I N ST I T U T E O F SA L E S M A N AG E M E N T
WINNINGEDGE R A I S I N G T H E VA L U E O F S A L E S
Number 2 2017 | ismprofessional.com | £4.95
Play your cards right
NOW WORKING WITH THE ISM
Why salespeople must respond to the rise of the professional buyer
BURNING OUT? E
REAS HOW TO INC ING LT E YOUR M POINT
DELICATE BALANCE
Risk versus reward from key accounts WE Cover V5.indd 2
THE ONLY WAY IS UP
Your blueprint for B2B sales growth
MEETING OF MINDS
Show empathy to drive great deals 23/07/2017 20:51
CONTENTS
CONTENTS 24
WINNINGEDGE
cover story
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20
32
36
NUMBER 2 – 2017 ismprofessional.com
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Institute of Sales Management 19 Eastbourne Terrace London W2 6LG Telephone: +44 (0)20 3870 4949 Email: enquiries@ismprofessional.com Website: ismprofessional.com Chief Operating Officer: Roger Bradburn Head of Partnerships: Thomas Moverley Membership services: Susan Challenger Editorial: Marc Beishon, Tom Nash Design: Del Gentleman Advertising: James Lister Telephone: +44 (0)20 3870 4949 Email: enquiries@ismprofessional.com
Printed by: Ridgeway Press © ISM 2017. Opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by the ISM. The publishers endeavour to check all facts and figures prior to publication, but are not responsible for errors in material supplied to them for publication. Any article published will automatically be deemed to carry the sole copyright and be the property of the ISM. International Standard Serial No. UK ISSN 1746-6849
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1 Contents V3.indd 3
6 3 ISM Editorial
28 Cover theme: Part 2
4 Sales Talk The latest sales news and research
6 Smarter Selling
32 Blueprint for growth
A step-by-step guide to winning increased B2B sales and boosting profits, by Garry Mansfield
Practical advice on selling, including creating sales maps
11 Tools for the job
Tim Ussher – a senior professional buyer himself – advises on how to negotiate with people like him
Innovative tech kit for sales pros
36 Buyer empathy
12 Points of view
Sarah Hinchliffe explains how putting yourself in the shoes of the buyer brings a fresh perspective
Peter Linas on gamification and Simon Raybould on presenting
14 Relationship selling Robert Spence says people matter
16 Negotiating
40 Balancing risk and reward Beth Rogers shows how sales strategists can ensure successful key account management
Simon Buzza’s series continues
44 Book review
20 Why sales leaders get fired
We assess Jeb Blount’s new book on emotional intelligence in selling
The common reasons and ways to avoid them, by Steve Hoyle
46 The Melting Point
24 Cover theme: Part 1
Dr Christian Marcolli on how to avoid sales stress and burn-out
Mark Erskine considers how salespeople can respond to the rise of the professional buyer
48 Member profile Meet ISM Fellow, Garry Mansfield WINNING EDGE 1
23/07/2017 17:27
ISM MEMBER BENEFITS
Start saving with the ISM! ISM members can enjoy valuable new benefits
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I SMyBenefits will offer wide range of discounts, specifically chosen to support you both personally and professionally. As an ISM member you’ll automatically be eligible to access these benefits at www.ismm.co.uk by virtue of your membership.
Family Savings
he benefits offered will provide significant T cost savings on products and services you normally purchase, potentially saving you much more than the cost of your ISM membership subscription. There’s even a nifty savings calculator on our member benefits page, where you can find out just how much you will be able to save.
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rom cinema tickets, meals out and F domestic appliances, to grocery shopping, home insurance and professional training, ISMyBenefits has it covered. esigned to make ISM membership D even more rewarding, ISMyBenefits provides a wide range of offers across the following categories:
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cinema tickets out more often, and pay less l Earn cashback at over 50 major retailers lR educed entry on top UK attractions from Merlin Entertainment
l Dine
Lifestyle savings on Apple products discounts at over 2,900 gyms l Discounts on domestic appliances l Access to NUS Extra student discount card lC orporate
Travel lD iscounts
on top package holidays savings on over 80,000 hotels in the UK, Europe and worldwide lD iscounts on airport parking, airport hotels and airport lounges lG reat
Insurance l Great
value life insurance on car and home insurance l Discounted travel insurance l Discounted roadside assistance lS avings
Professional Development lD iscounts
on hundreds of business and sales books lA ccess to IT and Professional Development Training
Advice lC omplimentary,
no obligation financial advice consultation with a professional adviser* l Independent mortgage advice at preferential rates* *Financial advice and independent mortgage advice is provided by Lighthouse Financial Advice Limited, an appointed representative of Lighthouse Advisory Services Limited. Contact details can be found on the benefit pages at www.ismprofessional.com. Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up payments on your mortgage.
THERE IS NO SIGN-UP PROCESS AND NO EXTRA CHARGE, SO LOG IN AT ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM TO START SAVING! 2 ISM AD V4 copy.indd 2
06/04/2017 12:48
INSTITUTE OF SALES MANAGEMENT | EDITORIAL
MOVING WITH THE TIMES Welcome to the latest edition of Winning Edge, your window on the world of sales, as well as the ISM itself
W
e’re pleased to PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Another aspect that hasn’t changed is our report that our commitment to continuous professional membership development and in providing members continues to with the level of support they need to increase as we help them to realise their potential and strive to get the seek to improve in their roles. word out about the innovative and With the imminent launch of our exciting changes that we’ve made. It is online learning management system, never an easy task to make changes to an coupled with the implementation of our organisation that has been part of the Professional Sales Certification process, establishment for so long, but we felt that members will not only be able to gain a to provide you with the level of service level of recognition for what they have and support you require in today’s world, already achieved within their career, but we needed to move with the times – as also the support needed to access the next the sales industry itself has done – and steps on the ladder create something to success. that was fit for our “We’ve worked alongside We’ve worked members as we learning industry experts to alongside learning stride deeper into collate and design an online industry experts to the 21st century, learning system” collate and design taking on advances an online learning in technology and system that will enable members to work communications. We hope and trust that at their own pace through a variety of you’ll still be able to see the same core CPD-related opportunities and to record beliefs and commitment, along with the their progress and outcomes along the necessity to move with the times. way, and to be able to demonstrate that progress to peers, employers and clients. BESMA BECKONS You’ll receive more information about One thing that hasn’t altered is our both of these innovative approaches to commitment to quality at all levels and self-development shortly, but in the our celebration of that quality through meantime you can read more about our annual awards – BESMA – and Sales Professional Sales Certification and our Summit. As you may know, the British commitment to CPD on our website. Excellence in Sales Management Awards recognise the top sales performers, ONLINE OPPORTUNITIES highlighting their achievements and Speaking of our website, we would love helping to both promote and celebrate to hear your thoughts on the content and the sales profession across the country. usability of the newly designed site. We We are holding a full day of are committed continually to update and professional development activities on add exciting and useful content across the Thursday 9 November, followed by a information and learning sections of the glittering night of celebration as we site, to make sure it keeps abreast of present BESMA, our prestigious awards. developments within the sales sector and Details of the event are on our website. ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
3 Foreward V1.indd 3
provides you with the range of news, topics and support that you need. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if there’s something you would like to see included, or if you would like to contribute yourself. We are always looking to publish works by our members for their peers. Lastly, we wanted to give you the heads-up that we will be launching a webinar programme in September. Again this is something that we have always been involved in, but the idea of using new communications technology to share information and to host online CPD events is something that we are particularly excited about. You will, of course, receive details of the full webinar programme as soon as it is finalised, along with the opportunity to get involved. It is easy to wonder if, with so many changes and different ways of working, the new ISM has strayed away from its original intended path. In fact, we’re simply moving with the tide in terms of developments in technology and communications methods to help us to undertake the type of work which maintains the original and overarching ethos of the sales institute – to support members, provide information and learning opportunities, and enable networking. YOUR ISM
The new ISM is fit for purpose and for the challenges that lie ahead for all sales professionals, and we’re pleased that you are coming along with us on the journey. But never forget, it’s your ISM – you’re steering the ship. We are here to facilitate whatever you need to enhance your role and future in sales, so please don’t hesitate to let us know what we can do for you. And we wish you a successful quarter and an enjoyable summer. If you have any questions, please email enquiries@ismprofessional.com or visit ismprofessional.com for more information.
WINNING EDGE 3
23/07/2017 17:28
SALES TALK INDUSTRY NEWS
ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE STATISTICS
DID YOU KNOW…
75%
ARE WORRIED ABOUT ONLINE FAKE REVIEWS
7%
COMPLETELY TRUST ONLINE REVIEWS Source: Report by Feefo, a specialist in online reviews
81%
OF CONSUMERS START THEIR PRODUCT RESEARCH ONLINE
74% REMAIN STRONGLY INFLUENCED BY REVIEWS
BUZZWORDS
OFQUAL-REGULATED Ofqual is the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation – a government body that regulates qualifications, exams and tests in England. Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland are regulated by their national governments, but the Scottish Qualifications Authority is also accredited by Ofqual. The ISM is the only industry body approved to deliver Ofqual-regulated sales qualifications. It has recently developed Professional Sales Certification, a competencies-rich framework for cultivating a salesperson’s skills and prospects.
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4-5 News V2.indd 2
ALL TOGETHER NOW
Digitisation drives the need for more sales and marketing integration Nearly all senior business decision-makers believe sales and marketing teams should work closely together, but two-thirds say they could be more aligned, finds a new study. A survey of business leaders by sales skills development specialist Huthwaite International finds that 71% of decision-makers believe that digital technologies are causing further integration of sales and marketing. They describe the increased number of customer touchpoints, and the tendency for customers to educate themselves about a product or service prior to making a purchase, as key drivers of the closer partnership. Tony Hughes, Huthwaite’s CEO, says, “There’s never been a more interesting, exciting or challenging time to work in sales and marketing, but it’s also never been more important that both teams work together as close partners.” Hughes continues, “It’s nothing new to note that this relationship has been strained in the past, but this research really underlines how important it is to address such problems.” The main benefits business leaders could realise
if sales and marketing teams were to work together more effectively include a more consistent message being delivered to clients and prospects, and improved information sharing resulting in gaining new customers. “It’s simply no longer the case that marketing builds the brand and harvests the leads, and then the sales team closes the deal,” says Hughes. “Now, from tweets to online ads, or even simple conversations, both teams play an important role and all communications in all channels need to be relevant and consistent. That can only happen when sales and marketing teams are partners.” Meanwhile, a separate study by Huthwaite finds that only 39% of customers feel that they were paid sufficient attention the last time they made a substantial purchase. Even fewer, just one in four, felt they were questioned properly by the salesperson. Hughes comments, “If salespeople aren’t listening, it usually means they’re talking. There’s a real danger in this because it means a missed opportunity to discover how they could help the customer further.”
CUSTOMER BEHAVIOUR
LESS THINKING
Connecting with customers’ emotional brain is the way to achieve growth
Human beings make decisions in two ways. One is slow, deliberate and calculating. The other is fast, instinctive and emotional. Psychologists call this more impulsive process “System 1” – and it controls most of the things we do. For businesses leaders, sellers and marketers, understanding this System 1 decision-making process, and how it influences the way people think, is invaluable. It determines the choices we make every day because they feel right – the brands we buy, the charities we give to and the
politicians we vote for – and therefore makes and breaks campaigns, products and companies. A new book, System1: Unlocking Profitable Growth, explains how to create innovation, advertising, brands, and sales and marketing approaches that appeal to our System 1 brain. Through a series of psychological insights, plus real-life case studies from Tesco to Trump, co-authors John Kearon, Tom Ewing and Orlando Wood provide evidence and practical advice on how marketers and sellers can propset by appealing to customers’ emotions.
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23/07/2017 17:37
SALES TALK | INDUSTRY NEWS
Talking Point
SHORT SELLING N EW S RO UND- UP
S E LL H A R D E R !
TOP SALES GURUS
“75% of purchases are strategic, yet only 14% of buyers report discovering opportunities from sellers, rather than from other people and personal research. Buyers are looking for ideas, but few sellers bring them forward. In fact, sellers often tell us they don’t want to seem too aggressive in the pursuit of new business because they don’t want to infringe on the trust their buyers place in them. This line of thinking couldn’t be more wrong. It turns out buyers are more satisfied when sellers drive new opportunities for them.” Source: Research from global sales trainer, RAIN Group
EVENTS
ISM BACKS NATIONAL SALES CONFERENCE 2017 The ISM will again be a key supporter of the UK’s foremost sales conference and exhibition The Institute of Sales Management is delighted to be supporting the National Sales Conference (NSC), which will once again be held at Coventry’s Ricoh Arena, on 30 November 2017. The conference and expo offer a great opportunity to meet ISM staff, hear about the ISM’s exciting plans and network with fellow members and other leaders in the sales profession. NSC and its accompanying Sales Expo have been designed specifically for the development of the sales profession. Top speakers will include Sir Clive Woodward, Allan Pease and Andy Bounds. NSC is a “must attend” event for sales leaders looking to enhance their own and their team’s performance. For more information and to book tickets, see the back cover and visit www.sales-expo.co.uk
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4-5 News V2.indd 3
A great place to see who is the top sales mind is Top Sales Performance Guru. Heading the leaderboard on 11 July was the UK’s Ian Moyse, an ISM Master who has featured in Winning Edge, won a BESMA, and is one of the most complete sales professionals around.
EDUCATION
AWARDS FOR SALES EDUCATORS
UK universities make a splash on the world’s sales stage Portsmouth Business School’s Richard Lowton has won the award for teaching innovation at the 2017 Sales Educators’ Academy conference, organised by the Sales Education Foundation (SEF), in Orlando. Lowton, pictured above on the right, was one of three finalists selected from sales educators across the world, including professors from Bloomsburg University, Pennsylvania and the University of Central Florida. “With sales education long dominated by American universities and colleges, I’m extremely proud to help put the University of Portsmouth on the world stage of sales educators,” says Lowton.
TOP SCOTS Edinburgh Napier University’s teaching in sales has also received international recognition from the SEF, for which sales guru professor Neil Rackham is a board member. The sales programmes run at the Craiglockhart-based business school have seen it named as one of the “top universities for professional sales education” by the SEF.
RISING SALES STARS More than 50 students from 20 universities in 11 countries recently took part in the Salesforce European Sales Competition at Edinburgh Napier. They were assessed on their presentation, negotiation and interpersonal skills, with Daisy Fagel of Euridis Business School in France winning the main role-play award.
ENABLING GROWTH
SAVO Group, a provider of enterprise-grade sales enablement systems, has acquired KnowledgeTree, and now claims to be “the only company offering a complete solution in the sales enablement industry”. SAVO says it views consolidation of sales enablement as inevitable and “remains committed to leading the industry”.
MARKETING MISS
Research from the CMO Council finds that only 16% of marketers feel their organisations are delivering customer experiences that truly fulfill their brand promises, while two-thirds say their efforts in this area are “hit or miss”.
NEW EXPERIENCES
Showpad, a sales enablement platform, has launched Showpad Experiences, which allows marketing to “craft new interactive ways of presenting existing materials”. The company has also acquired London-based startup Hickup, which has developed mobile sales playbook technology that drives the new product.
SERVICE LIFT
The Clarity Project, a new book by marketing expert Liam Thompson, describes a simple strategy to gain clarity about your target market. The book charts a four-step system to simplify your sales message and attract more clients online. It’s available on Amazon.
ACADEMY AWARD
ISM-accredited training provider Professional Academy has been approved for the government’s Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers. Professional Academy has been awarded the status of delivery partner, enabling it to assist its training clients in developing their key team members with apprenticeship qualifications in the areas of management, marketing, digital marketing, business administration and customer service, as well as sales.
WINNING EDGE 5
23/07/2017 17:37
SMARTER SELLING
SALES PROCESS
PUTTING PROSPECTS ON THE MAP Hazel Butters offers a practical guide to sales mapping and conversations – the sales equivalent of throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks. The sales process should be a mutually beneficial experience: you provide value, positive experience and benefit to your prospect at each stage, and they feel trust and comfort as they are guided through a process that leads to a resolution of a problem or the capture of an opportunity. WHERE TO START
I
f you want to get to a destination in a direct and logical way, you need a map. Similarly, if you want to reach a revenue goal in your business, you need to map out your sales process. Creating a sales map helps you to look at different approaches, identify opportunities and interpret the prospect’s experience at each part of your sales process. You can then identify and address the problem areas where the process slows down or stops completely. Behind this is the premise that sales is a process that helps the prospect understand your vision and mission, your expertise, the results you achieve and how you can work with them to solve their problems. Without a process, making sales unravels to become a random series of actions, follow-ups
“Without a process, making sales unravels to become the sales equivalent of throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks”
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HAZEL BUTTERS is a sales accelerator who helps start-ups to increase sales. She is offering a free place on her Ask For The Sale coaching programme. To enter, see the box opposite. Visit www.prompt-inc.com
Mapping out your sales process is more straightforward than most people think. I rely on three key resources: a variety of coloured Post-It notes, a whiteboard, and most important, team input, so everyone involved in the sales process is not just aware of the steps, but has a personal commitment to its structure. I would include staff from marketing, sales, account management and customer support. Now it’s time to speak to your customers. You’ll want to map out a process to find and secure ‘ideal’ customers, so speak to those customers that best fit that profile. Ask them about their sales journey and experience. Map out each of the contact steps between you and that prospect-turned-customer. Where did they first find out about you? What was the first contact? When or how did you share information with them? How many times did you follow up with them? In what format did you follow up with them? Did they like that format? Did they want a demo, or hate a Powerpoint presentation? What questions or objections did they have, and how were these addressed? What stakeholders were involved in the sale? Were they involved early enough? What was the process they went through to secure budget sign-off ? There’s no single way to create sales maps, but a great way to start is by documenting each interaction – including questions, challenges, meetings, information exchanges, documents, contracts, disagreements and agreements. Here are a few more tips for successful sales mapping: SALES MAPPING ‘DO’S’: ✔ Have a written sales process ✔ Ensure it is shared and visible within your team ✔ Create it in a step-by-step format, working
toward specific goals to get to each step
✔ Track your sales through the sales process: is it
reflective of the real world?
✔ Revisit it frequently. Can it be optimised? Are
there steps where sales bottleneck, slow down or ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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SMARTER SELLING
are lost? Keep asking yourself: what is the simplest path to purchase? ✔ Walk the line between your company vision and details. You need to ensure your sales map connects to the vision – the big “why your company exists” – and also includes enough detail to communicate how that vision informs the sales process ✔ Identify specific handover points, for example, when does a prospect get handed from marketing to sales? ✔ Set goals for each stage and factor in specific metrics ✔ Consider when a lead converts to an opportunity – and all the definitions you use ✔ Factor in resources required at each stage, including people and assessments ✔ Think about how the process appears from a prospect’s perspective ✔ Ask new customers what their buying experience was like: is there anything they would change? SALES MAPPING ‘DON’TS’: ✘ Attempt to use a different company’s sales
process – you need to map out your own ✘ Make your sales process so detailed that it’s inflexible ✘ Over-define how things should be done to get to stage goals. Creativity and lateral-thinking can be strong differentiators in sales, and your team should be able to contribute in this way ✘ Create “sales silos”, where departments or individuals are working alone. Factor in collaboration checkpoints and goals to the sales process to prevent departments, teams or individuals from being isolated ✘ Think that all steps of the sales process are equal. Some stages are more important than others ✘ Keep your map within your sales team: the process impacts all prospect and customer-facing departments and individuals, so share it.
ARE YOU COMFORTABLE ASKING FOR THE SALE? As a Winning Edge reader, you could win a complimentary place on ‘Ask For The Sale’, worth £4,000. Ask For The Sale is Hazel Butters’s 6-month sales coaching and accountability programme for small business owners and entrepreneurs who need to get more comfortable bringing in revenue for their business – and asking for the sale. For more information visit www.prompt-inc.com/askforthesale To enter, simply send your name and email address to: winningedge@prompt-inc.com
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Ask Anne
H OW TO PEP U P YO UR S A LES T EAM T RA INING Training methods have come a long way since the days of overhead projectors and acetates, explains Anne Bagnall
I would like to share with you some ways of delivering effective training for your telesales or sales teams. Importantly, these are methods that promise to carry on working once you are back in the workplace.
My telesales team has a good deal of technical information to remember. How can I design memorable training in the classroom that will deliver back in the workplace?
I had a similar challenge recently, where the telesales campaign I was delivering had a lot of technical information. My challenge was how to make bland facts memorable, and encourage everyone to take them in. One way My training sessions feel flat and dull, so how can I make them of doing this I have found very livelier and more fun? useful, and to have fun at the same time, is to design some Great training sessions are more activities and puzzles from about the candidates than A4 factsheets. Laminate the trainer. Here are “Recap at the the sheets and then some ways to add that end of each cut them up so the much needed extra session and ask pieces can be dimension and to questions to ensure reassembled in the make sure everyone people have correct sequence. enjoys the sessions: absorbed The activity will force l Keep your team information” candidates to absorb always involved. Ask the full meaning of the questions rather than content of the sheets, and will merely provide facts encourage them to think deeply. l Design a range of activities to If you have a larger group, create demonstrate the points you wish to two teams. Use different coloured make – whether it’s writing down paper so your pieces don’t become thoughts on paper, using a whiteboard or conducting role-play mixed together. Maybe run a competition between teams and l Keep everyone doing something make it fun with a small prize. for most of the time – but Always sharpen up your training remember that writing things down sessions by asking for feedback after is a great way to understand each one. You will be surprised concepts and cement learning how useful this is in making very l Invite candidates to read out what they have written to the group worthwhile improvements. so everyone can share their ANNE BAGNALL is thoughts. Attach work to the wall managing director of for everyone to read and remember Phonetic, a telemarketing as the day goes on company, and also of Pure l Take breaks of ten minutes each Sales Training, where she hour to keep people mentally fresh advises clients on their l Recap at the end of each session internal sales departments. She is happy and ask questions to ensure people to answer readers’ questions. You can have absorbed information call her on 07876 231868, email l Ask candidates what they have anne@puresalestraining.com or visit learned, and how they will use the www.puresalestraining.com information back in the workplace.
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SMARTER SELLING
T he Sales Doctor YOU R P ROB L E M S A N S W ER ED The best leads: Alec Baldwin is one of several screen icons in Glengarry Glenn Ross
those who moan about lacking the better quality leads are often the laziest individuals who can’t be bothered to be proactive and want to be spoon fed. To avoid rewarding this behaviour, it’s actually imperative that you are very selective when it comes to lead allocation. Salespeople should only be rewarded for success that they have earned, not for merely doing their basic job – that’s what their basic salary is for... I view commission and the best leads in the same light: they are both rewards and should be treated as such.
Q
We’ve just had a couple of new sales staff start at our small company. What is the best way to introduce them to the team, and get them hitting the ground running?
A
Q
Our sales department has just been given a new territory after an acquisition. It’s an important territory so I’d like to give it to my best salesperson, but this may seem unfair to my other salespeople. How do I make sure we maximise this opportunity and also appease the rest of the team?
A
If you’ve seen the great film Glengarry Glenn Ross, which is based on salespeople selling real estate in America, you’ll know the whole premise of the film is centred around who should receive the Glengarry leads (which are the best quality leads). Now, if you haven’t seen the film I don’t wish to ruin it, so I won’t tell you who does receive them, but ask yourself this question: if you were a business owner, who would you give your best leads to? As a business owner myself, I would reward two types of people. First, I would choose the topperforming salesperson, as I would be confident that the lead is in capable hands and has the highest chance of being converted. Second, I’d look at the person who is grafting the hardest in the team, but not necessarily getting the results they deserve yet. I would develop that person by identifying areas in their approach that require attention to help them achieve those results. Once that person started to improve, I would start to reward them with high quality leads as well. In my experience of training over 3,000 salespeople,
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TONY MORRIS is director of the Sales Doctor, a London-based sales training company he co-founded with fellow ISM member, Boyd Mayover. He is the author of several sales books including Coffee’s for Closers, The Perfect Sales Meeting and The Perfect Sales Call. Call 020 8906 6725, email: tony@salesdoctors.co.uk, or visit: www.salesdoctors.co.uk
There are two main recommendations I’d make to get new starters up and running quickly, while also helping to develop your existing sales team at the same time. First, I’d get the existing sales team to deliver individual 10 to 15 minute presentations on the company. They should cover areas such as: l Mission statement and what it means to them and the customers l The unique selling points (USPs) of the company l The features and benefits of the company l How they position themselves in the market and their key differentiators to their competitors l The biggest objections they face and how they overcome them l The culture of the company and the standards all staff must adhere to. This will achieve three things. It will: educate the new starters, ensure the existing sales team have the right level of knowledge required (and may identify some training gaps), and improve the confidence of the existing salesforce. Second, I suggest getting the new sales team members to attend customer meetings with the existing sales team, and rotate, so they get an opportunity to learn from different styles. Once they’ve all attended meetings, the new sales members should present their findings to the rest of the team, covering areas such as: l The best questions to ask l The best way to build rapport with a new prospect l The best way to present the company l The best way to explain the features and benefits of your products or services l How to handle certain objections l How to deliver the USPs l How to gain buyer commitment. By getting the new sales team to present their findings, it will not only ensure they have actually taken things on board, but will also educate the existing team members in important issues raised that they may not have seen or discussed before.
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SMARTER SELLING
Coat Hanger T H E LI GH T ER S IDE O F S A LES
SPARKLING SALES FIGURES?
Research suggests that valuable sales time is lost to cleaning KEY ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT
HOW ENGAGED ARE YOU? Key account management is all about engagement, says Jermaine Edwards RELATIONAL ENGAGEMENT
This is your ability to connect with your clients and deepen trust and influence. We need to build relationships, which are critical to customer success, but many miss this in account management. But what does that actually look like? How will you know things are working? What will you use to build those connections, amplify trust and deepen relationships that are important to you? Without a focus on this, you limit your ability to grow your influence and opportunity. STRATEGIC ENGAGEMENT
This is your ability to align yours and your customer’s goals to mutually beneficial outcomes. This is all the things you and your managers can spend a lot of time on: making specific account plans, cost/benefit analysis, SWOT analysis etc. It’s also where you’ll set expectations with your client on how you’ll work best. It includes your business growth goals and may include plans on who you’ll make your “power connections”, ie. key influencers or stakeholders who move your strategy forward.
M
ore than half of British workers have been asked to clean their place of work by their boss, despite it not being in their job description. A survey of 1,000 UK workers carried out by interiors etailer Furniture123.co.uk suggests salespeople are among workers losing an average of 13 working hours per year cleaning their office or workspace, despite 85% claiming their company employs a cleaner. Those who work in marketing are the most eager cleaners – spending 17 hours on the task annually. Mark Kelly, marketing manager at Furniture123.co.uk says, “Not only are staff carrying out tasks outside of their job description, it’s eating into their normal working hours, which in turn will be costing businesses. “It’s fair enough for employers to ask their staff to keep their office or workplace tidy and do their best to limit the amount of cleaning required,“ continues Kelly, “but it’s likely to be more cost effective in the long run to hire a professional cleaner to carry out tasks such as vacuuming, and leave specialists such as sales staff to do the job they are hired for.” The study finds that UK workers’ most common cleaning tasks are:
l Cleaning desks – 85% l Cleaning the kitchen – 52% l Loading and emptying the dishwasher – 51% l Vacuuming – 47% l Emptying bins and recycling – 47% l Tending to office plants – 17% l Cleaning the bathroom – 15% l Cleaning windows –11%.
Shoe in
All heart
TACTICAL ENGAGEMENT
This is your ability to deliver on the right things to win consistently and is probably the most neglected area in key account management. What are the daily and weekly tactical implications of every strategy or plan set with your client and internally with your business? This can include how you decide to build relationships, how you align the rest of your internal departments to support customer success or how you execute growth goal promises with your board and account management team. JERMAINE EDWARDS is a speaker, coach and author on key account management. Email jedwards@jermaineedwards.com or visit www.jermaineedwards.com
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Two shoe salespeople were sent to a remote part of Africa to open up new markets. The day after arriving, the first salesperson called his head office and said glumly, “I’m returning on the next flight. I can’t sell shoes here. Everybody goes barefoot.” At the same time, the other salesperson reported back excitedly to his HQ, “Crank up production. The prospects here are unlimited. No one has any shoes.”
A sales executive was on an arduous sales tour, making numerous customer visits on his territory when, tragically, he suffered a heart attack in his hotel room and died. The hotel owner dutifully called the salesman’s office and explained the appalling turn of events to the rep’s sales manager. The sales manager received the news calmly: “Return his samples by freight and search his pockets for orders.”
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SALES EDUCATION | ISM PARTNERS
NEW ONLINE SALES BA Edinburgh Napier Business School has launched a new online degree in Sales Management
COACHING TO WIN
For sales success you must keep your eye on the ball, says Mike Lever
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ith Wimbledon 2017 still fresh in the memory, it occurs to me that, at some point, all tennis players will have been told “keep your eye on the ball”. It seems pretty obvious advice, but how do you check that someone is keeping their eye on the ball without using expensive eye-tracking equipment? This is where coaching comes in. We’re often asked if coaches can only work with clients in areas where they have expertise. The answer is a resounding “no”. The key thing with coaching is that the answers don’t come from the coach; it’s the questions that cause the client to view their issue in a new way that come from the coach – and the answers come from the client. Incidentally, when I talk about coaching, I mean “non-directive” coaching. There’s also “directive” coaching, which looks and feels a lot like telling. Telling is absolutely right for some people, some of the time. Just as coaching is not a panacea, telling (and with it, mentoring, training, facilitation, etc.) needs to be used only when it’s the right development tool. There’s a great quote from Maslow (of “hierarchy of needs” fame): “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” There may be perceived advantages to being an expert in the client’s field, for example, by being able to grasp a technical problem. But the key to coaching is when you ask a client to describe the issue in layperson’s 10 WINNING EDGE
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terms, and this causes a shift in how they view it and helps get to a solution. Einstein (more or less) said, “If you can’t explain something to a six year-old, you don’t understand it yourself ”, so this is a good test to see how well the ‘coachee’ understands their challenges. At New Results, we’re proof of this. Our prior experience comes from a range of FTSE100 companies. We have technical expertise in telecoms and finance, in particular, but this doesn’t restrict us to coaching only those in telecoms and finance. In fact, our clients operate across a wide range of industries, including education, professional services and wholesale supplies. If you really want to know that your coachee has their eye on the ball, ask them to tell you something they would only know if they have their eye on the ball. Returning to tennis, if they were watching the ball, they could shout out the direction it’s spinning. Where do you go after that? Well, the ball’s in your court. One option is New Results’s Train the Coach programme. Your own training team can now deliver this in-house under licence. If you’d prefer us to deliver it for you, or co-deliver, we can do that too. Whichever way you choose, you’ll benefit from increased performance through a coaching culture. To explore this further, contact us on 0800 030 4323. Mike Lever is a director of New Results, and BESMA Sales Trainer of the Year 2013/14.
Tony Douglas (left), director of Edinburgh Napier’s Centre for Sales and Business Development, recently launched the University’s fully online BA in Sales Management. The degree programme builds on vocational sales qualifications pioneered by the ISM. As such, it is aimed at sales professionals looking to develop their interest in, and build knowledge and understanding of, selling and sales management in today’s complex, constantly changing business environment. Through the programme, practical, critical and analytical skills and attributes will be honed through study and interaction of five modules: Contemporary Selling Process; Sales Management Today; Relationship Selling and Customer Value; Strategic Account Management; and a Sales Practice Report – a personal and reflective investigation into a sales topic related to a salesperson’s role and responsibilities in their own workplace and industry. The first entry opportunity is September 2017. Thereafter, sales professionals will be able to start the programme in January, May or October each year. Holders of a Level 5 qualification from the ISM can be admitted to the programme. In addition, applicants with relevant work experience will be considered on an individual basis. For more details, visit www.napier.ac.uk/courses or email t.douglas@napier.ac.uk
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ON THE MOVE
G A D G E T S F O R D I S C E R N I N G P RO F E S S I O N A L S
WHAT’S MORE
TOOLS FOR THE JOB | GADGETS
NOTEBOOK
SURFACE MENTION Microsoft has been improving the Surface Pro, which it describes modestly as the “most versatile laptop on the planet”. It is 8.5 mm thin and weighs 1.69 pounds, and has 50% more battery life than the Surface Pro 4, at 13.5 hours. Unlike Apple’s MacBook Pro, the Surface Pro has a touch display (12.3 inch), which also supports a new Surface Pen, and there’s Surface Dial, which when placed on the screen brings up app-specific digital tools. There’s a new whiteboard app too. PRESENTATION
HANDS ON PROJECTOR
MOTORING
TRACK CHANGES
APP
Who would have considered a Skoda a few years ago? That’s changed now of course, and the latest Octavia is said to be the most powerful to hit the UK, offering 15 PS more than the previous range-topping model, and a raft of additional equipment to deliver the brand’s “sportiest drive to date”. Available in both hatch and estate forms, the vRS 245 is also offered with a choice of a six-speed manual or a new sevenspeed DSG transmission. Powered by a modified version of the existing 2.0 TSI four cylinder vRS engine, the 245 can sprint from 0-62 in 6.6 seconds (estate 6.7 seconds). There’s also standard fitment of an electronically regulated limited-slip differential, originally developed for motorsport. When needed 100% of the power can be directed to one front wheel. What you’ll need that for we don’t know but it will cost you from £27,595 to £30,185.
Most companies have only one or two people who work as salespeople or in sales roles, so a standalone mobile CRM app for the iPad such as Routzy makes sense as a contact manager, and it also handles digital forms, proposals and presentations, and sales routes (so the Routzy name we guess). A one year sub costs $349.99 on the ITunes store but there’s a free trial. See routzy.com
ROUTZY
DASH CAM
TRAFFIC PANORAMA Garmin’s Dash Cam 65W is said to have a 180 degree wide angle field of view to expand the scope of its 1080p video recording capability. The increased view allows you to capture more details such as cross-traffic and roadside features. It has the usual features, including voice control, red light and speed camera alerts, and forward collision and lane departure warnings. A “go” alert tells you when traffic ahead of you starts to move. It’s out now at £199.
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Sony’s Xperia Touch is an interactive Android projector that turns any flat surface into a 23 inch HD touchscreen. It’s had mixed reviews, mainly because of its high price tag – it’s currently £1299.99 – but it could win you interest on the road with business presentations. SMARTPHONE
GALAXY STILL STARS
Of all the 2017 smartphones we just can’t see anything better than Samsung’s Galaxy S8/ S8+, not so much for the usual features but also for extras such as DeX, which allows you to turn your phone into a desktop system by adding a keyboard and monitor; Connect, which allows you to activate “Internet of things” devices; and an Oculus Gear VR controller for interacting with virtual reality content. Samsung also reckons it has a “defence grade” security system.
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the month”, “sales professional of the quarter”, or simply climbing to the top of the weekly leaderboard – tends to be something people talk about and remember for years. ITERATE, ITERATE, RECREATE Remember Pokémon Go? It was the gaming phenomenon of 2016, but the app’s success was shortlived. It lost millions of users in the space of a few weeks. The novelty became its USP, and novelty is, by definition, short-lived. The same principle applies to your sales process. At first, your team may be fully engaged with your new game – but if the concept becomes stale, it can be hard to GAMIFICATION maintain interest. The best way to solve this problem is to keep refreshing the formula, P LAY U P A ND P LAY for example by adjusting the rules to T HE GA M E account for any techniques that may confer an unfair advantage, offering double points By Peter Linas amification is more or less on holiday weekends, and introducing a exactly what it sounds like: head-to-head system that allows two friendly applying the structures and rivals to square off against each other. design methodologies of games to Your improvements shouldn’t be arbitrary, but non-game frameworks. Your sales don’t be afraid to experiment either: if you keep it team is an ideal candidate for this fresh, you’ll keep it interesting. process because, by cultivating the dynamic sense of competition and camaraderie that already exists DON’T OVERCOMPLICATE THINGS between salespeople, the business will benefit from That said, don’t throw too many features at your increased passion, productivity and profits. salespeople. When games try to do too much, they What’s more, gamification doesn’t have to be inevitably fail: nobody needs or expects this to be intricate, multi-layered or complicated. The best an epic, open-world, third-person action strategies simply get salespeople to associate certain extravaganza. They just need to feel a sense of meaningful behaviours with tangible rewards – progression, achievement and reward. within the game and outside it. It could be as The system you choose should be simple and simple as creating a leaderboard for the number of aligned with your business goals: literal gold stars deals closed per month; or as granular as assigning might be a bit cringeworthy, but they’re better than points for keeping the CRM scrupulously updated. investing time and resources in a character creation Whatever form your game takes, it should be screen and an RPG-style skill advancement system designed to stimulate constant improvement and – reserve such sophistication for real life. skills development. However you choose to gamify your sales process, I suggest you keep the following TAKE GAMING SERIOUSLY key tips firmly in mind. It’s just a game – but then again it isn’t. The aim here is to turn a profit. Set clear objectives for TRACK AND IMPROVE return on investment (whether they pertain to sales, A gamified sales process should be a transparent customer retention or productivity) and address sales process: it needs to uncover the behaviours the situation if it hasn’t led to improvements. that lead to failure, encourage the behaviours that If gamification isn’t supporting your business lead to success, and make the often nebulous objectives, what, in the end, is it really doing? differences between a successful and struggling And finally, don’t treat it as a miracle cure. salesperson tangible. Gamification adds another dimension to your It should tell you when certain styles and sales process, but it’s just one dimension. Other approaches are a poor fit for certain prospects and technologies, such as predictive analytics and customers, identify the common ground between CRM, remain as important as ever. your highest performers, and determine what does That said, while gamification is only one piece of and doesn’t motivate your team. Cash prizes, for a larger mosaic, it is a good one. When you gamify PETER LINAS is international MD of Bullhorn, which provides example, tend to be excellent for short-term your sales process, you can give a flagging, cloud-based CRM solutions for motivation, but insufficient for longer-term dispirited team a much-needed sense of fun and staffing and recruitment firms. motivation. Recognition – such as, “employee of excitement – and boost your profits in the process. Visit www.bullhorn.com
OPINION
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ADVICE
here’s very little that undermines a sales PRES ENTAT IO NS presentation more than seeing the presenter CHEC K YOUR struggle with their TECH technology. Whether it’s reasonable or not, your prospects conflate By Simon Raybould your struggle to make your presentation work with you struggling to create your widgets or make your deliveries on time. Here are a few tips to make sure that things go to plan. I’m willing to bet you already know most of these, but don’t always remember to use them. PRACTISE You practise your delivery, right? So why not practise your preparation? I’m not saying you need to be as slick as a hard-core pro, but at the very least you should have run through how you get bits of your equipment to talk to the other bits, so you know what you’re looking for. Nothing makes you look like an idiot faster than having to turn your projector upside down and around and around to find where the VGA cable is supposed to go in. The same goes for knowing what buttons you need to press on your laptop to get the right content showing on your projector.
this second desktop is a matter of knowing how to use your laptop and it means that any messing around with software, finding files and so on can be done on the other desktop – the one that’s not being projected. It has the additional bonus that you can even read your emails and/or be on Skype and no one need ever know.
HAVE A CHECKLIST This one really couldn’t be simpler. You don’t need to have idiot-proof instructions, but a simple checklist of what to pack and what to do is an absolute godsend in the heat of the moment, when you’re trying to set things up quickly, with clients watching… twiddling their thumbs… getting restless and losing interest… Put it this way, every professional performer I know has a checklist, no matter how many times they’ve performed.
TURN OFF THE WORLD Turn off your laptop’s connection to the outside world. The last thing you want is pop-ups appearing half way through your presentation. This means, of course, that you need to have moved all your files onto your hard drive. And by that I mean all of them – don’t link to video files, for example, but download them and insert them to your slide deck. Why? Because there’s a law that says the more important your presentation is, the greater the chances are of the Wi-Fi not working.
SET UP BEFORE YOU GO IN I’m embarrassed to have to write this one, but so many times I watch people walk into a room, open up their laptops and then spend a few minutes opening up the file they want – sometimes even having to search for it. Why not simply have all of this done before you walk in? HAVE ‘WALLPAPER’ ON SCREEN THAT YOU’RE PROUD OF Here’s a sneaky trick… have your laptop’s wallpaper set to the same as your first slide. That way, when you fire up Powerpoint (or whatever you’re using), the user barely sees a flicker. It looks so very, very cool. A more sophisticated way of doing this is to have a second desktop set up on your laptop. I’m not talking about a second monitor here, just a second desktop run by your operating system. Setting things up so that any projector you plug into shows ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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SIMON RAYBOULD is a presentation trainer and professional speaker. Visit PresentationGenius.Info
GET A GREAT REMOTE Having to sit next to your laptop really inhibits your ability to perform. So does having to leap back to it every time you want to move a slide on. That means a remote control is an absolute must. I strongly recommend you make sure it has a blackout function button too, so that you can darken the screen while you handle any unexpected questions, interruptions etc. I often use an iPhone as a remote control. Not only is it fun, but it also has the advantage of showing my current and next slides on the phone. By doing this, knowing what is coming up next is only a half-second glance away. It’s handy. WINNING EDGE 13
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FEATURE | RELATIONSHIP SELLING
PEOPLE STILL BUY FROM PEOPLE ROBERT SPENCE discusses the fundamental importance of building relationships when selling
I
can still remember the salesman called Neil who sold me my first car. I was a nervous 18 year-old, and Neil spent a lot of time with me running through all of my available options. He took even more care explaining finance packages to me, at a time in my life when I cared more for chasing girls than worrying about the latest interest rates. Eventually, with Neil’s guidance, I chose a car and a finance option that suited me perfectly. RELATIONSHIPS MATTER That was ten years ago, and yet I still remember Neil very clearly as the man who sold me my first car. Why is this? It is because of an aspect of sales that is often overlooked, a strong link that holds the whole process together. Whether your sales cycle is months long, years long or simply hours long, it is this one thing that can help you to start the process, give it momentum and hold it together. It’s the thing that can help you begin a conversation, build rapport and overcome objections as the cycle runs its course. And that thing is, of course, the relationship between you the salesperson and the prospect. We come in to contact with dozens of people every single day. We interact with so many people and yet there are always those that make an impact on our lives – and it is they who stick in our memories. The majority of these people are remembered for one thing – the relationship they build with us. I am not talking about a long-term spouse or the best friend you’ve known since primary school. I am talking about all those brief interactions: the dog walker who will take minutes out of their day to ask you about your family, or the checkout lady at your local store who takes an active interest in your life every time you buy a pint of milk. It is these people and these short encounters that stick with us, and it is developing this type of simple relationship that can make us great sales professionals.
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RELATIONSHIP SELLING | FEATURE
BACK TO THE FUTURE Relationship selling is nothing new. The top sales professionals in the world swear by the importance of relationship building in a sales process, and yet it is sometimes overlooked in favour of hardcore closing techniques and gentle manipulation tactics. But one thing’s for sure: we are more likely to buy from those who show an interest in us. Take a second to think back to a sale you took pleasure in. Perhaps it was the sale that won you the most recognition among your peers, or earned you the most commission, or the one you worked the hardest for. Think back to what got you that sale. What was the one key element of the process that brought you that business? I am willing to bet my house that it was the relationship you built with your prospect. A relationship trumps price. A relationship trumps competition. A relationship will turn a no into a yes. And not only that, a relationship will turn your one-time client into a repeat customer. Better still, that repeat customer will recommend you to others, providing you with a steady stream of new, warm prospects. Put yourself in a buyer’s mindset for a moment. I’m sure you can think of individuals you’ve come across in your life whom you trust and who have really helped you. I’m sure you have a car mechanic you always turn to, or a builder or other “Full marks to the tradespeople whom you can always ISM for taking a lead rely on. Relationship selling is this in stamping out bad simple. Pleasant, trustworthy people get repeat business. sales practice and We all know that people hate to changing negative be “sold”. But they love to buy. perceptions of Every sales professional I have ever salespeople” looked up to and learned from knew the importance of this and worked tirelessly to ensure their business relationships were just as robust as their personal relationships. I can guarantee that if you are working in sales just to make a quick commission cheque then your career will not last long. A bad salesperson may close a sale, but they will also close the customer relationship with it. CHANGING PERCEPTIONS Let’s be honest here, there are those out there among the general public who view sales professionals as snakes, and as experts in the art of misleading customers, willing to say anything to get a contract signed and a deal closed. Of course, I’m sure this sort of poor practice is still going on in our industry and there are those out there who are giving the rest of us professionals a bad name. So, full marks to the ISM for taking a lead in stamping out bad sales practice and changing the negative perceptions of salespeople. ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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WE ARE ALL SALESPEOPLE No matter what line of work you are in, you are a salesperson. Every single day you will need to convince others you deserve to be listened to and treated better. Whether you are going for a job interview, asking for a pay rise from your boss, or going on a romantic date, you must sell yourself. Relationship Selling is a straight-talking guide on how to become a better salesperson – how to increase your sales, how to build and develop strong business and personal relationships, and how to get more from each and every day. The book describes the most profitable sales techniques used by millions of sales professionals around the globe, giving you the chance to learn what it takes to increase your commission cheque month after month.
And changing they are. I’m seeing a definite improvement in attitude towards salespeople. The rise of consultative selling, in which a salesperson will act more as a guide and adviser to a prospect or client, as opposed to a hardnosed dealmaker, is becoming increasingly popular and is at the forefront of changing perceptions of the sales industry as a whole. That’s why I remember Neil now, ten whole years after buying my first car from him. He developed a relationship with me. He listened. He advised. He cared. He took the time to ensure that I was getting exactly what I needed in the transaction – so much so that I’m proud to say that the car Neil sold me still sits on my driveway to this day. Over the next two editions of Winning Edge, I’ll be looking in much more detail at the mechanics of relationship selling and how strong customer and client relationships will remain the most important element in every single sales process. In the next feature I will be focusing specifically on ROBERT SPENCE is a how we can develop and sales manager, coach, maintain strong business mentor and author. His recently published book relationships, and see our Relationship Selling is prospect pipeline grow available on Amazon. Visit from strength to strength. relationshipselling.co.uk WINNING EDGE 15
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FEATURE | NEGOTIATING
REAP WHAT YOU SOW SIMON BUZZA provides the next two rules in his series of 12 key rules of negotiating RULE NUMBER 7 ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES In negotiation, and in life, everything that you do has repercussions. Things will come back to you one way or another. You cannot escape the consequences of your actions, and you will eventually see the long-term effects of your earlier decisions. “What goes around comes around,” as they say. Sometimes we get screwed over and there is nothing we can do about it. Really? I have never subscribed to this view, and a cold, hard look in the mirror by its proponents is generally very revealing. Let’s take a look at this from two different perspectives: l If the other party feels they have lost at the negotiating table l How our behaviours impact our results. IF THE OTHER PARTY FEELS THEY HAVE LOST IN THE NEGOTIATIONS Of the four potential outcomes from a negotiation, two include the word “lose” – as the negotiating spectrum (opposite) indicates. Any agreement or settlement that leaves one party a dissatisfied loser is not clever in the long run and will come back to hurt you later, sometimes in ways you cannot predict. This is a typical “win:lose” scenario, which ultimately turns into a “lose:win” scenario... Let me explain more. A very tough negotiator told me about a hard deal he had wrung out of one of his customers. He had demanded, threatened and bullied the buyer, ultimately negotiating a deal that paid considerably more than any other customer his business had supplied. The customer was a major one (about 15% of the total sales revenue), but the supplier had a technological edge, which it felt it could exploit to its advantage. So the salesman did, and he was proud of his achievement in “screwing the customer for every last penny I could get”. 16 WINNING EDGE
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We happen to know the customer in question and a couple of years later we enquired of its procurement team if the story was true. The buyers told us it was and that, at that time, they had no option but to buy the items at the inflated cost. However, they subsequently felt so manipulated and “trampled all over” that they decided immediately after the price increase to ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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find an alternative supplier that would work with them to find a mutually attractive solution. It was difficult, but they found one. Some 18 months later, they terminated the contract with the original supplier and shifted all their business to the new one, with whom they felt they had a better level of mutual respect. They described a bittersweet moment as they negotiated with the original supplier, who was completely oblivious to his customer’s alternative plans. The seller was ashen as he left, having been told that the contract was terminated with immediate effect. He lost his job, his business was left with a catastrophic hole in its revenue, and a new competitor was introduced into its market with a cheaper but equally effective product. He most certainly reaped what he had sown.
THE Win:Win
HOW OUR BEHAVIOURS IMPACT OUR RESULTS In another real-life situation, one of my team had a notoriously difficult customer who was “If the other party leaves threatening to terminate the the negotiating table contract with us. I was told feeling they have lost, they he was awkward, unsmiling, will not forget and they will short of time, unfriendly, only interested in his own look for an alternative agenda and generally tough solution” on all aspects of our service. I was invited to meet him to defend our position. My account manager was tetchy about this contract – he found the relationship tough going. Consequently, he himself was also unsmiling, curt and relatively cold in his dealings with the customer – he was on edge. His briefing to me initially led me to expect a similar scenario. However, I took the opposite view, and rather than leap straight into a confrontation, I decided to engage and disarm the individual. I would not talk about the contract, but only wanted to understand the buyer’s situation. So, we talked about life, family and values. It was a very different conversation from the one I had been led to expect. The buyer visibly relaxed and we built some rapport and trust in just one meeting. As a consequence, I replaced the account manager with someone with more relationship-building skills. This new account manager was warm, smiling and a good listener. The result was a step-change in the relationship: the customer felt appreciated and the revenue grew significantly as N E G OTI ATI N G S PEC T RU M we gained an increased share of the spend. So, it transpires that our own behaviours Win:Believed Win Win:Lose Lose:Lose impact those of our customers – and we reap what we sow. You see, all our actions have consequences, especially in the difficult world of commercial
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FEATURE | NEGOTIATING
negotiations. The market can and will change from a buyer’s market to a seller’s market, and vice versa, in double quick time. Don’t ever be fooled into thinking that your actions don’t have consequences, or that there is nothing you can do to change the outcome. Don’t think you can get away with bad, short-term or tactical choices, even if you don’t seem to get caught. If the other party leaves the negotiating table feeling they have lost, they will not forget and they will look for an alternative solution, even if it takes a significant amount of time and effort to do so. We can and should still negotiate firmly, striving to get a good deal while also treating all involved with warmth, integrity and honesty. It’s amazing how discerning people are. They quickly pick up on this type of behaviour and, consciously or not, they start to respond in the same way. Remember, people are generally infinitely more valuable than any transaction, regardless of the size of the potential upside. Treating people right will always come back around to benefit you in the long run. In the end, you invariably get to reap what you sow. RULE NUMBER 8 LEARN TO COMMUNICATE In order to negotiate, people must have the ability to exchange ideas, concerns, proposals and arguments – in short, they must be able to communicate effectively. Spare a moment for this simple thought: if we communicate poorly, this will dramatically increase our chance of failure in any negotiation. If you’re lucky, poor communication might merely mean a mildly prolonged discussion – irritating, but not serious. But it might mean something far more damaging. Imagine the potential consequences of negotiators getting their communications wrong in the following circumstances: l Politicians and diplomats negotiating for peace in conflict and war (or Brexit!) l Hostage negotiators seeking to bring home loved ones and the afflicted from war torn and dangerous countries l The emergency services having to negotiate in difficult situations to help the innocent and prevent wrong-doing l The Good Samaritan trying to persuade a would-be suicide victim to pause and think again l The parent persuading their children that Santa will only come at Christmas if they settle down to sleep early... So, you see that communication and negotiation are inextricably linked, and good 18 WINNING EDGE
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negotiation skills are crucial – not least for buyers and sellers in business seeking to deliver true value for money. If you want to be successful in a negotiation, there is no room for communication breakdowns and misunderstandings. How much have you thought this through? It is a broad topic. We are not just talking about words, although we seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time on words, at the expense of the all the other important areas of communication. Body language, tone of voice, dress and appearance, handshakes, listening skills, emotional intelligence, timekeeping and courtesy all play a key role in a
“Make sure you don’t send the wrong signals by saying – or doing – things that conflict with the message you really want to get across”
SIMON BUZZA is a Fellow of the ISM and founding partner of the NewDawn Partnership, an advisory service that focuses on delivering operational improvements to the buyer and seller interfaces of a business. Visit: www.newdawnpartners.com
human’s extensive communications skill set. Based on external cues, including dress, people assess one another positively or negatively. We make a flash judgment of someone as trustworthy, capable, friendly, intelligent – or the opposite – and we deal with them based on those impressions. People make inferences about one another’s motives based on first impressions, which occur extremely quickly. We only need 100 milliseconds to form judgments of others on all sorts of dimensions, including likeability, trustworthiness, competence, and aggressiveness. If you want to start the negotiations on the right note, you need to communicate the right messages from the outset. Even more interesting, our first impressions of others are generally accurate and reliable. For instance, first impressions about a person’s competence have been shown to be good predictors of important outcomes, such as who will win a democratic political election. The best negotiators rehearse saying and doing things in ways that send precisely the message they want to send. The bottom line is that the better you become at using non-verbal communication and reading the non-verbal messages others send, the more effective you can be as a negotiator. Realise that everything you do at the bargaining table is part of the communication and negotiation process. So, make sure you don’t send the wrong signals by saying – or doing – things that conflict with the message you really want to get across. ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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FEATURE | PERFORMANCE
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PERFORMANCE | FEATURE
YOU’RE FIRED STEVE HOYLE considers the main reasons why sales leaders lose their jobs – and how to counter them TONY’S TERMINATION
Tony Milner got home early that evening, and he was in a bewildered, hurt and angry mood. That lunchtime he had been asked to “pop in” to see his boss Suzanne Legrand. On entering her office he immediately sensed the tense atmosphere, and the presence of Jon O’Grady the group HR director was worrying. Fifteen minutes later he was heading out of the door towards his car, without his laptop or company mobile, having been fired without any prior warning for “poor performance”. His bewilderment was because he did not fully understand what the “poor performance” consisted of. He had been recruited into Incred Systems some 18 months previously, and while he had only exceeded target in three of the six quarters, overall his cumulative achievement was over 100% of target, which was slightly better than average when compared with colleagues who ran other divisions within the large software and integration business. He had always received positive appraisals from Suzanne, and while he had not had much contact with her over the past few weeks, neither had he heard anything that might lead him to believe something was wrong. Replaying in his head the conversation that lunchtime with Suzanne, he was still a little confused. In the most recent quarter he had missed his target, but not dramatically. He had always forecast coming in slightly below target. He had two very large possible “upside” deals that he initially thought might have crept into that quarter, but he realised in the end that to force them through would have required giving huge discounts and setting unhealthy precedents with the major customers involved, which he knew would be regretted later in the year. Suzanne’s view was that he had “set her expectations” that at least one of those deals would land in the quarter, and she had been relying on that to make her own committed number. She had ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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expected Tony to have “made it happen” somehow. The meeting had obviously not been particularly friendly, although O’Grady had been matter of fact about it, and had outlined what he saw as a very generous compromise agreement. Tony could see that the severance pay on offer was not bad, but he was really upset by the shock and injustice of the situation.
LESSONS TO LEARN
In my experience, Tony’s story (it’s true, by the way, but not his real name) is very typical. As a consultant, coach and mentor, most of my time is spent on helping sales managers and sales directors to improve their performance and results – but in my research for a new book looking at why sales managers, directors and VP’s get fired, I have discovered that the reason is often nothing to do with their sales management skills. In Tony’s case I managed to speak with both Suzanne Legrand and Jon O’Grady, as well as others in the company. Nobody would give me definitive answers as to why Tony was fired, but it appears that the biggest factor was that Suzanne had to be seen to be “doing something” when she failed to make her target for the second quarter in a row. She had certainly relied on one of Tony’s big deals landing in the quarter, and factored that into the forecast she had committed to with her boss. It was also obvious that questions were being asked about her management style and decisiveness. So it is probable that Tony was the victim of Suzanne’s positioning with her boss and, in effect, he was made the scapegoat for her failing performance.
“The reason sales leaders get fired is often nothing to do with their sales management skills”
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STILL JUST ONE OF THE TEAM This is very common with sales leaders who have been newly promoted, either from being a salesperson or from a lower level of management. SCAPEGOAT FOR THE BOSS Often, for the first few months the individual is This is probably the most common reason why sales caught in the no man’s land of being a member of directors get fired, and normally it’s because of the previous team to being their manager and expectations that the boss has set with their boss (or leader. Many a sales manager on getting promoted board). In some cases, the sales leader had set the says that “it will not change me” but in the end it expectations themselves through unrealistically high will and it must – because people will inevitably forecasts that were the result of wishful thinking, react to them differently and will start managing which the boss had then passed on upwards. communications with them in subtly different ways. Sometimes the boss, under pressure from their boss, Over time, it is also likely that the new leader will had agreed expectations that the sales leader had alter their perspective on the individuals who now not bought into, and then had unfairly been work as part of the team. But some managers dismissed when the results did not follow. This is a never get past the point of being able to dissociate large part of what happened to Tony Milner. themselves from their team. As a sales leader you are constantly balancing the NOT KEEPING ENEMIES CLOSE needs of your people, your peers, customers, This has emerged as a suppliers and, most somewhat surprisingly importantly, your boss. “In particular, new sales leaders major reason for sales To be successful, a sales often fail to pay enough attention leaders getting fired. manager ultimately has to managing internal relationships” Enemies in this case are to be guided by what mostly colleagues, their boss and their normally in other functions, and often including organisation want them to achieve – so the primary people who also have to deal with customers such as team that they must associate themselves with is those in marketing, operations and delivery. now the management team, and not the group that Occasionally, but rarely, the more back-office reports to them. Failing to make that leap is the functions such as finance or HR can become downfall of many a promising sales manager. enemies. The reason for people becoming enemies includes all of the normal emotional and political GENERAL INCOMPETENCE reasons, heightened because the sales leader has Failing to understand the sales business and basic very definite black and white numbers to be judged management skills can be why some sales leaders against and so can be an easy target, and can be fail, although surprisingly it is not very common. blamed for other issues affecting customer-facing Individuals who have succeeded in a tough sales job functions. In particular, new sales leaders normally probably have the desire and capacity to develop focus on the external aspects of the role, and are so themselves quickly enough, and can always be intent on driving sales performance that they often helped with more training or coaching. If general fail to pay enough attention to managing often incompetence turns out to be the major reason for complex internal relationships – and not just the someone getting fired, then it is probably a sign of a business relationships but the sometimes more bad hiring or promotion decision in the first place. powerful personal and political issues too. NOT BEING ABLE TO MANAGE AND LOSING THE DRESSING ROOM TRANSFORM AT THE SAME TIME This is not common, but when it happens it is easy In today’s fast changing world, all managers, but to spot. It normally occurs when a sales leader is especially those closest to the customers and trying hard to drive the team forward, often in emerging trends (ie. sales) have to be comfortable situations where their performance has been failing. with, and ideally thrive on, being able to implement The sales manager or director starts to apply change quickly and effectively. There is often a pressure on the team, which gets worse if tension between driving long-term change and performance doesn’t immediately improve, and improvements, while at the same time hitting which some salespeople find difficult to accept. In a monthly or quarterly targets. This is similar to very short time this ratcheting up of pressure, and the classic dilemma facing salespeople around salespeople reacting against it, turns into a vicious developing relationships and creating/shaping downward spiral. The only way out of this is for business for the long term, versus taking tactical something dramatic to happen and, more often short-term business to hit today’s targets. Most sales than not, this is the removal of the sales leader as leaders relish this challenge, as it is at the heart of they have lost all trust and support of their team. what makes sales and sales management exciting. My interviews and research are continuing, but there are already some very clear reasons emerging for why sales leaders get fired.
STEVE HOYLE is a sales consultant, coach, trainer, interim manager and author specialising in helping clients grow the capability of their sales teams in complex B2B environments. His next book Why Sales Managers Get Fired is due for publication in Spring 2018. While he has already identified over 20 reasons why salespeople get fired, he is still conducting research and would love to hear from practising sales leaders as to why they or colleagues got fired. Email steve.hoyle@linksdev.net or call 07785 381563.
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PERFORMANCE | FEATURE
But, a significant number fail, either because they just manage the short term (which eventually dries up) or because, despite making the right strategic moves, they didn’t pay sufficient attention to good management of the tactical operational business and the “strategic” moves did not bear results in time. Getting the approach right, and doing both without compromising either, is often the hardest part of the sales leader’s job, but also the most rewarding (in every sense). It is normally unfair to expect newly-promoted leaders at any level to be perfect, so they will almost certainly need mentoring and coaching in this respect. POOR POLITICS It is obvious that in many cases sales managers, directors and VPs get fired in a totally unfair manner, for political reasons. We all know that sales may be fair in the long run, but is often unfair in the short term. But in most cases there are numerous things that can be done to help the sales leader reduce the risks of getting fired. Returning to Tony Milner, he eventually agreed a revised and even more generous compromise agreement, including a good reference, and was able to get a new job in the same industry sector within a few weeks. Could he have done more to prevent getting fired? The answer is always yes. He realised that his style of focusing on “getting the job done” was one of his great strengths, but maybe he should have spent a little more time on office politics – on building relationships with his boss’s boss and other key stakeholders who might have had a decisive influence on his future. He could have communicated better, spreading the thinking behind his forecast much more widely, rather than just to his immediate boss Suzanne, who was then able to make use of it in a way that suited her own purposes, but undermined Tony’s position. Alternatively, he could have kept his forecast between just himself and Suzanne, but managed his communications with her much better. In the end, he had to weigh up if paying a little more attention to managing upwards was something that he wanted to do, and if it would affect his true management style. Only he could answer that, but he did tell me that in his new job he was going to consider relationships with his boss, and management in general, much more carefully. My initial conclusions about the main reasons why sales leaders get fired are summed up by a recent conversation I had with my wife – an artist who knows very little about sales, but who often has to put up with my stories from the frontline of selling. One evening I mentioned to her that I’d just interviewed another sales director who had been made redundant. “What was it this time?” she asked rather wearily. “Oh, mostly politics,” I replied, to which her response was, “Isn’t it always!” ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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MICH A EL’S S TO RY: FRO M S A LES PRINCE TO S H OV E D O U T One of the more interesting and extreme cases I came across was Michael Fischer, who was recruited as EMEA VP of sales for a major telecommunications provider. The recruitment itself was unusual and should have rung alarm bells with Michael. He was approached directly by the CEO, who had worked with him just three years previously and who, while not a close personal friend, had kept in touch socially ever since. Michael was officially recruited by the global head of high talent, together with the president of international business, Jocelyn Hughes. Michael never really understood how much they were genuinely interviewing him, or just following the CEO’s instructions, but they certainly put him through a rigorous process, and negotiated hard on his remuneration package. Things went fine for Michael for a few months, but in retrospect he should have seen some warning signs: “EMEA” didn’t include all the countries you would expect; his authority sign-off level was not as high as his predecessor’s; and he wasn’t allowed as much time as had been agreed in his 30/60/90day plan to find his feet. His direct reports, however, were great to work with. They warmed to his no-nonsense, back-to-basics approach to a disciplined sales team. Sales practices had become a little sloppy over a number of years, but the company’s good market share and near monopoly in many markets had ensured that targets were met and people had been happy. Now though, the market had become tougher and they were losing market share and missing the more aggressive targets the CEO had imposed. Michael thought he was getting on well with Jocelyn Hughes, who had made encouraging noises since he started, although it was
clear that the relationship was always going to be very arm’s length. Jocelyn had been around for many years and had a wide network of contacts, which meant that she always knew what Michael was up to. His greatest issue was actually with his peers in the marketing and support functions, who were constantly letting him down, focusing on their own functional concerns, and not helping him to transform a slightly underperforming sales team into a force to be reckoned with. Their actions were never outright obstructive, but were always a little late, and not as supportive as they needed to be. Michael, however, faced a major
“In retrospect Michael should have seen some warning signs” task, and he ploughed on with a fast-paced change programme designed to make the sales team competitive again. His end came suddenly. Nine months after joining, Jocelyn called him into her office and fired him on the spot with little explanation, other than he was “not a team player”. It seems Jocelyn’s other reports had ganged up as they saw Michael as a threat to their comfortable existence. Jocelyn had never really wanted to recruit Michael, and now the CEO himself was under some pressure from the board, so could not help save his “prince”. When Michael was asked what he could have done differently, his answer was “spend as much time managing relationships to the side and above me as managing the people below me” – one of the classic truisms for most sales managers in most companies.
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COVER THEME | PURCHASERS’ POWER
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WHO HOLDS THE CARDS? MARK ERSKINE considers how salespeople can respond to the rise of the professional buyer
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alespeople used to hold all the cards – functions. Their role and influence has grown so they knew more about their product much that in some important ways the sales process and service than the buyer. This – what most sales trainers teach – has become allowed them to control the selling almost redundant, as the buying process has taken process and use well-honed selling skills over. Just as sellers have targets, professional buyers to persuade, influence and close deals. have quotas to attain – the savings they need to Whatever market sector you are in when selling, generate to cover the overhead cost of their no one can have escaped the fact that the buying function. They have developed professional buying process has changed. Salespeople have traditionally techniques to counter the sales skills they come up sold to “user-buyers” – those responsible for the against. They are also tasked with managing a day-to-day use or supervision of the product or “whiter than white” compliance process that ensures service being sold. After fairness and equality all, they needed to be and which stands up to “Whatever market sector you are convinced that it would do legal scrutiny. the job or solve the problem To run this process in when selling, no one can have they were encountering. effectively means escaped the fact that the buying The ability to build trust eliminating any process has changed” and develop relationships subjectivity or emotion in with user-buyers was a key the buying process to make logical, rational and defensible buying decisions. part of winning deals, as were effective selling skills You will even find a number of major – great questioning and listening, influencing skills, UK businesses changing their procurement objection handling, negotiating and closing. category managers every six months or so to ensure that relationships are not forged – after all, that THE RISE OF PROFESSIONAL could lead to unacceptable, emotive buying PROCUREMENT decisions and increased supplier margins. But for many years now we have seen the rise of Once into the procurement process then there professional buyers in the form of procurement
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options are considered and evaluated, and then finally by “convergent” thinking, where the best option is selected. The first stage takes the vast majority of the time. Historically, this is where the salesperson engaged in the long game meets the prospect and influences the process – ideally, of course, so that their ideal solution is the desired outcome for the prospect. This long-term courting of the client enables the salesperson to build strong relationships and trust. It puts them on the front row of the grid when the race is about to start. Even if it is a formal process, they start ahead. Now, with the rise of professional procurement, this stage of cognitive thinking is often conducted by detailed research of the market and without supplier engagement. Rational objectivity, rather than subjective emotional decisions swayed by skilled sales professionals, wins the day. Salespeople, of course, want to create differentiation, to show their product or service is superior to create value in the mind of the buyer. It is an ideal world for the buyer where there are three submitted bids, each of which meets the defined specification. If no differentiation can be created “Long-term courting of the then the buyer can choose on client enables the the one very objective and salesperson to build strong quantifiable basis – price. are likely to be multiple relationships and trust” Now the seller, of course, hurdles to overcome and stages doesn’t want a decision to be to work through. To the based on price, as that means tighter margin. And salesperson this can be seen as a frustrating maze, if their personal reward is based on margin rather delaying progress from the start line to the finish than revenue, or even a combination of the two, and extending the sales cycle. Often the first stage is then it means they stand to earn less. a request for information (RFI). If we were cynical So, should salespeople ever be excited by an RFP as salespeople, we might suspect this is just a landing on their desk? Or do they need a different timesaving technique to avoid trawling websites to set of skills or a different behavioural style to gather information. We may also suspect that this is combat professional procurement? just a way of gathering the latest market intelligence In years gone by, rookie salespeople started their – with little or no real appetite to buy. careers with companies that rigorously trained core We then move on to request for quotation (RFQ) foundation selling skills – questioning and listening, or request for proposal (RFP), where an extensive rapport building, elevator pitches, objection response is required. At this juncture the handling, presentation skills, negotiating, closing opportunity to engage in the buying process is often skills and the like. If you were serious about a career limited to technical questions, with any written in sales you joined someone like Rank Xerox, not responses shared with competitors. The ability to necessarily because you wanted to sell photocopiers, uncover prospect needs and identify problems but because you wanted great and rigorous sales through personal dialogue is restricted, if not training. Such firms would insist on role-play after eliminated. The downside, of course, is that this role-play to hone your skills. Then, when you were approach can restrict innovation and scupper the finally ready to be let loose on prospects, you possibility of creating a tailored solution. learned much more about your trade from your Research into the decision-making process by sales manager, who showed you how it was done. psychologist JP Guilford in his book Understanding With economic pressures in today’s sales world, Human Intelligence demonstrates that the first step of manager to seller ratios have hugely increased and the decision process is to understand the situation getting time with your manager in the field has through “cognitive” thinking. In this step, the been diminished. Companies now seem to hope “buying influence” must understand that a situation that young sales rookies know how to sell and they exists, the business implication of the situation, and don’t provide those vital foundation skills. that the situation should be addressed. This is As these core sales skills were diminishing, the followed by the “divergent” thinking stage, when 26 WINNING EDGE
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PURCHASERS’ POWER | COVER THEME
opposite was happening in procurement. Qualified procurement people were sharpening their axe – driven by their industry body, the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (CIPS). Qualified CIPS professionals have become consummate negotiators; they know how to counter selling skills and run a professional measured and quantifiable process. They start negotiating while the salesperson is still selling – the lines have been blurred between these stages and as a result the seller gives away key elements of their solution to sweeten the deal and ensure they win, when in fact the buyer already knows who they want to select and is already in negotiating mode. Are salespeople going to be too expensive a resource to justify? If all they do is respond to formal tenders with no opportunity to use their skills, then that may well be the case. The key is to ensure that this is not all they do.
Everything you do in life is based on the brain’s determination to minimise danger or maximise reward – but the defensive ‘away drive’ is stronger and faster. In today’s world, the brain doesn’t just treat physical things as danger – loss of control, loss of approval or status, and imposed change all encourage people to avoid risk. Conversely, powerful motivations like approval, certainty, happiness and contentment are strong influencers.
ADAPTIVE SELLING – AND SELLERS Selling techniques like “solution” or “consultative” selling have become hugely popular over the past 25 years. This more collaborative style was developed, many sales professionals believe, to counter the stereotypical pushy sales stereotype. But this softer style has also meant many sellers have lost their edge in appealing to a buyer’s emotions. People need to feel the implication and pain of not acting and the personal reward and emotional NEUROSCIENCE – A NEW TOOL benefits of choosing a new product or service. Successful sales leaders have always recognised that Today, confronted with professional buyers – who it is important to engage early with their prospects will typically display logic, process, method and in the buying process to build relationships, and that structure as a strong preference – intuitively getting to the ultimate decision has a huge positive matching and mirroring behaviour won’t really cut impact on their conversion ratios. Building a the selling mustard. When sellers do manage to network of relationships and inside sponsors and achieve face-to-face customer interaction, they need coaches in the prospect organisation is vital to to adjust their behaviour far more consciously and circumvent bureaucratic tendering processes, as is learn specific rules of engagement to really connect getting above procurement in the buyer’s corporate – adapting their energy levels, body language, the hierarchy, by getting to the real decision-maker. The words they use and their communication style. old sales maxim of networking high, wide and early Then, they can use emotional triggers to influence has never been more important. and persuade even the most hard-nosed As the buying landscape changes, sellers need procurement professionals – who are, after all, just new tools to gain competitive human beings with the same edge. Understanding brain functions and processes. “The old sales maxim of neuroscience – the study of the This area of adaptive networking high, wide brain and nervous system – is selling is still hugely and early has never been vital in that journey. untapped. Sellers don’t just more important” need to use adaptive Although we may like to techniques, they need to learn consider ourselves and our to consciously manage their behavioural selling style customers intelligent rational and logical, in reality and embed it into their personal development plan most of our thoughts and feelings that exert an if they are going to make a real success of it. influence on us occur in the primitive unconscious However, personal development of individuals areas of the brain – logic forms only a small part of within your own salesforce may not be enough to the decision-making process. keep yourself ahead of the game and competitive. So what does this mean for selling? Gerald Subject matter expertise in your products and Zaltman, a professor at Harvard Business School, services is vital – otherwise your knowledge is in sums it up: “In reality our emotions are interwoven danger of being superseded by professionally with reasoning processes. Although our brains have prepared procurement teams, and that means loss separate structures for processing emotions and of credibility very quickly. logical reasoning, the two systems communicate Sales directors and managers may well need to with each other and jointly affect behaviour. Even change the type of people they recruit to win back more important, the emotional system – the older control of the playing cards. They will need sales of the two in terms of evolution – typically exerts recruits with a stronger “thinking” orientation, the first force on our thinking and behaviour. because evaluative, investigative, analytical Emotions are essential for and contribute to sound sellers will be the most natural match for the new decision-making. Decision-making hinges on simultaneous functioning of reason and emotion.” breed of professional buyers. ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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MARK ERSKINE is a Fellow of the ISM with over 35 years’ experience in the sales industry. He is owner and director of Seller Performance, which, through its Capitalise programme, helps organisations harness the power of neuroscience in selling. Its preferred behavioural profiling tool is Life Orientations, used by over 21,000 organisations around the world. Email mark@ sellerperformance.co.uk or visit www.sellerperformance.co.uk
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COVER THEME | BUYER INSIGHT
DOING THE DEAL
Professional buyer Tim Ussher provides the fourth and final feature in his series, this time advising on tendering and negotiating with buyers
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his feature is the last in a series running over four consecutive editions of Winning Edge. The first article asked if sellers really are doing everything they should to impress buyers and highlighted a key question for sellers to ask their prospects: “What do I have to do to win this contract?” The second feature aimed to improve our level of understanding of the buyer and their drivers, and also the importance of information and preparation. The third piece discussed those all-important meetings with the buyer, and explained how to pitch to them. In this fourth and final instalment I provide some guidance on tendering and negotiating with buyers. THE TENDER The tender or request for a proposal/quotation (RFP/RFQ) is the buyer’s advanced tank regiment. It prepares the battlefield, clears away unwanted suppliers, narrows down the field, starts to select worthy opponents, gets the buyer a view of what’s in front of them and gathers intelligence ready to then face the troops in the final rounds of hand-to-hand combat – the pitches and face-toface negotiations. I often tell my business, “the more we tender, the more we’ll save” – this is a simple fact. There is always a better deal, product, contract, service and/or price to be had by the buyer when they run a tender. Let’s remember that few buying departments still use the tender to decide the award (ie. the somewhat old-fashioned “sealed and final offers”). The tender process merely serves as the first round of “paper negotiations” and shortlisting. To summarise, it: l Allows simple comparison of numerous potential suppliers, terms and services 28 WINNING EDGE
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l Provides a mass of valuable information l Tests the worthiness and overall fit and suitability of each supplier l Outlines the supplier’s desire to win, provide innovation, and offer continuous improvements l Enables the buyer to start conditioning suppliers with their rules and desired outcomes. The tender is a very powerful tool for the buyer, so a submission for it must be equally impressive. It presents the first formal opportunity for sellers to start winning: Quality of response Make sure your tender response is of a high standard in terms of look, feel and content. It represents both you and your company and will be judged by a number of people alongside many other responses. Make yours stand out, while also closely following instructions. Conditioning This is a key, yet often overlooked, part of the process for both the buyer and the supplier. Buyers will include hints and tips throughout their communications, presentations and meetings to start aiming high and get suppliers thinking big. So the supplier should in turn condition the buyer – plan what messages you want the buyer to get. Tailoring Buyers have the ability to award millions in spend for contracts. So when we send out a tender we’d like to feel it’s been given special attention and treated as pretty important. Do not tell buyers you’re too busy to give the tender full focus, nor accidentally leave displayed the name of another potential customer from a previous version... Tailor your response carefully, include the buyer’s company logo on pages, and describe how your vision and goals complement those of the buyer. The goal Know the judging criteria, score weightings and
“There is always a better deal, product, contract, service and/or price to be had by the buyer when they run a tender”
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what is expected of suppliers to get through to the next round. Find out, if possible, how many companies are being invited to tender – and how many the buyer expects to be shortlisted. Do what’s asked Buyers take trouble to draft out their tender documents, check them with the business and get them all correctly formatted. Buyers long to be able to compare the responses quickly and effortlessly, so it’s a real bore when a supplier does not comply with the guidelines or layout of the tender document, adds new columns, or simply hasn’t filled out all the fields (it does happen, often). Clarify Hopefully, the process will allow suppliers to ask questions, which should be shared with all those ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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tendering, so if in doubt, make sure you clarify. Meet deadlines The need to meet deadlines seems obvious, but still some suppliers fail to submit their responses by the clearly stipulated and reasonable deadline. Mobilise the troops, get the big boss to support the work, and stay up late if necessary. After all, this is what you, as a salesperson, works for... a sales opportunity, so make sure you respect all deadlines. Communicate Keep up the personal communication. Perhaps a call to the buyer to acknowledge that you’ve received the RFP, and that you’ll have your team working on it immediately. This all serves to impress upon the buyer how seriously you and your company are taking their tender, and all WINNING EDGE 29
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COVER THEME | BUYER INSIGHT
MEET THE BUYER TIM USSHER has spent his entire career of over 30 years as a buyer. He began buying for a large retail chain with 1,400 stores, moved to cash and carry and then over to manufacturing. He went on to become chief procurement officer (CPO) for several major companies. In the UK he has been CPO for BSkyB and Virgin Media, where he managed procurement teams of over 75 buying staff. In addition, he has led global procurement organisations of up to 340 procurement staff worldwide for multinationals such as Hilton, Williams Cleaning and Security Group and Regus. In 2002, Ussher won the inaugural Purchasing and Supply Chain Professional of the Year award from the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (CIPS), the procurement industry’s top individual award. In his current role of independent consultant CPO, he has carried out major reviews and established new or improved procurement functions for the London 2012 Olympics, EMI, Diageo and British American Tobacco. Ussher is passionate about continuous improvement within both buying and selling to drive up performance and professional standards. As he explains, “I want salespeople to be better at what they do, because sellers on top of their game helps buyers do their job more effectively. That’s what buyers want – brilliant suppliers with outstanding salespeople.”
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the while you’re building that relationship. Involve the boss Whether it’s a tender response or negotiations, the buyer may never quite feel they’ve pushed it enough or been taken seriously unless a more senior person from the supplier’s side has latterly been involved. Buyers invariably involve top decision-makers, so it’s right to get your boss involved. The e-auction Find out what the criteria are, the scoring, how many attendees, prepare, have the right people on “I finally won the damn auction. We’ll probably standby, and understand if the auction will award make no margin, but what the heck, I won!” business or just get you to the negotiating table for the next round. Know your parameters to bid. This is a huge topic, so I’ll cover some of the I’ve watched suppliers go straight in with their best more tangible tips that will help the seller (and price at the start, while others drip feed, but buyer) towards securing a satisfactory deal: ultimately it’s only the end result that counts. The scene setter How competitive? A good example of a negotiator is a barrister. It’s a fine line between winning and not, and if Their opening address to the there’s only one supplier being jury will set the scene and start selected, then coming second “Think of the buyer as a to condition its thinking. Sellers will get you the same as coming hungry lion, probably should similarly outline a last – nothing. Think of the best fed little and often” summary of their position, buyer as a hungry lion, probably goals and expectations. best fed little and often. See their cards first The buyer will usually want to see what the THE NEGOTIATION seller has to say, what their offers are, and be in This is the sexy, macho bit in business. It’s the time possession of as much information about the seller where all that knowledge, power, information, as possible, before then determining how to pitch tendering and shortlisting comes together and the their negotiation stance and tactics. This leads buyer can now flex their muscles. We wave a back to that primary seller’s question again: “What contract in front of the suppliers, pick the best one, do you need in order for me to win this deal?” Try and of course get our obligatory savings. But this is to ascertain first what the buyer expects and their also the time the seller can flex their muscles and goals, and then adjust your pitch accordingly. turn things to their advantage, especially if they’re Build trust on the shortlist; so it’s a time to “lead” the buyer, All the time the seller has spent building trust with and persuade, cajole and negotiate with them. the buyer outside the negotiating room will now serve them well. Keep it professional The buyer and seller both seek the same goal, so always be professional. Good relationships are important, but this is not about personalities. Keep the end in mind Ask yourself, “What do we need to do to get this deal concluded?”Ask lots of questions of the buyer and, when the timing is right towards the latter part of negotiations, ask this simple question – you may get useful hints to win. Listen and watch We’ve all been told on training courses that there’s a good reason why we have two ears, two eyes and one mouth – and we should use them in these “The tender deadline is in 5…4…3…” proportions. The information gathering continues ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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BUYER INSIGHT | COVER THEME
through negotiations, so pay attention to every little tone, inference, body movement and nuance displayed. Buyers will usually – either deliberately or unintentionally – pepper their talk with partially hidden or even obvious clues. Drip-feed expendables Buyers like a sustained, frequent flow of wins so they feel they’ve chipped away and have used their skills to continue to win things that weren’t originally on offer. Know what you can ultimately afford to give away, and start higher. Good cop, bad cop This little act (sometimes genuine) often works well for the buyer, so should for the seller as well. It’s where someone in the team is cautioning against the deal, while the lead tries to help conclude it satisfactorily, like an ally, and wins trust. Involve the boss The buyer likes to know they have involvement from the decision-makers within the supplier’s organisation, and that they’ve exhausted all avenues. Sellers should therefore always be ready to have their boss involved at some point. Go for longer-term deals Assuming your company wants a long-term deal, then you should always try to steer the negotiation towards this. Annual deals were the norm, but with the pressures of buyer staffing levels, more procurement teams are expected to lock in longer-term deals. The silence For many buyers the saying silence is golden really does have that meaning. The silence earns us more gold... We ask for a better offer and wait in silence. The seller should, of course, respond, but not before considering the question: “What do I need to do to win?” By all means fill the silence, but it doesn’t have to be with more discounts. Play the chess game, and practise Chess and negotiating are all about planning and anticipation. The buyer will prepare, so sellers should also plan, anticipate, rehearse and practise impending negotiations. Know your wants, likes and giveaways – and remember the age-old saying, practice makes perfect. Win–win Beware this mild form of hypnosis or falling for
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“Have you lot decided who I’m to deal with in this meeting?” the appealing suggestion that you the seller are getting a good deal. Neither the buyer nor seller will get everything they want, so the key is always deciding where to compromise. Collaboration I really believe that collaboration is the best way to do business. Be open and honest, work with the buyer to explore each other’s goals, and see if the pieces of the jigsaw fit together well enough for both sides to do the deal. It is best to cast all thought of confrontation and conflict aside. Giveaways It is to be hoped that the seller will have been able to hold some things back from the tender response and still be shortlisted. This is important, because they must now enter negotiations armed with those all-important giveaways, as their buyer counterpart certainly will be. Board and policy I’ve found that to mention, “This will need to go to the board for approval”, or “That’s against our company policy” can be highly successful tactics to deflect something that, as a buyer, I want to avoid. As a seller, you need to be prepared for it. The lock-in Suggest this to appeal to the buyer’s desire to conclude a deal. Each party has all the decisionmakers in the room, so there’s no room for excuses, and the meeting runs until the deal is done. Admittedly though, I’ve never yet had this suggested by a supplier! Body language: Our body language, movements, hand positions, stance, tiny nuances in our looks and expression are all incredibly powerful tools in life and in negotiations. It can help, hint, show the opposite of what we’re saying, enforce, magnify, insult, decline; it can show understanding, friendship or hostility. Don’t hold back, but bring to bear all your powers of communication to strengthen your hand in negotiations. You can be sure the buyer will too...
WINNING SELLING... TO IMPRESS THE BUYER! gives a concise insight into the mind of the procurement professional, with no-nonsense tips, tactics and practical advice for salespeople. Recently published, it is endorsed by Lord Alan Sugar, entrepreneur and star of the BBC’s The Apprentice, who, having personally sat across the table from Tim Ussher in sales negotiations, describes him as “one of the best purchasing professionals I have come across in business”.
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FEATURE | SALES PERFORMANCE
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SALES PERFORMANCE | FEATURE
BLUEPRINT FOR GROWTH GARRY MANSFIELD provides a formula for boosting B2B sales success
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re you feeling the pressure to grow faster? All over the world there are company executives demanding more revenue, faster growth and higher productivity. These executives sit across from a sales leader who is increasingly under pressure to find some answers. Maybe this is you? With everything going on, it’s sometimes hard to take stock and identify what improvements are necessary. If you have tried initiatives in the past, you might have found little or no impact on results, and this can be frustrating. Here, I will share my growth BluePrint, a detailed framework that can be used to check, build and improve your sales and marketing capability, and thus create a powerful growth engine for sales and marketing. This BluePrint can help you to identify your change priorities and build a better way of selling. After all, not every sales leader is in a position to bring in a team of expert consultants to “do change for/to them”, even if they wanted to. And for changes to stick, your team must be accountable for improvements, for without their ownership change can be a fad that passes with little lasting impact.
SAL E S P E RFORMA N C E EQUAT I O N PURPOSE
PROPOSITION
PEOPLE
PROCESS
Hign performance growth engine
PURPOSE
PROPOSITION
PEOPLE
PROCESS
No direction or alignment to company goals. No focus on improving performance
PURPOSE
PROPOSITION
PEOPLE
PROCESS
Your offers are not compelling to buyers and customer retention is hard
PURPOSE
PROPOSITION
PEOPLE
PROCESS
Underperforming people who do not deliver competitive advantage
PURPOSE
PROPOSITION
PEOPLE
PROCESS
Processes are not efficient, effective or predictable. They hinder, not help, sales
© OUTSIDE IN SALES & MARKETING
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THE SALES PERFORMANCE EQUATION You should focus on activities rather than outcomes. It can be hard to find answers when you’re obsessed with outcome measures. But you don’t often find more orders by staring at your forecast and hoping it will get better. You must take action, but where? Start by exploring the sales performance equation (SPE) for your team, and see how purpose, proposition, people and process – the four Ps – provide the building blocks of a B2B growth engine. Your SPE equals purpose x proposition x people x process. The four performance dimensions are all required – they’re interdependent and work as a multiplier equation. This is important because underperformance against any of them will impact your sales results, as the table below illustrates. GROWTH BLUEPRINT ELEMENTS We continuously look at what makes high performing B2B sales teams better than the average. The top 10% are more predictable than the rest, the next 60% are mid-performing, and the final 30% are poor. So what is it that makes the best different? We developed a framework that captures best practice. This growth BluePrint has three steps to sustained performance improvement: l Identification and assessment of risk and potential l Transformation initiatives – moving from point A to point B l Sustaining improvement using solutions, tools, methods and services. There are 18 elements in the BluePrint, of which some are foundation elements and others are accelerators. Foundation elements are the basics of sales performance. All sales teams do these things at one level or another, but the better performers will often execute each element to a higher standard. Accelerators are the elements that are true differentiators of the best companies. They are not often found in mid and poor performing businesses. Let’s look at each SPE dimension and see which are foundation elements and which are accelerators. WINNING EDGE 33
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FEATURE | SALES PERFORMANCE
T H R E E BAR R IE R S TO CH A NGE Three common challenges stand in the way of sustaining your transformation of sales. Awareness can help you to identify, plan and overcome them. 1 INERTIA Inertia is not to be underestimated as a barrier to change. Are you reluctant to consider changing from “how we do it today”? If you are hoping that a positive uplift is just around the corner, but don’t make any changes, you are certain to be disappointed. 2 INCREMENTAL THINKING Closely linked to inertia is incremental thinking. Do you prefer small changes to a more strategic and more impactful sales transformation? Incrementalism is
fine if only small improvements are needed, but when the sales team is failing consistently you need a more strategic view of change. Invest time and energy into improving each BluePrint element and be ambitious with your growth plans. 3 INTEGRATION Finally, integration is key, and overcoming a silo mentality between sales and marketing is a critical challenge. Changes in the buying cycle mean that salespeople are engaging later, so it’s important for your marketing team to engage earlier in the process, before handing over to your sales team to engage and influence the customers at a more individual level.
PURPOSE With only 38%1 of sales reps stating that they understand their company’s sales strategy, there is a mountain to climb when embarking on a transformational journey. Do you have a sales strategy? It’s likely that you do, but it needs to improve performance. Some firms struggle to translate a strategy document into reality but high performers use it to engage the sales team, customers and the market rigorously, implementing their plan in go-to-market activities. A vision is only part of the challenge though. A significant barrier to growth is that only 27%2 of salespeople feel that their company is effective at delivering and sustaining change initiatives. You GROWTH BLUEPRINT
Accelerators Foundation
Bid management
Leading change
Value playbooks
Sales talent management
Strategic sales operations
Case for change
Compelling propositions
Motivating performance
Account management
Purpose
Proposition
People
Process
Sales strategy
Communicating value
Sales performance management
Sales management
Customer experience management
Selling model
Opportunity management
Customer insights
Sales process © OUTSIDE IN SALES & MARKETING
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must focus on delivering change and improvement, and to be effective you must address a number of key challenges (see the box, left). Improvements are delivered when your company invests in a transformational business case and leads initiatives effectively. Sometimes senior leaders can be so focused on implementing change with their team that they forget to modify their own behaviours. I see most success when leaders are on top of, and in front of, change initiatives. PROPOSITION The best sales teams engage their target customers more effectively, clearly communicating and demonstrating value. Yet only 23%3 of sales managers are confident that their team can present their value proposition effectively to these target customers. There are some reasons for this. A lack of insight into your target customer’s situation, pressures, needs, frustrations and competitive landscape will stop you being relevant. Too often salespeople rely on a standard company deck, spending too much time talking about how many offices and people they have, rather than how their solution will increase performance for this customer. Change your conversation to put more focus on the value you can unlock for them, and use visual selling techniques to engage more deeply with them. In return, the sales process will feel more consultative and progress faster. Our research found that 95% of companies collect voice-of-customer feedback, yet only 5% of them close the loop with a systematic approach to improvement and customer communication.4 How could you improve in the systematic collection of customer feedback and use the insights collected to inform improvement initiatives? Customer experience management perhaps relates to retention more than a selling, but your long-term growth requires that you build on current revenues. A lost customer is a step backwards for you and your customer’s decision to renew is based on whether you have consistently delivered your value proposition promises. The development of innovative, differentiated and compelling propositions will help you stand out. Validate the value of new offers with customers throughout the development cycle and this will accelerate “time to revenue”, control costs and improve win rates. Marketing and sales must work together to differentiate your offer in the market. The best companies join-up the proposition elements of the BluePrint into a guided selling playbook that is simple, collateral-rich, measureable and valued by sales and customers. This guides the company’s interactions at each step of a buying process and as a key accelerator (found in top performers) this helps to improve results significantly. ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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SALES PERFORMANCE | FEATURE
PEOPLE Do you have the right selling model in place? Whether you choose a hunter or farmer sales approach, a tiered account or other model should reflect how your customers want to engage with you. Apply your approach consistently and don’t be tempted to blend multiple models into one, as this can leave employees and customers confused. Once you have the right structure, it is time to fill the teams with the right people. Sales high performers deliver 67% more revenue each year than average performers5 and this is a compelling reason to develop a talent management strategy. The best leaders take a strategic view of their people as the most important (and likely most costly) resource in their business, and this builds competitive advantage. Talent management is a change of focus when compared with sales performance management, and both are important. I often speak with sales managers who claim to performance manage, but this often means a weekly pipeline call, some ad hoc discussions and an annual appraisal. That’s not enough. Sales managers need regular conversations focused on the right (activity based) measures. My final people point is that the best companies build more motivating, performance-orientated cultures. While individuals must also motivate themselves, your sales leadership can create a winning culture and this can significantly increase productivity, results and talent retention.
CH ECKLIS T FO R S A LES PERFO R MA N C E 1 Do you have a clearly defined vision, growth strategy and improvement activities that will deliver growth? 2 Do you understand your customer’s drivers, needs, wants and priorities in the context of their company and industry? 3 Does your sales team present your value proposition effectively to your target customer? 4 Does your company use “voice of customer” feedback to make improvements? 5 Do you have a channel strategy and structure that works for partners and customers? 6 Are you attracting and retaining the best people in sales roles?
7 Does your sales team manage opportunities effectively? 8 Does your company have a well understood sales process and tempo for sales management reviews and meetings? 9 Do you manage customer relationships well and maximise wallet share? 10 Do you have the right technology, tools and resources to improve sales performance? l Complete a more detailed 40-question assessment to score your company against the BluePrint framework and receive a customised report that can help you to identify potential gaps. Visit http://outsde.in/assessm
These fundamental elements are found in most companies, yet the quality of execution is much higher among better performers. And this is not all they do better – they also take a more strategic view of selling activities. They invest in account management for key accounts. For many B2B companies the 80:20 (revenues:customers) rule still applies and you should apply the right level of focus and resources to your most critical customers. If you PROCESS don’t, they could walk, leaving a huge gap to fill Win rates for average performing B2B companies sit before you even start on growth. at 41%,6 and the best at over 60%. When under half 7 of forecasted deals close as predicted, this is a The same is true in the pursuit of major bids, significant issue for your where winning one bid executive team. can transform the “Frontline sales managers are often It’s fair to say that every revenues of your the difference between good and company has a sales business. Managing bid average performance” process in one form or opportunities properly another. Good ones are means investing in easy to use, well aligned with the buying process professional teams and using a structured approach. and supported with helpful tools. It’s easy to The final accelerator element is strategic sales overcomplicate this, so focus on getting the basics operations and it’s perhaps surprising that this is an right. Then monitor adoption, activity and progress. accelerator at all – we all have this don’t we? Sales The bedfellow for any sales process is opportunity operations may well be the beating heart of a sales management. I find that the best performing firms team but their role in the best performing teams is are decisive on where to invest effort and this means way more than merely a reporting function. They they work on 35%8 fewer opportunities. That’s are responsible for enabling sales transformation. right, the best companies work on fewer deals. How Does your “sales ops” team do this? consistently do you manage your deals and make the right choices about which to work on? FINAL THOUGHTS Frontline sales managers are often the difference If you need to improve sales performance, then I between good and average performance. A good hope this has given you some inspiration and a sales management process is built on a regular framework against which to identify potential gaps. tempo of effective discussions, focused on coaching Financial performance is significantly better for future performance improvement from every good performers, so make a start today by individual and not just checking data integrity. answering the ten questions in the checklist above. ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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REFERENCES: 1 Outside In research, 2014 2 Outside In research, 2016 3 Outside In research, 2014 4 Outside In research, 2016 5 McKinsey, 2012 6 Outside In research. 2015 7 CSO insights, 2015, puts this at 46% of forecasted deals 8 Outside In research, 2016
GARRY MANSFIELD is the founder of Outside In Sales & Marketing, a B2B consultancy that helps mid-sized companies to sell better. A Fellow of the ISM, he is profiled on page 48 of this edition. Email garry@oism.co.uk, Twitter @Outsideinsales or visit LinkedIn or http://oism.co.uk
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FEATURE | SALES BEHAVIOUR
SELLING WITH EMPATHY In the second of her three-part series, SARAH HINCHLIFFE explores how the ‘six habits of highly empathic people’ can help us become better salespeople
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n part 1 (see Winning Edge 2017 No 1) we cantered through Roman Krznaric’s Six Habits of Highly Empathic People, identified in his book Empathy. Krznaric defines empathy as “the art of stepping imaginatively into the shoes of another person, understanding their feelings and perspectives, and using that to guide your actions”. We learned that we are all wired for empathy and that we must simply develop our empathic brains and skills to make it natural behaviour. If you had a go at each of the six challenges I set, you should be getting the idea. Now let’s bring the subject back from the personal perspective and give it a business angle. Krznaric confirms that empathy helps with three aspects of selling: 1 Building relationships – buying and selling are people-based activities 2 Inspiring creativity – a sure way to differentiate your offering
FIGURE 1: BUYING AND SELLING STAGES ALIGNING THE STAGES ENCOURAGES EMPATHY
Status quo
Need emerges
Define need
Access options
Address worries
Make a choice
Become important
Shape needs
Create compelling offer
Build confidence
Negotiate and close
BUYER
Provide insight and thought leadership SELLER
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3 Underpinning culture and codes – creating shared values on which to build strong trust and loyalty. With this in mind, let’s consider how each of the six habits can increase sales potential. SWITCH ON Selling is not about you, it’s about your customer. It’s not about your products and services, it’s about what benefits they can bring to your customer’s business. Shifting your mindset so that your customer comes first is crucial and there are some simple steps you can take to support this change. Being sensitive to your customer’s buying cycle is a great start. Rather than designing a sales process based on the stages you intend to go through to make a sale, create one based on your customer’s buying stages. Focus on identifying what stage your customer is in and align your actions as shown in Figure 1 opposite. Your actions at each stage must focus on helping your customer move their business forward. Modern selling (both online and traditional) is far more about helping your customer to envision a better place through insightful and helpful interaction. No more product pushing for a quick sale. Throughout, it’s important to be genuine. Faking it will show sooner or later. You need to share your customer’s pain and show that you really care about taking it away, not just show polite interest. They will notice and respect you for your authenticity.
HABIT 1: Switch on your empathic brain Shifting our mental frameworks to recognise that empathy is at the core of human nature, and that it can be expanded throughout our lives
TUNE IN Previously, we learned that prejudice, HABIT 2: Make authority, distance and denial are four the imaginative leap Making a conscious effort barriers that prevent us tuning in to to step into other people’s other people. Highly empathic people shoes – including those of our tend to be more open-minded and ‘enemies’ – and to prepared to defy authority. They see acknowledge their everyone as individuals, even those humanity, individuality and perspectives they regard as enemies, and seek to appreciate them. As salespeople, we need to get to know our buyer. Is it one person or a team? What is the composition of the team? Teams may cover many parts of the business, including the user community, technical, quality, delivery, finance and procurement. Once we know who they are, we must put ourselves in their shoes, whether sandals, brogues or army boots. In the ideal world, we will get to understand each person’s role, objectives, incentives, likes and dislikes, fears and hopes. No more treating the procurement department as a necessary evil only to be engaged at the last ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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FEATURE | SALES BEHAVIOUR
minute in a price war. No more worrying that the business sponsor is a superior being. Everyone is equal. Everyone is human. Everyone, including you, is simply trying to do their job properly. Tuning in early and engaging sincerely will bring insight into the buyers and the buying dynamics. With this insight, you will be able to hone your communications to build stronger trust and credibility. DIG DEEP When I was a rookie HABIT 3: Seek salesperson back in the experiential adventures 1980s, our boot camp Exploring lives and cultures training introduced us to that contrast with our own the idea of a DILO – a through direct immersion, Day In the Life Of. We empathetic journeying and social cooperation were encouraged to go out into our customers’ worlds and experience their lives. In my first sales job in computing, I spent wonderful days at the BBC script unit and special effects department pondering how technology could benefit them. In those days, we knew way more than our customers about computers, so this wasn’t difficult. Now, with the internet and social forums, our customers often know as much about our products as we do, and if they don’t they “know a man who does”, so we must work hard to stay at least one step ahead. If we wish to become a trusted partner and adviser to our customers, we must be savvier than them. So, spend time with your customer and with your customer’s customer – overtly or incognito like many of Krznaric’s examples. Try a job swap, or a mystery shop. Convert what you learn into stunning business ideas that will transform your customer’s business and allow them to see you as someone who made a difference. LISTEN UP The Greek philosopher Epictetus is famous for his HABIT 4: Practise the art of conversation wisdom: “You were born Fostering curiosity about with two ears and one strangers and radical mouth for a reason, so that listening, and taking off our we can listen twice as emotional masks much as we speak.” This saying is often quoted in relation to the tendency (perceived or real) of salespeople to talk too much and listen too little. The most basic of sales skills is about listening to your customer’s needs and wants before offering a solution. Even so, it’s amazing how many 38 WINNING EDGE
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“Everyone is human. Everyone, including you, is simply trying to do their job properly”
salespeople still fall into the trap of launching into the superlative features of their products and services, without the faintest idea of their customer’s motivation. Krznaric encourages us to be radical in our listening – to completely put aside our own thoughts and desires in favour of taking in every tiny emotional and logical detail and nuance we are hearing. He encourages us to be truly interested in our conversation partners and to bare our own souls in our responses.
SIT DOWN Habit Five is sometimes known as “armchair empathy”. It’s about getting HABIT 5: Travel in your armchair to know the world through theatre, Transporting ourselves into films, photos, books and songs. other people’s minds with To get to know our customers better, the help of art, literature, we must continually develop our film and online understanding. Today, we have access to an almost unlimited source of written and visual material via the Internet, as well as traditional media. There is no excuse not to include desk research in your daily sales life. Make time in your diary to step back, sit down and be creative about how you can help your customers. GET RADICAL Applying Habit Six in its purest sense to HABIT 6: selling is perhaps beyond the call of Inspire a revolution duty. Instead, think of it as really Generating empathy on a pushing the boundaries so as to come mass scale to create social up with innovation that could make a change, and extending our step change. empathy skills to embrace the natural world Can you turn a problem upside down? Or propose a new operating model? Or make a compelling return on investment case? Inside your own company, can you change how resources are deployed to support the sales cause better? To be truly different these days, we must be consistently more thoughtful and more insightful than both our customer and our competitors.
SARAH HINCHLIFFE is a director of i4 Sales Performance,* a business focusing on helping small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) achieve sales and bid excellence. i4 is a Shipley Business Partner. See www. i4salesperformance.co.uk or email sarah@i4salesperformance.co.uk *i4 Sales Performance is the brand name of the services supplied by i4 Consultancy and Design.
IT’S A WRAP So, we’ve switched on, tuned in, dug deep, listened up, sat down and got radical. Along the way, we should have built better relationships based on genuine interest and understanding in our customers’ businesses and the individuals involved. This knowledge and rapport should have inspired ideas and trust. Altogether, this should have made us different enough to win. Next time, we’ll delve into how to apply the six habits to writing a winning proposal. ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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ISM PARTNER FOCUS
THE DAILY SALES STORY DANIEL DISNEY explains the background to his popular sales blog
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ot so long-ago sales professionals would seek knowledge, wisdom and motivation from sales books or audiotapes. Now they are surrounded by amazing content from sales blogs, podcasts, quotes, debates, groups, forums, the list goes on. This is where The Daily Sales comes in, sharing the best sales content every single day to hundreds of thousands of salespeople across the globe. But where did it all start? How did it grow so fast? And how did an unknown sales manager from Portsmouth become one of the top global sales thought leaders, author of the number one UK sales blog and founder of one of the world’s leading online sales brands? It all started in November 2014. After taking on a new role as sales manager for a start-up tech company in the UK, I was keen to understand the best way to grow a brand, find customers and build a strong sales pipeline. While I had had a LinkedIn profile for the last couple of years I had never truly utilised it. With this new role in a brand-new company though, it seemed like it would be worth testing its capability. After reading some fantastic blogs from Tony J Hughes, Mark Hunter, Jeb Blount and Anthony Iannarino I decided I wanted to take my 15 years of sales experience and give it a try myself. A total of 151 people read my first blog ‘My top 5 sales quotes’, which to me was amazing. A few of those also connected with me and began to engage with the blog. A few blogs later LinkedIn’s own Sales Strategies page featured one of my blogs, and where previously I would have got a couple of hundred people reading it, I suddenly had over 1,000 readers. As I continued to write, more and more of my blogs were featured and shared and I started to build a personal brand for myself within the sales industry. My network of 500 soon grew to 5,000 and I was connected to some of the leading names in the industry. What I found though, was a lot of sales content pouring in from various sources and it was becoming more and more difficult to keep up with good material. Another thing caught my eye – the rising popularity of memes. Memes are images from the Internet, films and of famous people, with sentences on the top and bottom describing something entertaining that ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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people can relate too. The social world was going nuts for these things but I couldn’t see any specifically for salespeople. Alongside my interest in writing sales blogs, I wanted to try and create a sales meme. I took an image from Dumb and Dumber, where Lloyd asks the woman he is very interested in whether he stands a chance with her, to which she replies, “Only if you were the last man on Earth.” Lloyd then slowly smiles and says, “So you’re telling me there’s a chance?” This instantly reminded me of the age-old situation in sales where on a cold call sales people will often get shot down with a “Give me a call back in a year’s time”, to which I can imagine many salespeople thinking “So you’re telling me there’s a chance?” The meme was a massive hit, getting thousands of likes and reaching tens of thousands of people – one single image doing more on social media than a blog. After creating and sharing a few more sales memes I soon realised I had an opportunity to create a place where the best sales content in all varieties could be viewed and shared by salespeople all across the world. And so The Daily Sales was born – a content sharing platform built to entertain, motivate and inspire salespeople. Each day we share the funniest sales memes, motivating sales quotes and inspiring sales blogs. I created the brand, designed and built the website, set up the social channels and started to create and share high quality sales content. Within a year, The Daily Sales had over 100,000 followers and its content was reaching over seven million people every month. While growing The Daily Sales I have continued to write weekly sales blogs. A recent one was read by over 380,000 people globally. From an unknown sales manager in Portsmouth, I am now recognised all over the world. I’m on the list of the top 100 sales gurus, a keynote speaker, sales coach, sales author and I’m working with salespeople and sales teams to help them utilise the power of social media to increase their revenue and pipeline. Now I’m looking forward to working with the ISM in helping more salespeople gain the knowledge, qualification and recognition needed to succeed in sales today. In a fast-changing industry, it has never been more important for sales people to keep up to date with methods, ethics and processes available – not just to be salespeople, but to be true sales professionals. WINNING EDGE 39
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FEATURE | KEY ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT
BALANCING RISK AND REWARD What should sales strategists be doing to make sure key account management is still working, asks BETH ROGERS
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ver-demanding purchasing managers, the costs of the key account infrastructure, excessive focus on too few customers – why do we still love key account management (KAM)? It may have marked the transition from product-based selling to customer orientation necessary in the economic circumstances of the 1990s, but is it still relevant, useful or profitable? Based on a chapter in the new book Malcolm McDonald on Key Account Management, by Malcolm McDonald and Beth Rogers, this article takes a critical look at the risks inherent in KAM. What should sales strategists be doing to make sure it is still working effectively in 2017?
things that should appear on the risk register as a result of pursuing key account strategies? If they are acknowledged, you can make informed decisions about how to manage them.
FINANCIAL RISKS Company boards tend to focus on financial risks. What financial risk can a KAM strategy represent? We often talk about Pareto’s rule – 20% of the customers deliver 80% of revenue. What if only one customer represents 10% of revenue? What if trying to maximise business with those 20% leads to neglect of the other 80%? Although sales strategists must analyse the lifetime value of customers and allocate more resource to the best opportunities, they must also find some resource for the rest DEFINING RISK of the customer portfolio. Even “A risk that could have a First, let’s consider what risk is. if the customers who represent big impact on the Risk can be a positive thing, but a small proportion of revenue company deserves a the majority of risk registers in are only served by portal or contingency plan, even if companies are long lists of telephone, these services must things that could go wrong and be good. It is those myriad the probability of it need to be managed carefully. A small customers who balance happening is small” risk that could have a big impact risk in the customer portfolio. on the company deserves a Key accounts go out of contingency plan, even if the probability of it business, get taken over and change their sourcing happening is small. The risk matrix on page 42 is a strategies. Even if you have been doing business typical analysis tool used by risk managers. The with them for decades, any compensation that probability of an event is mapped on one axis, and might be written into the contract in case of exit its impact on the other. Like all matrices of its will not mitigate the shock to the company. type, it only gives a snapshot. Risk profile can There should be a contingency exit plan for change over time and so the analysis needs to be every key account. Sometimes, purchasing reviewed and repeated regularly. Many companies managers ask suppliers to share their exit plans. update their risk register every month. They want to know that if they drop a supplier, Is your company secretary monitoring those they will not be responsible for job losses likely
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FEATURE | KEY ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT
RI SK MA P P I N G HIGH MANAGE SELECTIVELY
MUST MANAGE!
MONITOR
CONTINGENCY PLAN
PROBABILITY
LOW LOW
HIGH IMPACT
wish to investigate? There have not been any high profile cases yet, but it could well happen. It is also true that there have been no high profile cases under the Bribery Act, but that does not mean to say that the act does not affect the conduct of key account management. Organisations are becoming very wary of the offer by suppliers of any type of hospitality, and suppliers need to be very sensitive to customers’ policies. Most purchasing managers are members of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (CIPS), and will be very clear about the company policy on hospitality for them or any other decision-makers. A competitor could challenge any perceived distortion of trade, but of course, any hospitality, gift or discount is contextual. It would probably be acceptable for a key account manager for an IT supplier to take several of the customer’s technical staff out for a modest meal after a particular event such as successful installation of a complex upgrade. However, if a key account manager took a particular decision-maker out for lavish entertainment at a critical moment – such as the day before a contract was due to be awarded – it could very easily be perceived as an attempt to influence them. The timing of an event, its scope, cost and location are contextual factors that must always be considered.
to make the news... It suits both parties to be prepared for the worst, as well as the best. Sometimes, exit is not quick, but long and drawn out, and KAM is deployed where it is no longer appropriate. Are yesterday’s key accounts still sucking in resource when their strategic value has deteriorated? The strategic value of customers should be regularly re-evaluated, and from time to time resource should be withdrawn from some business relationships. If a major company loses market share, its decision-makers may realise that suppliers will shift ORGANISATIONAL RISKS attention to their competitors or new entrants that Let’s move on to organisational risk. Adopting are taking their market share. But what if they KAM involves investment in an infrastructure that insist that you help their quest to regain their past will include a key account manager, a key account glories? We want customer loyalty – what about team, and processes to support how they develop supplier loyalty? It might be feasible, but it and deliver value with the key account. These depends on the profile of the customer. It is usually are necessary to avoid organisational blockages, customers who complain about bottlenecks and being locked-in to particular miscommunication in the “The strategy value of suppliers, but suppliers also business relationship with the customers should be need to be wary of lock-in to key account. Many companies regularly re-evaluated” particular customers. The spend a great deal of executive financial risk to sellers is that the effort trying to get the right costs to serve the key accounts organisational structure for occur now, while significant future value in the KAM, especially when the key accounts are global. customers is improbable. Coordinating value across international legislatures is not easy. Infrastructure costs money, and LEGAL RISKS changing infrastructure is also costly. Let’s move to the potential legal risks of KAM that The indications from recent research are that will keep the company secretary awake at night. fluidity in key account teams and flexibility in We have just discussed lock-in. Textbooks describe processes are more successful than static interdependent or integrated supplier-customer arrangements. The closer people work together, relationships as the pinnacle of KAM – the Holy the less innovative they are because “groupthink” Grail that key account managers aspire to achieve. kicks in. But if teams are frequently reconfigured, Close partnerships are a source of innovation and people have to cope with constant change, which opportunity. However, if a supplier and customer can reduce their productivity. Evidence suggests have integrated processes and joint projects that so long as key accounts have executive-level without having formed a defined joint venture, is sponsors who fully empower the key account that something that competition lawyers would manager, organisational risk can be managed. 42 WINNING EDGE
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MARKETING RISKS Last but not least, there are marketing risks inherent in KAM. Unless it is being used as a way of differentiating the way you sell from that of competitors, is it really worth its investment? There is best practice KAM, which customers recognise and admire, and there is something less, which won’t make a difference when it comes to choosing preferred suppliers. The trouble is that being best in your field requires effort, regular benchmarking and idea generation. The quest for the best recipe for KAM never stops. The obvious marketing risk in key accounts is the reputational damage caused when, despite the carefully crafted key account plan and integrated processes, a key operation fails. Perhaps a delivery is missed or a quality problem in your product affects the customer’s products. We can call such an event a negative critical incident (NCI). A customer decision-maker expects a good night’s sleep in return for commitment to a strategic supplier. Where the key account manager has the authority and initiative to make things better when NCIs occur, the relationship can usually be restored. In fact, a good recovery from problems can even improve the key account’s perceptions of a supplier. NCIs are an ever-present risk, but the risk is particularly acute in key accounts. ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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A K AM R I S K M A P EX AM PLE HIGH
NEGATIVE CRITICAL INCIDENT
INFRASTRUCTURE PROBLEMS
FAILING TO DIFFERENTIATE
LOSS OF SKILLED STAFF
USING KAM IN WRONG PLACES
ROLE STRESS
LARGE NEW OPPORTUNITY
Source: McDonald & Rogers, 2017, adapted from Hillson, 2002.
OVER-FOCUS ON KEY ACCOUNTS LIKELIHOOD OF KAM RISK
PEOPLE RISKS No matter how sophisticated the organisational design for key account management, the key account managers and account team members are still likely to experience role stress. They are expected to see things from the customers’ point of view and pursue goals that maximise shareholder value for their own employer. Consider a credit control clerk working in the Spanish office of a global company, who is also a key account team member for a customer managed in the USA. He has to please his line manager who wants to reduce debtor days and improve cash flow, and the key account manager who may want special terms for the key account. It takes some creativity to achieve both. The expression “remember who you work for…” is very familiar to key account managers... Maintaining balance is challenging and the only way forward is to acknowledge the risk of imbalance and review it regularly. Key account managers who can keep customers and shareholders simultaneously happy are highly skilled and do not magically grow on trees, so losing them is a constant risk. Although no key member of staff has to be retained at any price, as there are capable interim key account managers in the market, the potential costs of interim arrangements, recruitment and development do need to be considered as part of retention strategy.
COMPETITION LAW BREACH LOW LOW
IMPACT OF KAM RISK
Risk specialists argue that opportunities should be managed in the same way as potentially negative events, and this is particularly true in key accounts. If the key account wants a supplier to take on a new project quickly, will that create a cash flow or operational crisis? Such a marketing risk might seem nice to have, but it could be painful to manage in practice. RISK AWARENESS Despite the rise of account-based marketing and the Internet of Things, it seems unlikely that the intricate relationships between suppliers and their most strategic customers can be simplified and automated. Key account management will be an important element of sales strategy for a long time to come. Indeed, there seems to be a growing demand for people who understand best practice in key account management and who can imagine even better practice and implement it. Risk awareness has always been on the long list of skills required of key account managers, but it is rarely placed high enough on that list. Being in business is about managing risk as well as making profits. It is something key account managers need to talk about with customers and their own board.
HIGH
FURTHER READING McDonald M and Rogers B (2017). Malcolm McDonald on Key Account Management. Kogan Page. Hillson D (2002). Extending the risk process to manage opportunities. International Journal of Project Management 20 (3): 235–240. Piercy NF and Lane N (2006). The hidden risks in strategic account management strategy. Journal of Business Strategy 27 (1): 18-26.
BETH ROGERS is a visiting fellow at Cranfield School of Management and Portsmouth Business School, an ISM corporate member. ISM members will receive a 20% discount on her new book, Malcolm McDonald on Key Account Management, when purchased from Kogan Page with the discount code BMKKAM20. Visit www.koganpage.com
WINNING EDGE 43
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BOOK REVIEW
EMOTIONAL TIES A book that ties emotional intelligence to selling is reviewed by MARC BEISHON
I
t is apparent from the two articles on buyers in this issue of Winning Edge that salespeople need something extra up their sleeves to engage today’s buyers. For Tim Ussher, getting the buyer onside in many ways is crucial, as described in detail in his series (see page 28), and for Mark Erskine (page 24) it is the insights that neuroscience can bring to get on the same wavelength and so stand out (by not standing out, if you see what we mean). This book by Jeb Blount, Sales EQ, where EQ stands for emotional quotient or intelligence (as in IQ), is on the same lines. It’s about gaining a deeper understanding of human psychology and influence frameworks and is why selling is such a fascinating and involving job to be in – knowingly or not, you are at the frontline of human relationships, but the more you know about psychology the better. Emotional intelligence is one part of the picture. Psychologists describe it as the ability to identify and manage your own emotions and the emotions of others, and the theory dates back quite recently to the 1990s. People with high EI, it was believed, could solve a variety of emotion-related problems accurately and quickly. For example, they can accurately perceive emotions in faces. As John Mayer, one of EI’s proponents, says: “Such individuals also know how to use emotional episodes in their lives to promote specific types of thinking. They know, for example, that sadness promotes analytical thought and so they may prefer to analyse things when they are in a sad mood (given the choice). High EI people also understand the meanings that emotions convey: they know that angry people can be dangerous, that happiness means that someone wants to join with others, and that some sad people may prefer
L E VE LS OF INTE LL IGENCE n Innate intelligence (IQ) is the indicator of how smart you are, and those with high IQs thrive in sales. But a dark side is that they can damage relationships through impatience. n Acquired intelligence (AQ) is about how much you know, and makes IQ relevant and useful. It can be developed by being receptive to a belief that you manage your own “locus of control”. 44 WINNING EDGE
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n Technological intelligence (TQ) is the ability to interact with technology and weave it seamlessly into one’s daily life. Those who fail to develop this ability or who resist developing it will be left behind. n Emotional intelligence (EQ) is your acuity for dealing with emotions and amplifies the impact of IQ, AQ and TQ. Blount references the seminal book, Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, as triggering his interest.
to be alone.” Mayer and a colleague went on to test whether EI exists and found it does, but warn that it is important not to confuse EI with personality traits such as optimism or motivation. SALES APPLICATION Applying EI to selling is not new, but Blount has found an accessible way to do it. He’s not afraid to cite other sources, such as Daniel Pink’s bestseller, To Sell is Human, which we reviewed awhile ago, and says: “No matter what you sell, your sales cycle, or the complexity of the sales and buying process, emotions play a crucial role in the outcomes of your sales conversations, interactions and deals.” And he frames the problem succinctly: “Most salespeople begin the sales process from a position of logic and gradually shift toward emotion. In contrast, buyers tend to begin the buying process at the emotional level and over time shift toward logic... Few things make sellers more unlikable than pitching. And so it goes throughout the buying journey. By the end of the sales process when the buyer is asking rational questions, putting objections on the table, and negotiating, the seller is reacting emotionally to perceived rejection, desperate not to lose the deal.” Blount’s contention is that “ultra-high performance” sales professionals are “acutely aware” that the emotional experience of buying from them is far more important than products, prices, features and solutions. We know from other research that the experience of dealing with a vendor ranks highly among buyers, but this is more than just turning up on time and being properly ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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BOOK REVIEW
prepared. And Blount takes aim at the big guns in sales thinking: “Salespeople are being told that they need to offer insight, teach, challenge and add value. However, deteriorating attention spans have made it difficult to get buyers to sit still long enough to be given insight, taught, challenged or provided with added value.” Such “modern sales concepts” land like a lead balloon in the real world with real buyers “because the majority of salespeople haven’t mastered the situational awareness and emotional intelligence to leverage these techniques effectively while maintaining human connections”. SIMPLE PSYCHOLOGY Having put down modern concepts, Blount doesn’t then fall into the trap of presenting complex psychology, although we do get terms such as “cognitive dissonance” and “heuristics”. But his approach is down to earth, with case studies from selling – this is not heavy reading. So an example of cognitive dissonance (holding contradictory beliefs) is where you say your prospect’s current vendor is providing poor service, but as they chose the vendor, the prospect is likely to then see the good sides of the incumbent. Instead, Blount says ask about the things they like about the incumbent – this is more likely to elicit the complaints. He introduces four levels of sales intelligence of which emotional intelligence is one (see box, left), which are straightforward. Things get more detailed when applying EQ. He discusses how the best performers invest their time in the best prospects (and see also his previous book, Fanatical Prospecting), and pull away from lower performers by understanding the stakeholder map in organisations and the motivations of each to “leverage a set of repeatable frameworks to shape human emotion and influence buying decisions”. The usual sales and buying processes still apply – they are linear, rational steps that cannot and should not be ignored. But “the decision process is individual, emotional, nonlinear and often irrational” and is where you need especially to bring the EQ skills to bear. Blount debunks the idea though that you are there to build relationships as an end in itself – you are there to make deals. This is really the crux of sales EQ – you have to have both the relationship/ emotional connection and the outcome ongoing as a dual process, and he considers four pillars of sales-specific EQ that allows you to do this (as in the box above). As he explains, while empathy is key it can get in the way if you don’t have your ultimate goal in mind (see also the article on empathy in this issue, page 36). Self-awareness is key, especially in complex sales as it tells you when to “push or pull”, such as when to listen or talk. You develop this ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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SALES EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE n EMPATHY – the ability to step into someone else’s shoes and experience emotion from their perspective and is the most important sales EQ trait. n SELF–AWARENESS – developing this is a difficult and ongoing process but combined with empathy can give you “situational awareness”.
“The decision process is individual, emotional, nonlinear, and often irrational – and is where you need especially to bring the EQ skills to bear”
Sales EQ: How ultra-high performers leverage salesspecific emotional intelligence to close the complex deal, by Jeb Blount, is published by Wiley. It is available on Amazon in print, Kindle and audio versions.
n SALES DRIVE – includes optimism, competitiveness and need for achievement. Drive is partly innate but can be developed. n SELF–CONTROL – disruptive emotions can hold salespeople back from success. Fear, in particular, is the root of so much failure in sales. You need to regulate these emotions.
with tools such as psychometric assessment and coaching. The final one, self-control, is dealt with by Blount at length – it’s rooted in our “fight or flight” response, and the cognitive biases that are always there subconsciously. You need to know your emotional triggers, and prepare for stressful situations. Blount says disruptive emotions are why sales methodologies such as Challenger, Insight Selling, SPIN Selling, and Strategic Selling are difficult for many salespeople to carry out. DIGGING DEEPER At this point we are not halfway through the book. What follows are chapters that dig deeper into qualifying, engagement, the sales and buying processes, and of course the all important decision process. Blount also introduces five stakeholder types you’ll encounter in a deal – we’ve seen this before of course from many other authors, and Blount’s types are buyers, amplifiers, seekers, influencers and coaches, or BASIC as an acronym. A key tip – don’t ask if someone (a seemingly buyer type) is a decision maker – they are likely to say yes even when they’re not, owing to cognitive dissonance. Also, note that stakeholders can also have different personas – Blount has four main ones: analyser, director, consensus builder and socialiser/energiser; again, mainly standard theory. There are chapters on basics such as greeting and making calls, and on listening, which every sales book and course drums into you, but Blount explains why people don’t listen and how you can work on your own listening and why it can lead to prospects revealing more: it makes them feel good. But what is the most important sales discipline? That’s asking – not closing. As Blount says: “In sales, you must ask for what you want, directly, assumptively, and assertively. Don’t expect stakeholders to do your job for you. When you fail to ask, you fail.” Sales EQ is a good sales book, although there is a plug for Blount’s training company. It gets you thinking, but nothing seems too hard to do. And he ends with a word that many also do: in sales, trust is everything. But building it is part of the seller and stakeholder emotional journey. WINNING EDGE 45
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FEATURE | PERSONAL PERFORMANCE
HOW TO STAY COOL AND SELL UNDER PRESSURE CHRISTIAN MARCOLLI says stressed sales professionals can raise their ‘Melting Point’ to succeed
H
ow busy are you? Take a moment to consider that question fully. I suspect you are very busy, and not simply with the pressures of a challenging sales role. I’m sure you are also trying to achieve satisfactory integration of your work and home life to maximise your own and your family’s happiness. I guess you’re putting in long hours, continually prioritising and reprioritising tasks and deadlines. If so, is there a point on that high-pressure journey where you start to struggle? Will your mind and body crack, and if they do, how will you cope? At different times in our career, we are able to achieve the highest levels of performance. The true skill, however, is maintaining those levels consistently, without any detrimental impact on our effectiveness and productivity, especially in highly intense times with lots of demands, pressure and a changing environment. We often see people failing in tough circumstances: the sales executive who wilts under pressure and fails to close deals; the sales manager who loses their cool and gets disconnected from their leadership team; or – in even more dramatic cases – the sales leader who makes irrational decisions that inflict serious damage on their company. Maybe you have come close to that point yourself – the moment when things get very tense and threaten to come crashing down. If so, you’ve come very close to reaching what I call your “melting point”. The melting point refers to a critical psychological threshold that all of us face when placed under massive stress and pressure. It is the moment where we lose the plot. In particular, though, it applies to those operating in highly pressured environments, from top-performing athletes and musicians, to politicians, military personnel and, of course, to salespeople. We have reached melting point when we are no longer fully in control of our thinking, our emotions and our actions in a positive way.
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We start to internally derail, to display dysfunctional behaviours and, invariably, to make mistakes. It becomes very clear that we are not at our personal best because of the perceived intensity of the situation – things have become ‘too hot’ for us. This may even force us to walk away, because the intensity is simply too much to bear. Ultimately, reaching our melting point stops us from achieving our goals. If that all sounds rather dramatic and negative, take heart, because there is a way to cope with the melting point. Those who excel consistently don’t let the pressure get in their way. They’re adaptable, deal with their emotions and move on to an even higher level of performance. You can thrive under pressure too. It’s possible to become more aware and prepared for the warning signs long before meltdown. With this awareness, you can learn ways to raise your melting point and be at your best during the most challenging of times. Instead of letting your passion and ambition become a burden, you can learn to use them in a controlled way. You will not only maximise your business results, but also be more effective and inspiring as a team member or leader. Equally important – you will enjoy the journey, unlocking a new creativity and playfulness that brings a renewed sense of fulfilment in your work and life. To reach the optimal level of “The Melting Point performance, you must go through refers to a critical a developmental journey with very psychological specific phases, so you can easily assess your performance and create threshold that all of a plan to reach greater heights. My us face when placed new book, The Melting Point, under massive stress explains this process in detail. For and pressure” now, let me describe the first steps to increasing your melting point: DEFINE YOUR DEEPER PURPOSE Begin by understanding your story so far, from a professional and personal point of view. Write down the key moments in your life and career. Based on this narrative, you will be able to identify the functional parts of your story that you would like to carry on and build on, and also the dysfunctional parts that you would like to replace. Understanding your core values and your fundamental purpose (personal and professional) is the basis for creating an inspiring vision that you can use as your guiding star for important fundamental decisions, such as why you would like to pursue a particular career path or goal. ADOPT GOOD HABITS Make conscious decisions to eliminate damaging habits that have become very deeply ingrained, and replace them with good habits that offer a ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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The Melting Point gives you concrete insights into how to sustain a high level of sales performance day in, day out, week after week, in changing environments that are highly competitive, complex and intense. The book is based on a series of interviews with top business leaders and high-performing executives. Their comments and case studies provide powerful examples of how determined individuals have been able to face their weaknesses and transform their careers. l The Melting Point, recently published by Urbane Publications, is available on Amazon, priced at £16.99.
multitude of benefits. These good habits create positive reinforcements in your life. Routines and rituals are important in making the good habits stick. Although your initial response may be that you do not have the time to build up new behaviours, these good habits will actually help you save time in the long run, as you become a more efficient and productive self. Here are some examples of good habits: l Prepare for key performance moments – preparation brings confidence and control, reducing stress l Focus on and recognise incremental progress – it relieves the pressure of deadlines and targets l Save 30% of your energy each day for life beyond work – leaving work every day exhausted leads to burn-out and broken relationships l Manage your health – the right diet, exercise, breaks and sleep will build your physical, mental and emotional resilience l Establish boundaries and say no more often – courteously standing up against excessive or unreasonable demands will not count against you l Manage relationships proactively – creating open and constructive dialogue, at home and at work, rather than allowing friction to develop. By raising your melting point, you’ll maintain a winning edge in your career, lead your teams proactively and effectively, and bring long-term benefit DR CHRISTIAN MARCOLLI is an to your organisation. And international performance the icing on the cake? It coach and author. He is founder of consultancy will give you the means to Marcolli Executive develop a fulfilling life, at Excellence. home as well as at work. Visit www.marcolli.com WINNING EDGE 47
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ISM MEMBER PROFILE
SALES SOLUTION PROVIDER Winning Edge meets the founder of Outside In Sales and Marketing, GARRY MANSFIELD What is your current role? I founded Outside In Sales and Marketing in 2008 as a specialist sales performance consultancy and sales application provider. I work daily with mid-sized B2B sales teams to help them build a better way of selling. This starts with initial performance assessments, then helping them to transform sales, and providing simple, affordable applications and solutions to sustain improvements. What’s the best part of your role? I think it is the variety. I’m passionate about helping customers solve their sales-related problems, and I really enjoy working with them to improve their approach. I also love the creative challenge and the growth mindset necessary when investing in the development of new software applications. I find it rewarding when those tools are then used to help sustain improvements in our customers. And the most frustrating? It’s when a customer project is not seen through to the end and they miss out on the potential value they could have realised. Often, a huge amount of time, effort and money is invested by companies to identify required changes, agree a way forward, and implement a new approach (with a little bit of training) – and then they expect lasting benefits. But improvement is often not sustainable because of lack of follow-up, tracking and measurement. It’s such a waste not to bed in the changes before moving on to the next big thing.
commodity selling, I’m less convinced that it is the case for value-based selling. Successful salespeople have always guided customers through the buying journey, helping them at each point to make the commitments necessary to take the next step. We remain agents of change, helping customers to step into the unknown, and this hasn’t changed much since I started in sales in the late 1980s. How has your business changed since you started it? I have more relationships and partnerships. We are a Salesforce and Microsoft partner with our sales applications, and in recent years we’ve developed value added reseller relationships with innovative solution providers. This allows us to take a powerful set of solutions to our customers and helps us to work “outside in” – focusing on solving the right customer challenges and not just trying to push the products we sell. How do you feel about the future? We have a loyal and happy customer base for our selling applications and this is changing the shape of the business. It means we must support our customers in new ways to help them sell more successfully. I’m very excited that our investment in partnerships extends our capability to a full suite of solutions for mid-market B2B sales teams. A broad solutions portfolio means we no longer turn away customers, regardless of their mix of challenges.
How has the ISM helped you? Being a Fellow and an active member of a What are the key customer challenges? professional sales body like the ISM helps my Although many companies believe they are unique, pursuit of sales mastery. It’s a journey with no end in reality they are not as different as they think. in sight, but a challenge I really enjoy. I use insights Sure, there are some subtle variations, but the from Winning Edge and the ISM to keep up to date fundamental building blocks of success are very with important topics related to professional sales. similar. We recently developed a growth blueprint to help our customers see the big picture. It has What advice would you offer to someone 18 core elements in a framework for sales growth, starting out in sales? covering each area of the Outside In sales Be customer-centric. Understand how your performance equation: sales success equals company, your solutions and your sales purpose x proposition x people x process. “Being a Fellow and an active approach can bring more value for each member of the ISM helps my customer. Sales done correctly is a value What has changed in the last pursuit of sales mastery. It’s a creating role. An adaptation of a famous decade for salespeople? JFK quote captures this: “Ask not what Some believe that there are significant journey with no end in sight, your customer can do for you, but what changes in the buying process that have but a challenge I really enjoy” you can do for your customer.” flipped sales on its head. While this is true for 48 WINNING EDGE
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