of this trailer clip and you’ll instantly recognise his trauma…

Here’s the sales meat transcription:

9-yr old on doorstep, reading from a script: Good afternoon, are you in need of any assistance today, sir?

78-yr old opening door: No

9-yr old ’seller’: I could help you cross the street

78-yr old ‘prospect’: No

’seller’: I could help you cross your yard

‘prospect’: No

’seller’: I could help you cross your …

‘prospect’: No! (door slams shut)

’seller’: Ow! (his foot gets stuck in the door)

My friend was also sent out to knock on doors (most notably for a company which could make you any product you liked from foam).  He was given rudimentary guidance (ie, virtually no induction training) and went to see customers with the patter “I’m your new account manager…”

His opening gambit was typically “is there anything I can do for you?” to which the instant reply was simply, “no”.  Just like the aforementioned doorstep experience Russell endured.

My friend wondered what he could have done differently, and my smile morphed to anger that a company could hold their own sales process in such scant regard.  There’s so many ways to avoid this, so I instantly told him of three angles any new account manager should have at the ready.

Buying Patterns - Not simply what are they buying, but what scope exists for switching them to less expensive goods (yet maintaining your overall margin), saving them money from promotions, and plugging gaps where they really ought be buying what they are evidently not at the moment.

Future Projects - Where are they headed and how do they aim to get there?  And what can you uniquely offer to help that journey succeed both quicker, smoother and better?

Frustrations - Once rapport is established, open up this box.  Bottlenecks, Delays, Difficulties.  Where are they, how important are they and how can you relieve them?

Do you feel that objection handling as an art is one essential skill that few salespeople truly master?  As a cubrep, the process that got drummed into me involved five steps:

Empathy, Explore, Confirm, Response, Action

One of the reasons that I found it to work so well, is that it stops you from entering the awful world of “yeah, but…”  It impressed upon me that there are three vital steps that come ahead of the traditionally instantly blurted counter-argument.

At the time I first came across this technique, I knew a girl who’s job was to deal with extremely disruptive children when faced with educational rejection.  When I explained to her the new wonderful methodology I’d learned, she reached for a dusty old academic text from her bookshelf, and showed me the exact same process recommended as part of her own training.

Over a coffee-break the other day, I clicked through a link on the Selling Power newsletter that I get sent.  Entitled How To Tell Anyone Anything, I was struck by the similarities of their proposed way of reacting to criticism (from either a disgruntled colleague, sub-ordinate or boss):

Paraphrase, Listen, Acknowledge, Negotiate

The first step is considered so powerful as it diffuses tensions and puts you back in control.  Start with words such as “It sounds like . . .,” or “I can see that . . . .”  The Listen phase hands the floor to your detractor.  I suspect that they then often run out of steam or back-down.  Acknowledgment does not mean that you accede, more like you Empathise - it “is powerful because it enables the other person to feel understood and respected and puts the conversation on safe ground”.  Finally you move towards either accepting their view and plan action to remedy, or you placate by a “switch to “can do” language”.

It is clear that both approaches demonstrate the two crucial elements that I see so many objection handles ignore when I’m on call accompaniment duties:

1. resolutely refusing to offer a ‘response’ for as long as possible, preceded by detailed examination of what the objection’s all about, and
2. putting the objection truly to bed by having it swept away by either an action to do something about it or agreeing their initial thoughts are irrelevant