Sales Blog for Sales and Sales Management

I'm reading the book ‘Who'.  No, the author is not Dr. Seuss it is Geoff Smart and Randy Street of ‘Topgrading' fame and fortune.  The book is about prospecting, evaluating, assessing, interviewing and selecting the right candidate for the job.  The job could be sales, management, finance, or operations; it doesn't matter.  As Jim Collins states in his book ‘Good to Great', "it is about getting the right people on the bus and in the right seats."  I'm thinking the same thing applies to you and your sales business.  You need a sales scorecard.

The best way to upgrade your client is to have a preferred customer or client base.  In banking, they identify segments such as business banking, middle market, retail and private banking,  just to name a couple.  Why wouldn't this make sense in all sales?  The short answer is that it does.  I was with a group yesterday, Melink, a company that specializes in helping companies and entities build or retro build ‘green buildings'.  They have sales people that specialize in specific market segments.

If your company doesn't look at marketing and sales that way, it doesn't mean that you can't.  You should have a scorecard of sorts to make sure that the people you are getting introduced to fit the mold of the ‘perfect client' for you.  When you work with your ‘perfect client', you provide greater value because you are more familiar with that particular market segment, you know the solutions they typically need and you have a product that fits their specific needs.  However, the problem is that you don't have a system or process in place to make sure that you are really getting the ‘ideal' client for your ‘book of business'.  You need a sales scorecard.  So here you go.  Feel free to use, edit or reproduce any way you feel is appropriate to your specific business, but keep the concepts in place and make sure that you have some sort of accountability process in place to ensure you adhere to your scorecard.  If you would like further discussion on this feel free to call.

Once completed, share this scorecard with anyone that can potentially interface with your clients to make sure there is synchronization in focus, effort and support for this type of client.

I go to Starbucks and they sell me a Mocha Grande at least 95% of the time when I visit.  Yes, I said they sell me, I didn't say I buy.  Somehow, through the magic of branding and perception, Starbucks has sold me on the idea that I need to drive to get coffee and pay almost four dollars a cup.  What would be my motivation for that?  Sure, it tastes good.  However, it also adds calories to my diet that I don't need.  It has dairy products and I'm lactose intolerant, and gas continues to hover around 3.75 to 4.00 dollars a gallon.  What a great sales job on a high priced product that I really don't need, and really isn't good for me, and certainly the ROI is hard to measure.  So how did this happen?

I have no idea.

What I do know is that I'm not alone.  I couldn't find information on store traffic, but with 17,000 stores worldwide, that is a lot of people drinking expensive coffee that they don't need.  This  leads me to my point.  (Finally)

Why are you so hung up on price when it comes to selling?  It is never solely about price.  Certainly, price is a contributing factor, but it is not the factor.  People simply do not make important buying decisions based on money.  If that where the case then people exclusive home builders would be out of business, Rolex would not have watch to sell and Cadillac and Mercedes would not be used to describe ‘the very best'.

Instead of focusing on or worrying about price (which is really a record collection not a reality) focus on the following:

1. Why is the prospect meeting with you? They may start with ‘I want lower price' but that isn't it. Ask them, aside from price, what else is important to you because I'm certain that the people that you are doing business with today will do everything possible to keep your business including lowering their price.
2. Find out about the entire picture. Sales people typically focus on a single product or service yet the companies they represent have a multitude of product and service offerings. Learn how to ask questions about challenges they face in meeting their top line and bottom line objectives. What else keeps them achieving what they want to achieve besides the product or service you offer?
3. Think creative solutions and value. Seth Godin has a recent blog post titled "when you stand for something. I love his comment "When you stand for something you know have to make decisions about what you won't do." Make a decision not to sell on price but get people to buy your value, your solutions and your ideas. Anyone anywhere can provide a product that you provide. Not everyone is creative enough to position the product or service so that people see how the value applies to them individually and how it removes a burden they have or makes their life easier.
4. Be different, be Starbucks. What is it about you that you need to change, improve or capitalize on that would cause more people to want to do business with you, more frequently more quickly and pay you more? Answer those questions, package it with a nice environmentally friendly cover and you too will have people spending more time and more money to let you sell them.

The economy is in a tailspin?  Yes, that is a question because every sales person I've talked to this week tells me how great things are.  Every one of them has told me that they are getting calls and getting appointments.  People are willing to talk, people are worried, concerned, and they want help. That's the good news.  The bad news is that they'll talk to anyone, and in many cases, they want free advice.  Neither of those are good if you don't stick to a sales process that focuses on qualifying, asking questions and getting to a decision making process.

I want you to understand and put into practice the following:

1. Just because someone wants to talk to you because they are worried doesn't mean that they want to make a change or want to buy something. So your job isn't to just offer some comfort, but also to make sure that the ‘worry' is significant enough to do something. Take action, make decisions to change.
2. Yes, they want advice. But remember that they already have other advisors, and in many cases, they are working to ‘round out' the advice that they are getting. In other words, they are working to get a 360^o on their current status as it relates to risk they have or they might be facing. So as part of your advisory role and consultative approach, again, you have the opportunity to make yourself unique among the other advisors. That opportunity is to take the prospect to a point where they make decisions relative to the seriousness of their problem. If there is a compelling reason to do something, whether new or different, you must position yourself in the role of the one that will execute this change.
3. If your prospect or client needs to take action, you must now put yourself in a qualifying position to make sure that you are the one that they go to when they take action i.e. make a change or make a new or different purchase of a product or service. DO NOT, provide the advice, especially to a new prospect, free of charge. DO NOT let yourself believe that your expert advice alone will get you the opportunity to get paid in exchange for this advice. If they are a prospect they are most likely doing business with someone that is in your line of work. They are the incumbent and so they are already on third base ready to capitalize on any expert advice that you have provided THEIR client. Make sure that you get commitments from these prospects to take action and take it with you.
4. Be patient. I know from our own personal circumstances that we are in the process of making changes. Yes we are making changes, but we are a little more deliberate now about the timing of those changes. We are doing more risk and reward analysis than normal because we feel that there is more at stake currently, given the uncertainly of the marketplace. Chances are your clients and prospects are feeling the same way. So there are two really important steps here:

• Be patient. Set timelines for follow up and have clear expectations and outcomes for each step or meeting. Make sure that the ball keeps moving in a direction of a decision every time you talk or meet.
• Prospect like you've never prospected before. Again, now is the time that people are looking to get advice and help. The more people you contact the more you expand your database for current opportunities as well as in the future.

This too shall pass.  If you've always had a consistent and predictable approach to building your business your business will now zoom.  If you haven't had that kind of approach now is a GREAT time to start.