Salespodder: because today’s salespeople should be tomorrow’s chief execs

Apr 10, 2012 0

Suggestopedia

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I was gripped by the climax of golf’s US Masters. What a blight that the host club themselves are such disgraceful dinosaurs. Still, although the winner was an American, rather than my favourite tractor boy from near Cape Town, Louis Oosthuizen, it was an American of which we can be proud.

For Bubba Watson is not only a fellow lefty like me, that shot (the clincher blind hook to within a few feet of the pin, when in deep do-do on the second playoff hole) enabled the commentators to wax on how the chap has never had a golf lesson in his life. Not a single coach has ever sullied his game.

It seems the sole instruction from his father when first picking up a club was along the lines of ‘whack a few balls and work it out for yourself’.

Reading around the subject, I discovered Suggestopedia;

this is the concept that everybody has the capacity to be a genius, but that the conventional approach to coaching – with its emphasis on correcting faults – intimidates development

I have long maintained that the superstar salespeople are those that are self-aware. By that, I mean that they are constantly working on one aspect or another of their selling “game”.

And I agree that most sales “coaching” involves working on the flaws, rather than building on what they do which is already good.

It is why I have never had much truck with personal SWOT analyses. Even if the ‘W’ is altered to another letter, pertaining to something politically correct like Improvement Area.

I feel to focus on your strengths will not only deliver better results but also diminish the weaknesses almost by magic. It is way easier to broaden from your best skills than build on something that’s shaky.

If you are self-aware, you’ll know the trick or two you need to work on right now.

The problem is, that I know very few salespeople who think this way. It’s why so few make quota each year.

What are you yourself working on at the moment?

Apr 8, 2012 0

Pyramid Of Success

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England can rejoice. Stuart Lancaster gets the top rugby job. He is now our managerial hope to bring world cup glory, back on home turf in 2015.

All along S African Nick Mallett was expected to waltz into Twickenham. Yet the product of the national coaching system grew into the role, was widely regarded by punters and pundits alike as brilliant, and despite the daunting year of fixtures ahead, the clear favourite from all quarters to take charge.

During a gruelling nine hours of interviews, he felt he won through because he showed genuine development. There was both demonstrable progress and having something on offer that the players could “drive their energy” into.

A couple of masterstrokes were considered to be the disciplinary stance he took (serious public misbehaviour saw two of the best players dropped) and shaking up the training (he scrapped the usual warm weather Portugal trip to go instead to a wet and cold Leeds and got the squad involved in local community work).

And would you believe it, he clinched the job with a Powerpoint slide.

The chap from whom he got this idea was apparently a sport coach from America called Wooden.

And it’s a neat idea, isn’t it.

Are there (nine or) fourteen steps along the road to your ultimate success? If there are, and you know the sequence, then this strikes me as a good way of showing them.

As soon as I came across this, I put together a quick-and-dirty such treatment as part of a discussion with a particular team I know. Just the six in this quick case, a kind of three-down-three-to-go show, but way better than bullet points, don’t you think?

Apr 7, 2012 0

Performance Flows When Relaxed

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Here’s a weekend steer I got from reading about two outrageously successfully pop music producers, Trevor Horn and Steve Lipson.

[Horn] says he’s a great believer in not crowding musicians or jumping on them too quickly – it makes them “turn off” – instead he gives them breathing space. “If you use good people, what comes naturally is what you want,” he explains. “And it never, ever helps to lose your temper.”

Lipson’s tip is to beware of the “the big moment” when recording vocals. He used to produce the American Idol winners’ singles, each of them recorded by the four finalists in LA. “I’d have them for two hours. They’d come into the control room. We’d sit and talk for about an hour and 50 minutes. I’d keep an eye on the clock and then they’d go in and do two takes. It worked every time.”

The article set my mind racing with all sorts of sales similarities. Front talk, presentation prep, cold calling blitzes.

Is your natural state stressed or smooth? Perhaps true selling artistes excel when they’re in a calm, tempered space?

Apr 4, 2012 0

Trim Risk Exposure

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I caught a radio assessment of how self-help groups are forming around Britain to provide support and community for suffering servicemen.

Unsurprisingly, the armed forces have historically provided nothing in the way of preparation and remedy for the horrors of war that those at the sharp end experience.

Thankfully this may be finally changing. In part inspired by the success of recent voluntary initiatives, training and awareness is growing around a tool known as Trauma Risk incident Management, abbreviated to TRiM.

As well as the therapeutic value of sharing ordeals, this aims to flag any event that is likely to cause issues in the future at the moment it occurs on the battlefield. This is beneficial as often it seems torment only begins once home again some time later (for instance as the difficulty of adjusting to the surreal existence of supermarket shopping takes its toll) by which stage a fix may be very tricky to achieve.

Judging by the accolades from those troops exposed to this tool, it is a worthy and winning mechanism.

In our totally different solutions selling sphere, our risk is much less life or death of course, yet in career terms there are of course parallels.

What I gathered particularly useful were the procedures in place to spot an incident right away. There was no sweeping it under the carpet, no ignoring it in the hope that its impact would be immaterial.

How stark a contrast is this to many a bid management mindset.

This strikes me as an essential addition to any sales process. Consider the types of events that can reduce your chances of success, and institute a method of both flagging them the instant they happen and knowing what your course of action will be.

You can even create a scale from minor delaying influence to all out total deal derailment.

Examples can include the fallout from a specific competitor tactic, a key relationship breaking, or hijack from a outside influence.

Apr 2, 2012 0

Do Their Bad Way Better

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Here’s a Harvard Business Review blogger that got me nodding along in empathetic acknowledgement. Umair Haque riffs about Strategy’s Golden Rule. He feels that

The single most common competitive mistake [is] striving to do slightly better what their fiercest rival already does incredibly well

The issue he raises is most acute when pitching new products.

Too often sales teams are sent out with a list of where their new toy nudges past their competition. Yet playing on someone else’s strengths is not the answer.

Instead, it’s much better to home in on where the competition fall down. Why bother competing on turf where they’re good, especially if you offer relatively only a hair’s breadth improvement?

Better still to make that standout difference disruptive. This’ll open up all sorts of possibly overlooked tools. From service to payment terms to add-ons. As he goes on to comment;

In difference lie the seeds of disruption.
In similarity, only obsolescence, and decay.

Mar 31, 2012 0

n Things You Never Knew About…

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I do like to restrict wherever I can my new products tagged posts to tactics that are solely related to such, and not, as is so easy the case, fall into the trap of merely reporting a sales technique that can be equally applied to any product at all.

Here’s one idea that is most relevant I feel to those products at either end of their life cycle. For well-established longtime best sellers, as well as those just emerging.

I recall from an early age recognising a tabloid staple. Take a famous person and print a entire page devoted 20 Things You Never Knew About Them. If the journo had a hangover, then there’d likely be only ten things and a bigger picture.

As an aside, the day I googled this phrase, the top result was a lengthy London Times piece; 20 things you never knew about Shakespeare. Or as misprinted on his marriage certificate, Shagspere (!). You can certainly create a memorable slide out of that lot.

When someone of lifetime achievement was profiled, then several quirks and little known tidbits of scandal were reproduced. All of which sought to ally themselves with a particular image of said celebrity.

When the person was more akin to an “overnight sensation”, then the approach differs subtly. Anecdotes major on highlighting the hard work, eureka style moments, knockbacks and against-the-odds determination.

And it is this latter treatment that can so healthily aid a new product’s launch. You can use such a construct to help create a personality for your new product.

When I chair forums among salespeople at their regular get-together, I have in the past got them to write up the best things about the new product. It’s a fascinating exercise, because you usually get a slew of features, all from the viewpoint of the company alone. With hardly any benefits from the eventual customer’s perspective.

I can imagine a winner of an exercise evolves this to incorporate these interesting and obscure factlets.

My hunch is that prospects remember these types of details way better than your typical ‘techs and specs’. So, don’t be afraid to go large on ‘personality’.

As for an extra presentation idea, I’ve long been in wonder at big infographics. A treasure chest of them can be found around the web, and here’s a quartet of recent examples from onlineschools.org for inspiration. Remember, the principle remains the same for your own key (new or best) product. Click on the selected factoid for the full glory.

First, one of 15 for Apple fanboys and girls out there;

Here’s something spooky about brain matter;

Something geeky about youtube;

They also deploy ‘The Numbers Behind’ and ‘Cool Facts About’ as useful starting points. Finally, one for those who consider Groundhog Day genius;

Via: OnlineSchools.org

Mar 29, 2012 0

What Do You Do?

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Derren Brown. What a nutter. What a genius.

I read a review of his latest live show, striking audiences down called Svengali.

It seems that in his most recent book one of the things he riffs on is how incredibly dull is the question ‘what do you do?’. He suggests the vastly superior alternative;

‘how do you spend your time?’

Next time you meet someone afresh inside a prospect, I fancy it’s a brilliant way to start a conversation. Thanks, Derren.

Mar 28, 2012 0

Star Interview Method

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I recently came across a technique for answering tough interview questions, known as The STAR Method. It comes from the initials of its components;

Situation Task (or Target) Action Result

It naturally occurred to me that this is also a useful guide to delivering proof. Showing how wonderfully your wares have made an impact elsewhere when pitching is a vital part of selling.

There’s all sorts of longer descriptions around the web. The day I googled, this brief MIT careers page came up top;

In summary, the four parts are;

Situation: background that sets the scene
Task: specifics about what was required
Action: what you did
Results: the successful outcomes

This is pleasingly straightforward. It also neatly places a structure around your storytelling. Something I know should be welcome, as I’ve strained through many a seller waffle without point or process when trying to paint a positive picture of previous solution impacts.

Mar 27, 2012 0

Matching The Incentive

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One for the sales managers. So I was talking to someone that a while back ran a sales incentive for a new product. The technology they were looking to shift was considered by the backroom team to be great. Management expected a real buzz.

Then nothing. They had three prizes lined up. But the whole endeavour bombed. Of the trio of rewards created, one wasn’t even reached and the other two, well, let’s just say that it truly pained them to have to give them out.

When I heard this tale of woe, I’d just come from a chat with a Sales chief at the large Aussie recruitment company, Julia Ross.

She shared some of the incentives they ran. Even down to the tiddlers on a daily basis.

With an all-female team, the regulars included the expected spa days to shoe vouchers.

What shone through was apparently that those most tickled by the prize at the outset tended to win it. So the trick was much about crafting a succession of different accolades that would appeal to each contender along the way.

Her most popular so far this year was a half-day extra holiday.

When I blogged last year on the delightful topic of spiffs, I touched on the pitfalls of the usual suspects always walking off with the garlands, and introduced the notion that an occasional cheeky surprise nod to improvement can work well.

Combine these two facets and you should create a conveyor of winning incentives for your team.

Mar 25, 2012 0

Be Like Messi And Meryl

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How can you tell when a salesguy is really motoring? Going the right way?

A chat I had recently with someone about their 15-strong enterprise team caught us discussing how much practice a salesperson puts in.

The problem many reps have is the perception they give that they think they can wing it. Wing everything, every time, in fact.

They’ve had a great career so far. Earned pots of dough. Success just happens, right?

Well, no.

How much behind the scenes ‘lprep and test’l do salespeople really go through?

How often are you rehearsing your corporate story? Your new product pitch? An upcoming Board presentation? Objection handling with a techie on the way to a call?

Even the most gifted of performers practice.

From sport, the outrageous achievement of Lionel Messi to already be, at just 24, Barca’s all-time leading scorer (despite the fact he plays mainly in what is basically Scottish football…!) is founded in no small part on his dedicated training regime. No shirking on the shuttle runs for him, by all accounts. No skiving off early to hit the clubs off Las Ramblas.

Take acting. The top Oscar nods go to Meryl Streep. Does she just rock up a few minutes beforehand and instantly become Maggie Thatcher? Not a chance. Hours spent perfecting, honing, tuning.

So why is it so many reps think they can get by with no practice?

It is a mystery. Hope you’re not burdened by the same malaise.

The remedy is simple. Pull out a pen and scribble the pitch on that piece of scrap paper. Deliver your call to arms into that dictation app on your phone. Get your non-sales colleagues to role play with you. Walk into an empty meeting room and regale out loud. Write a few alternatives to a section of a recent Prop. Take a common slide and re-fashion it. Your options are endless. And pay huge dividends.

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