Archive for sales jargon
May 27, 2008 at 12:43 pm · Filed under sales jargon
FAB
Feature-Advantage-Benefit. An insight into how you should structure a pitch. Advantage is sometimes switched to Function. Lead with describing a product’s Feature, highlight what this enables it to achieve (the Advantage or Function), before ending with “which means that…”, where you state the glorious can’t-live-without Benefit of it. Also “English for Stupid” according to Jerzy Balowski.
Farmer
One of the many terms used to describe Account Management. Gamekeeper is also a commonplace term among older reps, as in a ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’. The idea is that Account Managers have to cultivate their crop of precious accounts. Traditionally viewed as less macho and intelligent compared to being a Hunter by new business Tigers. The truth is that a good Farmer has to approach business in a new business manner to make fantastic numbers, and, of course, both strains share a huge number of people who do not deserve to call themselves winning salesreps.
Feature
A specific single objective indisputable attribute of your offering.
Feel-Felt-Found
Maybe getting ever cornier, a technique of structuring story-telling, most often whilst Objection Handling. As in, ‘I know how you Feel’, ‘I remember when someone else Felt the same way’, ‘luckily, they actually Found that…’ type chat.
FFB
Feature-Function-Benefit. Similar to FAB, although I hardly hear it in these terms nowadays.
Field
Out there. Where all the action takes place. Salesreps are often referred to as those ‘in the field’.
Forecast
What you expect to bring in over the coming time period. A documented list of all your potential business opportunities that you are currently actively working on.
Front Talk
The social chit-chat that takes place before a meeting gets underway with a potential customer.
FUD
Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt. A technique of conversation that makes the potential customer aware of the pitfalls of doing something other than buy from you. Typically an anti-competition jibe, not usually recommended. Best used in a more general setting such as the risk of not doing anything at all.
Function
Synonym with Advantage for alternative to FAB routine called FFB.
Funnel
Involves the breakdowns of what you have got on the go. Called Funnel as a concept because you have to pour a lot in the top for a trickle to come out of the bottom. That means lots of names to go after will give a handful of orders. Used to show where deals are at in your particular sales process too, as typically deals will go through known, similar ’stages’.
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May 20, 2008 at 11:30 am · Filed under sales jargon
Earn The Right Call
Normally immediately prior to trying to get hold of The Man, it’s where you have to pass the entrance exam to get in.
Economic Buyer
An increasingly old-fashioned term, the most relevant explanation means the person who really makes the decision. It used to refer solely to the person releasing the funds, but that person increasingly may not be the one with the real power.
Elevator Pitch
A short concise and powerful mini-pitch, lasting no more than a few seconds, designed to wow a CEO-type person and get you moving even quicker towards the ultimate prize. Derives from taking advantage of those unexpected meetings where you ‘bump’ into someone important.
Elusives
People you are trying to contact by phone who are genuinely involved with what they see as more pressing priorities, so not necessarily trying to avoid you. Call out of hours. Grab their colleagues onto your side. Typically encountered at initial, cold, introduction time.
Empathy
Making the potential customer believe you have similar views, that you understand them on a personal level.
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May 15, 2008 at 1:01 pm · Filed under sales jargon
Death Valley
A period of no response in communication from a potential customer towards the end of a Campaign. Typically encountered after the final (maybe Board) presentations. Avoid like the plague.
Decision Making Criteria
The categories which the potential customer will use to decide what they will take.
Decision Making Process
How the potential customer goes about investigating their options and choosing the final one.
Diary-filling
Yet another name for Cold-Calling activity. However many euphemisms are used, nothing can provide success more than lots of this. And it’s tough.
Differentiator
Something that makes you or your offering different from the Competition. (For technology offerings, High Tech Strategies suggest “Differentiation is possible on the basis of five fundamental factors: function, time utility, place utility, price, and perception. These five elements can be mixed into an almost infinite variety of patterns.”)
DMU
A Decision Making Unit. Those fine bodies of boys and girls entrusted by their organisations to make specific decisions. Cover all the angles, particularly the ones that exist outside the DMUs meeting room.
Dripping Roast
With lots of juicy fat falling down into our hands, the baking tray! A term used to describe a great account that just keeps on giving us business. Normally used by Farmers to wind up Tigers who think they can sit and wait by the fax machine, email, carrier-pigeon loft for their orders to come in. Money For Old Rope, this account management….
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April 11, 2008 at 10:13 am · Filed under sales jargon
Call To Arms
Another way of describing what the Close is all about. From Shakespeare’s Henry V.
Campaign
One of the many business terms that come from the military. The actions you undertake to try and win business from a specific potential customer.
Canvassing
Finding those buyers. Usually associated with cold-calling activity.
CEO
The Chief Executive Officer. The ultimate authority?
Champion
Your kind of salesrep on the inside. Someone who has clout within your potential customer and can see a good win in your offering for themselves. Your number one contact in that case.
Cherry Picking
Where salesreps only go after the deals and names they perceive to be superior. Awesome if you can do this and hit your numbers. Only usually made possible by having a fantastic Funnel, crammed full of opportunities.
Close
The action where you seek to gain commitment from the potential customer for doing whatever it is you want them to, the most obvious being asking for the order.
Closing Silence
Shhhh! After you’ve asked a question, Pause. And Keep quiet. If it’s a tricky one for the potential customer, they are more likely to dive into the awkward silence and give you the answer you were after. Do not dive in and end the silence first. The person who breaks the silence ‘loses’. Does not tend to work well in a Japanese buying arena, as their culture determines they grow to feel comfortable within silences, shared by those with mutual respect.
CRM
Customer Relationship Management. At the turn of the New Millennium, the biggest new Management Fad. And like all business fads, there is a lot of winning ideas beneath the hype. Really another Marketing philosophy, but one that has massive implications for salesreps. Spawns many linked and similar methods, such as Relationship Marketing and One-to-one Marketing, each has at its core the sacrosanct nature of anything that happens during a transaction with a customer, as everyone is different and should be treated as such. CRM is more about how to apply such principles using technology. Look after your customers or someone else will.
Cross-Sell
The practise of selling more of a typically unrelated product or group of products to a customer that has previously not taken such offerings.
Coach
Can mean two people. They are someone who helps you along to a lesser extent than, within a potential customer, a Champion, and within your own outfit, your Mentor.
Cold Call
Picking up the phone (and on a much reduced level these days, calling in person) to someone you have not spoken to before looking for a result, typically an initial meeting.
Comedy Close
Not for the inexperienced, ways of positioning or even conducting a Close that have a touch of the unbelievable and incredulous about them.
Commission
Hallelujah! The extra in our pay packets that we get as a slice of the business we have brought into our company. It is everything over our Basic Salary.
Common 7 Objections
The Big Three of Time, Mail, Money plus Competition, Authority, Qualification and Disruption
Competition
Other people attempting to gain the business we are pitching for.
Confidence
The second most important trait for a Winner, behind Passion. Without this, you cannot sell. You must instil confidence in you from your potential customer’s point of view as well. Never, I repeat, Never cross that line into arrogance, though. No-one ever buys from someone who is arrogant.
Conditional Offer
When in Negotiation, the construct that allows you to play-off demands against each other. Never simply say, yeah okay, to a suggestion from a buyer trying to screw you to the ground.
Consultant
The traditional foe of the salesrep. Someone allegedly out to aid the potential customer through the minefield of buying your offering. Good ones may not be as easy to come by as you would hope. They nearly always have a vested interest. And it will not be to buy from you! Handle with care, get on your side early and expose and use other channels constantly.
Contact Management
The ‘diary’ that records everything you have ever said to any potential customer and prompts to tell you when to re-contact and what about.
Contact Management Software
Contact Management as above automated on your computer.
Contribution
A financial term meaning what is left over from sales after taking off fixed costs.
Corporate Overview
The presentation that tells potential customers everything that is wonderful about your organisation.
Cub-rep
A newbie, someone totally fresh to the job of salesrep.
Currency
Some aspect of the offering’s package that can be discussed and traded during Negotiations.
Currency Count
During a Negotiation, a record of what Currency appears, and when. Helps with determining relative values in the minds of your potential customers.
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July 25, 2006 at 6:42 pm · Filed under sales jargon
Salespodder’s Jargon guide to all that is B:
- Bag-Carrying
- Where a junior salesrep works as an assistant to a senior one, carrying their bags.
- Bath
- If you have a ‘bath’ it means you’ve sold nothing that period.
- Bean Counter
- This is what most salesreps call those within our potential customer organisations that control the purse strings. Whilst it does show that most of such people are the polar opposite of salesreps in terms of personality, their importance is massive, so treat them right or beware…
- Benchmark
- Usually refers to the process where competing offerings are tested against specific criteria to see which is most relevant or how good one individual one is. If you don’t set the criteria, don’t take part. You’ll lose the business.
- Benefit
- The reason why a particular aspect of your offering (from a technial/operations viewpoint) will change the life of the potential customer.
- Big Three Objections
- Time, Mail, Money. When you are given a barrier to progressing on the basis of any of these three.
- Biscuit-Dunkers
- We hate these, with a passion! Salesreps that do not actually sell.
- Blob
- To ‘blob’ is to not do any business that period.
- Blocker
- Similar to (but not exactly the same as) a Gatekeeper, someone whom prevents you from moving elsewhere, usually higher, within their organisation.
- Blown Out
- Rejection. You have crashed and burned.
- BlueBird
- I have absolutely no idea where this phrase came from! A BlueBird is simply an order that flies in out of the blue! Unforecasted and probably only using up a fraction of the work you would normally expect to have to do to win a deal, it was a ridiculously short sales cycle too.
- Blue-Sheet
- One of the many names given to a standard corporate sales process. More prevalent in the early nineties than nowadays. Every sales process should have something akin to this concept.
- Board Meeting
- A mystical get-together where decisions are made by potential customers that can change your life. All senior executives meet in such forums to make decisions regularly, predominantly monthly. You need to strive to become an agenda item at such meetings.
- Bonus Scheme
- The details which set out what you will be paid for your troubles.
- Book Price
- See List Price.
- Business Value Proposition
- An extremely ballsy close. You are extremely confident that your offering will make or save the potential customer more money than they thought humanly possible. You exude such confidence in fact, that you offer to provide the offering for absolutely nothing. All you ask is for a share of the gain or saving when it comes in. That’s a Business Value Proposition. It always flushes out true objections and is virtually never taken up!
- Buying Process
- The steps taken that enable a potential customer to evaluate and decide what to order. It ends with the actual money changing hands.
- Buying Signal
- Something that the potential customer does that reading between the lines tells you they want to buy from you. Can be vocal or visual, direct or indirect. Tend to be subconscious acts by potential customers, but not exclusively.
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March 13, 2006 at 12:02 pm · Filed under sales jargon
The start of salespodder’s jargon-buster.
Access
All about getting hold of people. Usually referred to in the context of Key-Man Access; do you have it, how easy is it, who grants it to you? You need to establish Access routes and open up permanently available lines of communications with those who can make things happen for you inside potential customer organisations.
Account Management
The process of selling to existing customers. Also referred to mainly as Farming, your contacts have already bought from your organisation. Upgrades, additional product, different product, new products and associated services are typical focuses for you here. Astute political antennae and tenacious spreading within the account are often required.
Action Call
The Telephone Call made where the objective is to get commitment from the potential customer to proceed with an idea of yours. Most commonly referring to the initial cold call where you try to book a meeting.
Action Close
A question looking for an answer in the form of an action or task you have asked the potential customer to conduct on your behalf.
Active Listening
Where the potential customer does the talking save for you asking clarification questions and testing your understanding with summaries of their position.
Activity
…Equals Sales. The more effort put in, the more business you will win. A sales ‘old wives tale’ that happens to be spot on.
Advantage
The specific spin put on something your offering does (technically or operationally) that explains why it’s useful. Usually from how something is done.
Alternative Close
A question seeking commitment from the potential customer where more than one option is offered to agree upon, with the response being acceptance of a choice rather as you avoid the chance of a direct ‘no’.
Anchoring
A psychological concept falling out of Pavlov’s Dog experiments. If you can tie a sound, action, word or phrase that the prospect considers unique to you, or the most help to them, with your proposal, then you’ll win the day.
Anchor Customer
Very important concept if you are trying to break into a new business stream. Your Anchor customer has to be one that will teach you the most, you can provide the best solution for, and lead you into the largest beautiful summer’s garden of associated references and prospects. There is no point in getting a first customer for customer’s sake.
Annual Report
The glossy document a corporation produces (for shareholders) that details the year’s final financial results. A valuable source of information for any salesrep, especially for decent questioning ideas..
Appointment-making
That great telephone activity to get in front of potential customers.
Area
Your sales area from within which all your business must come. Can be geographic or segment-orientated, such as by line-of-business.
Assumptive Close
A question looking for a ‘yes’ when you are heard to be taking for granted the potential customer will be going ahead with whatever you are currently proposing.
Attention To Detail Close
Questions that focus on the small print or finer details of the overall package of your offering.
Awkwards
People you feel are generally trying to avoid you.
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