John Hirth's commentary on sales...

"History repeats itself..." does this old adage apply to sales??

History repeats itself and those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them! You've heard that one before, yet may not have thought about that old history lesson in relation to your selling career. Well, the value of this lesson has a lot more to do with sales than you might think... let's take a look.

There are great lessons to learn and strategies to build when you understand the conditions under which you win and those under which you lose. Regularly going through a "win, loss" review will allow you to understand where you typically succeed and where you typically fail and why. Once you understand the conditions that drive the outcome of your selling activities you'll know better how to respond to any given situation. You can build new strategies to support your efforts and increase your percentages!

A company we work with did a six month "win, loss" review (history) on price quotes issued to prospects who they had not previously done business with. They believed that quickly responding to requests for price quotes demonstrated a high degree of responsiveness and would win them business. They knew they were not winning often, but were shocked when they found out their efforts had only gotten a 4% return (4% of quotes yielding orders). By looking at history it became quite apparent that they needed to change their strategy of "demonstrating responsiveness". Not only was it not working but it was costing a lot of staff time and resources.

The new strategy, based on what they learned from looking at their history, was to call every request for pricing first and ask questions about the request. They found that most of the time it ended up being a "price check", but also found that through making a personal contact they actually got information and ended up closing 15% of the opportunities instead of 4%. They also were able to identify that most of the "wins" were not being serviced by one vendor exclusively. So, learning from this historical record drove them to ask the question "how many vendors are you currently buying from?" When they got the answer "one" they knew it was unlikely they would win and drove them to ask more questions to qualify the opportunity better.

This ends up being a clear example of "learning from history and not repeating the mistakes of the past!" Learn from history and you'll be winning more of your opportunities. We'll cover some other "history lessons" in upcoming posts... happy hunting!

Create a "Non-Selling Posture..."

People love to buy, they hate being sold. You've heard that before and know it's true, yet many salespeople still go in with the objective to "sell" the prospect.  We often start by asking questions but when we see that first opening (need)...bam, we're sellin'! Often, unintentionally, the "feature benefit machine gun" comes out and were blasting the prospect with our "best stuff." They feel pressure and ironically so do we!

One of the great challenges that face all of us in sales is the reputation that has been left by all of the "amateurs" that have come before us. Whether you like to admit it or not, there is a negative stigma still associated with the sales profession. Remember the old game "password", I give you a word and you come up with clues (synonyms), to get the contestant to guess the word. If the word was "salesperson" what would some of your clues be??  I'm not asking you to think of yourself but of all those "other" sales people out there. If you're honest, it's not pretty.

In my last post, on how to answer "what makes you better", I began to reveal the essence of the "non selling posture". Saying anything or doing anything that typical sale people do will have you digging a hole for yourself and on the fast track to creating "sameness". The strategy will give you a label you really don't want. That's why it's so important to take a "non selling posture" and to not be afraid of sounding a little negative. It will go a long way to building trust with your prospect and help you to avoid sounding like a typical "sales person".

Don't be afraid, on new prospect calls, to start out by saying things like:

    I'm not sure we can help you.

    Our product/program may not be what you need.

    Why were you considering an option like this?

    We're helping a lot of companies like yours, I'm not sure we can do the same for you.

On your next new account call try some of these phrases and see if taking a "non selling" posture will remove some of the natural defensiveness from your prospect. It may seem awkward at first but most new behaviors do. I'm confident that this approach will pay dividends and improve your winning percentages! On second thought, "maybe it won't work for you..."

How did you do on your "report card?"

I'll bet that headline made many of the people who will read this nervous! It probably brought back some childhood memories...some good and some bad!

Report cards were an evaluation tool used to tell both the student and the parents (gulp) about the progress (or lack of ) the student was making. This assessment tool was an integral part of improving the outcomes of the educational experience. So I wondered, could the same idea be used to improve the experience your customer is having with your company (parent) and their sales people (students)?

Account retention is part of most sales jobs and one that is usually not given the attention that it deserves. Everyone knows its easier to "keep" a customer than "get" a customer but far to often companies and sales people put to much emphasis on "getting" rather than "keeping". Those that realize the importance of account retention spend more time on it but usually don't have an organized way to manage it.

So, in order to improve account retention, how about developing a "report card" that you can use on your most important customers. A report card would allow the customer to "grade" the performance of you and your company keeping you ahead of any "problems" that you might not be aware of. Quarterly "report card" meetings should be set up between you and your customers to get their feedback on the performance of the company and the sales person who calls on them. Report card meetings can be a "metric" and responsibility that sales people should be held accountable for.

The wrong time to focus on account retention is when your customers informs you that they are doing a "vendor review". Stay ahead of the game, develop a "report card" for your company to apply to your best customers. Be open not afraid of honest feedback and you can win the retention game!