Long ago as a teenager, I admit to hanging out in what we used to term Maccie Dees. Oh the shame. They had small ad boards next to the tills. I remember peering behind once and being amazed, and dismayed. A message was emblazoned on the back-side. No pretty colours. Just big bold black type on a white sheet. All a server would see was; it’s McDonald’s cola.

Even as a nipper I thought that this surely missed all its targets. Anyway, the other day, there I was, unusually in a South African burger chain called Steers. Encouraged to reach for the salt behind the counter, I noticed the same tactic still at play. On the customer side, a glossy ad for the latest juicy offer. On the rear, another staff message:

LOOK at me
SMILE at me
TALK to me
LISTEN to me
THANK me
INVITE me back

I’ve long been fascinated at retail selling skills. There seems to be a total lack of them. Being English, I’ve spent my lifetime of shopping encounters cowering from the relentless awkward can I help yous. In America, the problem’s even worse from the other pole. Store assistants practically rugby tackle each other to make you feel uneasy at your personal space being eroded and forced smiles splitting you like a Bond villain’s laser. No mean feat when you’re already bombarded with vacuous salutations upon entering,

Why is no-one constantly training their retail people? In this particular fast food outlet, my server certainly didn’t follow this sextuplet of instructions. During the five minutes I waited, such greeting eluded half-a-dozen co-punters too.

It’s not that I think the six commands are ‘right’. But at least it’s a system. None of the transactions I experienced got even close to what the corporate ops manual compilers sought to reinforce. In part this is S Africa’s general problem rearing itself again (no employee initiative allowed or offered) but more so, it’s an all too common disconnect between point of sale and customer service diktat.

There are interesting B2B ramifications though, don’t you think?

The obvious crossover is with handling an inbound lead. This reveals so much about you and your company it’s scary.

Where do they arrive? Who qualifies them? Where do they get routed next? What does the enquirer want? As the potential beneficiary, what happens when they fall into the territory’s reps hands?

What can a b2b salesperson take from the seven retail pricing practices now being investigated by the UK’s OFT?

These “price frames” are:

I’m sure we all recognise at least a number of these. It’s not that they are “illegal”. What the British regulator wants to ensure is that they help customers make better decisions, rather than mislead them.

Are you employing any of them? If so, then are they appropriately deployed with clarity? If not, where could you do so to both you and your clients’ advantage?

With the Ashes Down Under starting with such an enthralling First Test, I’m reminded to talk cricket. In fact, there are two types of sport aren’t there? American sports, and the proper ones that everyone else plays.

Firmly in the latter category for me is indeed the wonder of cricket. Yet it seems the England change of attitude and fortune following from the debilitating Gooch-Atherton axis that continues apace seems to owe some part to the adaptation of a baseball trick.

Previous coach Peter Moores apparently gave successor Andy Flower a book called Moneyball. If you haven’t heard of it yet, you will soon do. It’s being turned into a movie as I blog for release next year, starring Brad Pitt and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

The story is of a losing-team turnaround into winners, primarily because of their new (”sabermetric” in American) approach to stats. The figures that directed core opinion in the game were, they decreed, no longer useful. Outdated and irrelevant, they then sought out better numbers. One obvious impact was with the signing of new players. Overlooked by others, this team saw something special in recruits from looking at things their new, different ways.

The England cricket team, fresh from their stunning superiority to bring the 20-over World Title home, apply similar thinking. Apparently they have assembled a team of four (yes, that’s 4) statisticians. Just to look at stats in new ways.

Former Aussie coach and beneficiary of possibly the largest collection of world-class players to coincide in a single era, John Buchanan, also sought out similarly new numerical angles. He found that nightwatchmen for instance are a waste of time, and continued with the practice to not enforce the follow-on. I heard his dressing room nemesis Shane Warne once  mock his teaching that bowling three successive maidens provides an 85% chance of taking a wicket (”a coach is what drives you to the game” was Warne’s arrogantly misguided view in the face of this apparent ‘personality clash’). Here’s Buchanan’s approach in his own words.

1) Ignore existing … statistics - these are just the ‘outcome numbers’ of a process of getting there.
2) Search for valid and reliable process numbers that give a truer indication of performance.
3) Seek the numbers that ‘guarantee’ my team a win.
4) Use these numbers over time to look at trends …, and trends in individual and team performance.

For years, cricket has been the most stat-fertile of sport. Averages and scoring rates are now no longer the basis of England’s decision making. New angles arise from aspects such as when runs are scored and wickets taken, in tandem with whom and under what circumstance.

In a sales environment, stats play a surprisingly small role. This is probably because one over-riding stat is so dominant; performance against target. Yet how many salespeople know any other key indicators, personal to them?

What’s your average sale?
Typical cycle time?
Follow-up meeting lag?
Success by key contact role?
Prospect request latency?
Competitive pressure differences?

I bet there’s quite a few new ones where examination and pursuit of improving would propel sales. All sellers could likewise benefit from developing their own, new stats.

The Machiavellian world of sport geopolitics dealt a harsh lesson through England’s shattered 2018 World Cup hosting hopes on Thursday.

It’s not about the bid. You can write the best Proposal document. You can deliver the most “remarkable” presentation. Yet you can still lose your ‘sale’.

One particular saying made frequent appearances in the aftermath. Quoted by several participants, from a previously unsuccessful English bid leader, Alec McGivan, to the similarly empty-handed Spanish from this year’s debacle, it ran;

the fish were already sold

England’s defeated CEO, Andy Anson, was aghast that people had looked him straight in the eye and pledged their support, only to see them ultimately vote for someone else. The decision was made without any real recourse to any of the official components of the application process.

It is amazingly similar to how competitive bids in solution selling seem to run, once viewed through the self-flagellating lens of hindsight.

Let’s leave aside the well-documented and thunderous cries deriding FIFA, anywhere along the scale of incompetence to outright corruption. Even if they did rip me off for 50 Rand at the last world cup through incorrectly charged merchandise.

Apart from the obvious, namely that you should truly know precisely how your contract-awarding Board will vote before you get on your feet to speak, what can be learned from the presentations given in Zurich?

The English half-hour pitch was widely praised as a cracker. Here are five takeaways as to why it was so judged the most impressive.

Legacy - They clearly knew what they wanted their bid to achieve for the common good. The innovative Football United philanthropy was unique, Football hosts Football similarly eye-catching.

Imagery - There were stunning visuals. Yes, the three videos will linger in the memory, but photo after photo appeared with beautifully shot pics of youngsters having fun, superb stadia and footballers. There were hardly any words on them at all. “Spectacular Festival” being perhaps the one solitary phrase, and there was even this cheeky shot of Nelson, all the way up above Trafalgar Square, wearing the bid scarf in support.

Message - I did like the sign-off. A number of statements summarised the high points, each beginning “Our dream is…” They were all selfless, from the perspective of benefiting parties.

Team - How often do you get your absolute top people presenting for your cause? The big guns were certainly wheeled out here. Interesting to note that rehearsal must have been intense, as perhaps three of the five were in no way professional speakers, yet performed with aplomb.

Coal-Face - Perhaps the single biggest piece of brilliance. Eddie Afekafe was the star. A young man saved from a life of gangs and prison by football induced tears in the eyes. As compére, he linked the whole show together by beautifully telling his story of redemption through community work. He included this terrific call to arms,

“Mr President, I’m just one story. Choose England today, and England will deliver many more stories like mine through Football United.”

Finally, what of winner Russia’s slides? (The Guardian provide a 90sec summary video). Well, there was one stunner. A real pointer in how to highlight a key sway issue your way. They felt it was ‘their turn’. They thought this should be a chief consideration. Here’s how they got that across graphically.

It’s a map of Europe. Not a particularly inspiring one. But they didn’t need to do much fancy design, did they, what with the bid already in the bag. So a quick scan from a basic school text book will suffice. And it’s nice to know where the Norwegian Sea is. But wait, what’s that squiggly red line down the middle? Some kind of Berlin Wall?

Yes. Look what’s gone on to the West of it.

Can you guess what’s coming next…?

“Western Europe 10 Eastern Europe Nil”

What’s more, this is apparently exactly the same trick that Rio used to help secure the Olympics for 2016.

Pick the (fish) bones out of that.

Here’s a pleasant article to read from a lady called Heather Baldwin through Selling Power. She cheers Reasons to Celebrate Last-Minute Objections.

I flag it because I have suffered, with my own twitching ears, reps buckle at the death in the face of these. I hope this advice helps temper the panic.

There’s a couple of juicy quotes from authors Holland and Young, such as this belter,

“the message you send by discounting is that the concerns about risk are valid”

…for it is unnecessary price-slashing that is the pavlovian response of the inexperienced seller.

Five paragraphs worth reading, although I hope that the real remedy is better in the books than its summary here,

summarize the potential value,

the shortcomings of the current system,

the capabilities needed, and

the references that have been provided, and

then gently ask the buyer to move forward

In my experience, having your antennae tuned into potential buyer nervousness means you should encourage the out-pouring of such in a frank arm-round-shoulder chat about the next stages, putting emphasis on post-signature activities (which in their language is probably labelled ‘implementation’) and procedures.

Why has brainstorming gathered such a relentless force behind it as a problem solving and creative juice flow panacea? I recently blogged about findings that show it to be misleading in its impact.

I’ve heard all sorts of comedy terms applied to the practice in my time. Each intended to undermine the activity. Their inventors must have been on to something. In my early work days I heard such sessions referred to as a ‘Quaker’s Prayer Meeting’. This was 1992 and was not meant as endorsement. It signified that nobody would pipe up. As urban dictionary puts it in unusually delicate terms for them, silence is all you get. ‘Let’s imagineer’ was a dotcom call to brainstorm. Closely followed by the allied urge to adopt ‘blue sky thinking’ and more lately, to take an ‘idea shower’.

Here’s Seth Godin’s take on it.

Brainstorming doesn’t work so well, because most people are bad at it. They’re bad at it because their lizard brain takes over moments before a big idea is uttered. “Oh no!” it says, “I better not say that because if I do, then I’ll have to do it.” And so brainstorming quickly becomes clever stalling and timewasting.

Instead, he argues for an approach which appears a smiling relative of James Dyson’s inverse, wrong-thinking.

Far better is to practice edgegraft. Someone announces a direction (”we’ll be really convenient, we’ll offer our menu by fax,”) and then the next person goes closer to that edge, topping it, (”we’ll offer it by email!”) and so on, each topping the other in any particular direction. (from the book Free Prize Inside).

Wrong thinking, edgecraft, ‘o-oh’, I can here you sigh. But wait a minute. If brainstorming has such a bad rep, then how about utilising a basket of these alternatives in its place?

Consider the potential of constructing an event where you spend a quick-fire ten-minutes pursuing each method. You can even get funky and pretend to be another set of thinkers. Picture the japes if you assumed the thought patterns of your friendliest in-house rival team, or indeed, your most evil competitor… and the results you might unleash.

Do you have a blueprint for sales success? One that’s written down, communicated and constantly referred to?

England’s cricketers played their best tournament ever to vanquish all-comers and be crowned World 20-over Champions in the West Indies earlier this year.

It was clear that England were the only team with a plan. A key part of the resulting tactics involved innovative bowling. Such new thinking was put down to bowling coach David Saker.

Thankfully, he “divulged” his secrets at the time over a cheeky few beers to Guardian journalist and former bowler himself, Mike Selvey. At the foot of his article is the 17-point plan that fits on a single side of paper.

This coach’s blueprint is not a process. There’s neither sequential nor chronological flow. It’s more about the ways in which you should think.

Think about the behaviours your best performing colleagues stick to. In sales terms they could relate to actions as diverse as returning calls, regular contacts, proposal checks, review meetings, managing technical assistance, ring-fenced budgets or pipeline cultivation.

As the former player attests, individually most points will be dismissed by the arrogant as mere common sense. Taken as a ‘totality’, they provide a blueprint for success that evidently eludes the unwary.

And once you’ve got the ‘blueprint’ nailed, time to do the same for your optimum sales process.

I recently read a review of a management book, apparently one more along a trend of left-field provocateurs trying to get managers to think differently. This particular tome, called Smart Swarm, tries to build parallels between instinctive collective animal behaviour to decision making and that which should be employed in business.

One of the very first pieces of solution selling techniques I picked up was about how to unravel both the decision making process and criteria that lies ahead during your initial meeting with a prospect.

Every successful, repeatable solution sales process includes these very pair of tasks within its core.

Even for the inexperienced, a simple query along the lines of “so, how are you guys going to make up your mind on all this?” can kick start a fruitful discussion.

What tickled me about the review in question, was how you can progress into real political insight almost undetected by using their biological references.

Although there are the odd exceptions, blunt questions revolving around politics or decision making intimacy are likely to endure equally blunt, and unrevealing, answers.

Yet removing the heat from a prospective Board meeting agenda point by using the analogy of bees - sent out to find new dwellings and returning for their dance-off - may I fancy be slightly disarming. Indeed, the “discover, test, evaluate” mantra of “swarm theory” could be a cute way of investigating imminent corporate decision patterns.

Here’s a couple of further entertaining concepts as mentioned in the author’s original 10-page article referenced above:

bees’ rules for decision-making—seek a diversity of options, encourage a free competition among ideas, and use an effective mechanism to narrow choices …

identify all the possibilities, kick their ideas around for a while, then vote by secret ballot

and

most important, control of the group could be decentralized, not dependent on a leader.

“In biology, if you look at groups with large numbers, there are very few examples where you have a central agent”

A useful addition to your techniques that get to the heart of the matter that can also “amplify faint signals and speed up decision making“.

So I received some pitching spam on email the other day. Whilst muttering shame on my anti-spam filter, I pondered whether there was anything to learn from my cyber assailant. Here’s what I received:

[my first name],

I would like to schedule a brief call next week to discuss your organization’s interest in [5-word description of field that is frankly tricky to understand].

[my company] works with [similar] organizations to accelerate [some techie description].

If you have reviewed the benefits of transitioning to [my product] or have interest in a discussion with my team, please reply if we can schedule a 15-minute phone call next week.

Best,

[salesrep details]

www.[company-name].com

To opt-out of emails, please click here and send a blank message:
unsubscribe@[company-name].com

What do you think?

If this is representative of the typical calibre of rep activity over email then it is damning. Yet also an opportunity for those of us that pursue genuine, partnership solution selling. To put it mildly, if you’re writing and sending similar mails, end the misery. Stop now.

Around two decades ago, Quality was the management buzzword. Since then we’ve progressed, from Business Process Engineering through to eCommerce. In the same way high street fashion recycles, so it seems do business fads. Quality makes a return in the guise of Lean Principles.

As seen on the BBC’s local Politics Show last Sunday, in these times flagged austere, pockets of the pubic sector have successfully applied this Japanese management thinking to reduce costs and improve service delivery.

Toyota’s Burton-based Production Director, Marvin Cooke commented that it’s all about the elimination of waste. If a cost does not add any value, then get rid of it.

A young lady from Toyota’s production line (see company ad below), talked enthusiastically about a rope which each individual worker can pull to stop the line. Called the Andon Cord, it hangs along the length of the line above the machinery. An amber light alarm indicates when an issue occurs at a particular station. The whole line stops so that the problem can be tackled straight away rather than wait until it snarls up the entire process. It nips issues in the bud early and prevents costly downtime. See the yellow/grey rope:

Then Edward Bradford, a municipal engineer from Solihull recounted traffic regulations improvements. Things like painting new double yellow lines had 153 stages and took eight months. Applying Lean, so far this is down to 49 processes and takes three months. These provide substantial savings (possibly £800k) as part of multi-million drive with Lean throughout the council.

Proponents maintain a web presence documenting the virtues of Lean.

The HBR’s Working Knowledge also provides an interesting overview of all things Lean from 2007. They include their quartet of pointers.

Rule 1: All work shall be highly specified as to content, sequence, timing, and outcome.
Rule 2: Every customer-supplier connection must be direct, and there must be an unambiguous yes or no way to send requests and receive responses.
Rule 3: The pathway for every product and service must be simple and direct.
Rule 4: Any improvement must be made in accordance with the scientific method, under the guidance of a teacher, at the lowest possible level in the organization.

Where this gets intriguing for solution salespeople is when you map these principles to both client and your own internal processes.

Firstly and most obviously, if you sell a product or service which removes or makes redundant certain steps in a customer process, then attach this thinking to your presentation. It will not only help your cause, but also give your prospects an extra lever to use against their internal barriers.

Then there’s what’s going on in your own sales department. I have heard many a rep bemoan hurdles such as the sign-off necessary before quotes go out the door, the constricting levels of authority required to secure pre-sales resource and the draconian systems that too late in the day if at all permit deal incentives.

Lean principles applied in-house may well smooth your own pathway to success. A success which appears, in 80% of instances, to lead to a minimum of ten percent increase in efficiency. What would that look like on your bottom line?