Clear Rules

One of the reasons that I and many others I know are attracted to selling as a profession, is the freedom that most sales jobs offer. Rules are restrictions that many sales people resent, ignore, or break, just because they can. I mean the kind of rules that seem to restrict freedom rather than those that provide a foundation for civilisation. Rules such as, “we only buy from people on our approved suppliers list”, “you must speak to a nominated contact and can’t speak with the people who are involved in the decision”, and “It’s our policy not to divulge budget details”.

Despite having a well developed dislike for any rules that seem unnecessary, I have three rules that I do my best to obey in a sales process. Having broken them on numerous occasions and suffered the consequences of unexpected lost sales, I have concluded that these particular three rules are important. So much so that we now teach them in many of our sales training courses. Here are the rules:

1. Make no assumptions

On the surface, this first rule seems like common sense. While this may be so, it isn’t common practice. When you consider a sales conversation, the first opportunity for assumptions is in the language. Despite having a common language, people develop their own independent interpretation of the words and phrases they use. For instance, the term, ‘a communication problem’ even in the context of telephone use, could have dozens of different meanings. Therefore, if you think you know what a customer means when they use a particular term, acronym, phrase, or piece of jargon, you are in danger of breaking the first rule.

If you could listen in on a sales conversation and were to adopt a devils advocate perspective, you would find it easy to list the assumptions made when the participants begin to talk about the reasons for the meeting. People often begin by discussing the product or service that might provide a solution. This presumes a lot about the nature of the problem or opportunity. In many cases, the parties never get around to discussing the real reasons for buying something. Before you laugh and think, “it wouldn’t be me falling into this trap”, ask yourself how often you have found it difficult to persuade a manager that your sales forecast was realistic?

It is easy to say, “I’ll make no assumptions” and surprisingly difficult to adhere to the commitment.

In thousands of sales meetings, training courses, and sales simulations, we have observed how difficult it is for sales people to avoid making assumptions. Even experienced people leap to conclusions capable of leading to a disastrous result. To help people minimise the amount of guesswork, we developed a sales process labelled ‘CLEAR’. First, you will need to understand the other two rules.

2. Declare your intent to no assumptions

If you make an agreement with a customer at the beginning of a meeting to try to eliminate assumptions, you double your chances of getting the customer’s co-operation when you press for a better understanding of their need or requirement.

At the beginning of a meeting, it is easy to gain agreement on this point. No one wants to make guesses. It is a trivial thing and easy to forget. If you don’t make a point of doing it and haven’t prepared a way to ask smoothly, you are likely to overlook or consciously discard this step.

3. Don’t talk about your products, services, or solutions

The third rule is harder to observe than the first. After all, what are you there to do if it is not to talk about what you have to sell! Even if you have learnt that a seller’s first need is to understand the reasons for the customer’s interest, most often the customer prefers to talk about what they want to buy. It is the easy path. It doesn’t involve the pain of considering what isn’t known and what must be uncovered to guarantee a good outcome for both buyer and seller.

Once a need has been identified and the value of satisfying it qualified, the sales process should prove to the customer that what is being sold would deliver the promised results. At the same time, the buying process is about customers satisfying themselves that what they buy will deliver the required results. In financial and legal terms it is know as ‘due diligence’. It is in the interests of both parties to get this part right. Failure will lead to unpleasant or even catastrophic consequences for buyer and seller alike. Business to business sellers cannot afford unhappy customers. In most cases, buyers will blame sellers for performance failure whether it is deserved or not.

CLEAR is a guide to help sales people manage this process in a way that adds value for the customer and almost always leads to a better result for both parties. CLEAR stands for Circumstances, Leverage, Expand, Advantage, and Requirement.

A number of barriers are often thrown up when a sales person tries to obey the three rules and follow the CLEAR process. They are the same barriers that sales people run into when using other methods.

1. The customer won’t reveal the underlying reasons for their interest or requirement.

This may be because the person tasked with speaking to sales people, doesn’t know the reasons. Sometimes the customer thinks that it is not in their interests to tell outsiders. Another reason is a lack of trust in a particular seller or all sellers in general.

2. The customer will disclose the reasons but can’t or won’t reveal the extent of the affect on their business.

In many cases, the customer hasn’t measured the impact and doesn’t have a good assessment of the business value that might result from buying.

3. The customer won’t reveal how much they are willing to spend to get the results they want.

This may be because they don’t know or because they think it is not in their interests to tell the seller. As for No.2, it is common for buyers to involve sellers before they have a clear understanding of the issues they want to address and the results they want to achieve.

4. The customer won’t allow access to the people with influence over the decision.

Sometimes this is an imagined problem arising from a sales person’s reluctance to go around an established contact or to press for access. Sometimes it is a declared policy designed to protect staff from sales people. In other situations, vulnerable individuals try to prevent access. Reasons include fear about losing control, appearing weak, and exposing previous poor decisions.

5. The customer is vague about the decision making process.

Sometimes this is because their decision making process is ill defined. Sometimes the person being asked, doesn’t know their process. Sometimes it has yet to be defined. While less common, some customer’s think it is in their interests to keep it a secret.

6. The customer resists attempts to establish a sales process agreement (SPA).

More often, sales people either never consider the possibility or think it unnecessary. Once a sale is qualified, agreeing a step-by-step time bound process leading to either a yes or no decision is valuable to both parties.

7. The customer stops taking calls after the seller delivers the presentation or proposal.

I call this the post proposal black hole. It doesn’t happen in every situation and being in one, doesn’t necessarily mean that the sale is lost. A firm SPA will usually prevent a post proposal black hole forming.

The ‘CLEAR’ guide provides solutions for each of these seven obstacles. It defines a sales process that makes a substantial contribution to the customer’s thinking and differentiates the seller. The process allows the seller to demonstrate integrity. The diligence observed in the sales process infers trust in the seller and their proposed solution.

Selling is a process that should help customers achieve their objectives. If it does anything else, such as persuade buyers to do things that aren’t in their best interests, then the process is broken and all sales people are suspect. Those who find themselves fighting a broken process have an opportunity to repair it. Doing so creates value for the customer, sets the seller apart from competitors, and raises the value of all sales people. “All our dreams can come true - if we have the courage to pursue them.” Walt Disney said so.

Article by Clive Miller
Questions and comments to clive@salessense.co.uk

Vanishing Freewill

In the moment, time for thought is gone. Reaction and instinct are all. Free will depends on forethought, planning, and preparation.

Pause only for moment

Keep on learning to keep on earning. Whatever set us apart yesterday is common knowledge today and will be in common use tomorrow. 

 

Micro Articles

Less than 30 seconds is the target read time for micro articles that communicate meaningful messages in less than 120 words.

Raising productivity demands more of communication as well as . . .

Each wave of a new generation evolves and adopts new tools. Email, yesterday’s killer application, lies abandoned as the young favour instant messaging and twitter.

Say more with fewer words to keep up. Respect another’s attention span as you would their voicemail.

In response to a question on finding serious commission only sales people

The best recruiters are extraordinary networkers. I imagine that you are already leveraging this avenue. If not, networking is not an instant solution. It used to take half a lifetime to develop a powerful network of professional contacts willing to help. These days it can be done in a couple of years by intelligently utilising email and online professional networking tools such as LinkedIn and Plaxo.

The next best way is to use job boards and web sites to capture those searching for the kind of opportunities you offer. Explaining how to do this would take more time than I have and in any case, there others who know it better than I. My advice would be to dedicate some Google time to finding subject experts. If what they know works, it will be worth paying for.

Double your money

In my last post, I made an unscientific observation about cold calling results, concluding that one hit in twenty dials was some sort of universal constant. Suppose it were two hits in twenty. Would you double your money?

It seems likely. It may depend on what you define as a hit. It might be an appointment, or discovering an opportunity, or closing an order, or something else. It depends on what you are selling.

Since claiming that one hit in twenty was a common average, I have achieved two hits in twenty, twice! I don't mean to brag. Being inquisitive, I compared those I called to achieve a 1:20 result with those I called to achieve a 2:20 result. There was a difference. The better result came from better selection of the people I called.

Sell by Telephone

Cold Calling Constant

Having recently renewed my own prospecting activity, I have come to notice a common cold calling ratio. My experience seems to be consistent with the ratio's achieved by clients.

I divide call results into seven categories. They are a hit (objective achieved), a call returned (during the session), new information, email or post follow up, fobbed off (when I get through but have to call back), and declined (a definite no). each dial can only be recorded in one category.

In a typical, 20-dial session, my results are similar to those of client telephone sales people. About half the dials result in no contact, five will involve gathering new information, two or three will be worth a written follow up, one will be a hit, and the remaining one or two will be split randomly between an outright 'no' (declined), a call back during the session, and being fended off with an excuse.

Why so few refusals? The main reason is that I only call prospects that are well matched with our target group and I help clients to do the same.

The critical observation here is that I'd better not screw up the one hit.

Sell by Telephone

So many answers in a simple facial expression

Excerpt

Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence, Bantam, 2006, 18-19.

"One way moods differ from the grosser feelings of emotions, psychologists tell us, has to do with the ineffability of their causes: while we typically know what has caused an outright emotion, we often find ourselves in one or another mood without knowing its source. [Experiments] suggest, though, that our world may be filled with mood triggers that we fail to notice--everything from the saccharine Muzak in an elevator to the sour tone in someone's voice.

"For instance, take the expressions we see on other people's faces. As Swedish researchers found, merely seeing a picture of a happy face elicits fleeting activity in the muscles that pull the mouth into a smile. Indeed, whenever we gaze at a photograph of someone whose face displays a strong emotion, like sadness, disgust, or joy, our facial muscles automatically start to mirror the other's facial expression. ...

"We mimic the happiness of a smiling face, pulling our own muscles into a subtle grin, even though we may be unaware that we have seen the smile. That mimicked slight smile might not be obvious to the naked eye, but scientists monitoring facial muscles track such emotional mirroring clearly. It's as though our face were being preset, getting ready to display the full emotion. This mimicry has a bit of a biological consequence, since our facial expressions trigger within us the feelings we display. We can stir any emotion by intentionally setting our facial muscles for that feeling: just clench a pencil in your teeth, and you will force your face into a smile, which subtly evokes a positive feeling.

"Edgar Allan Poe had an intuitive grasp of this principle. He wrote: 'When I wish to find out how good or how wicked anyone is, or what his thoughts are at the moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my own mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression.' "

Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence, Bantam, 2006, 18-19.