If Facebook can’t get a handle on social media business, what can we do?

Look, I really hate to seem like a stick in the mud.  I really do.  But I guess sometimes I can’t help it.  And I guess that’s my image on social media.  Unlike a lot of other sales consultants, I’m not in love with social media as a prospect generation tool, particularly for B2B applications.  There are a lot of reasons why, but I think my viewpoint has just been reinforced.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks (cue the Geico commercial), you’ve heard about the Facebook IPO fiasco.  Perhaps the most hyped IPO in years hit with a big thud – early investors that bought at the $38 per share IPO price took a loss.  They’re still losing, too; the stock dropped another 2.25% today to close at $28.19 per share.  Everyone is running wild blaming Morgan Stanley, Wall Street in general, the media, Facebook, and perhaps even Justin Timberlake.  But there’s a more fundamental problem that tells us a lot about social media’s role in our businesses.

That fundamental problem was discovered by General Motors, who withdrew a $10 million per year advertising program the week before the IPO, saying that it “had not generated results.”  Frankly, this is what I hear from the majority of people who participate heavily in social media; they are unable to trace significant results to their efforts.

Ultimately, the Facebook IPO crashed because even Facebook hasn’t figured out how to make money on Facebook.  GM’s decision meant the removal of a significant revenue stream; it was one of their top customers if not their top customer overall.  And if Facebook can’t make money on Facebook, do the rest of us stand a chance?  Maybe…and maybe not.  For those of us who would like to use social media platforms like Facebook as well as Twitter and LinkedIn to generate new prospects, there are some potentially big issues.

The biggest issue for those of us in B2B selling is that the people to whom we need to sell, and the biggest consumers of social media, are often not the same people.  Virtually every sales trainer will tell you that your role is to sell to the decision maker.  Typically that’s the person in the corner office.  But how many corner-office occupants are watching Facebook or Twitter to select their vendors?  If you’re having a hard time imagining that, so am I.

Compounding this is the fact that social media is a proactive-opt-in platform; i.e. prospects need to make a conscious decision to follow, friend, link, or like you.  To do so, they must become aware of you.  How do you target your social media efforts to reach the right people?  Outside of LinkedIn, there’s no platform that allows for this.

Further, there may be a deeper problem with using social media for business.  Social media is inherentlysocial; meaning that most people use it for personal enjoyment and developing their social relationships. There are some analysts – it was referred to in the GM announcement – that suggest that social media consumers actively reject commercial messages in their Facebook or Twitter feeds.

Here’s the truth:  I’m aware of a lot of people who claim to be able to tell you how to make money on social media.  However, I don’t know of any business owner who claims to make good money from social media – other than the people teaching it.  Even Jeffrey Gitomer began 2011 saying that he was going to figure out how to monetize social media, and tell his readers.  He opened 2012 saying that he had retained a consultant to help him figure out how to monetize social media.

I’m not saying not to use social media – I’m saying, as I’ve said for two years, that if you want to be successful, don’t replace your conventional prospecting methods yet.  That’s a path to failure.  Instead, use social media as an augmentation and an image-builder.

And let’s see if Facebook figures out the business side of social media, shall we?

Are you important to your customer – or are you just a time waster?

I spend a lot of time talking about what is important to the customer.  Today, I’d like to shift gears and talk about who is important to your customer.  Is it you?  Or is it your boss?  The engineers?  Technical staff? Production?  Or someone else?

This came to mind as I was working with a client last week.  The client had a fairly new salesperson who had to fire an unprofitable customer, and was having trouble doing so.  The owner of the company, with the best of intentions, told the salesperson (who was not exactly brimming with self-confidence) to tell the customer that it was his decision to fire them, and not hers.  Now the customer doesn’t seem to believe that they have actually been fired.  Why not?  It’s simple, and I’ll tell you.

The customer won’t accept the decision because he didn’t get to talk to the admitted decision maker.  By telling the customer that the ‘boss’ made the decision, the salesperson completely disempowered herself and made herself look small and unimportant to the customer.  The decision to fire the customer was the right one; the circumstances made them not only unprofitable but difficult.  But the decision not to have the salesperson ‘own’ the decision made it so that the customer didn’t accept the firing.

I’ve been there before.  I once had to fire a customer in an industrial sales job that I had.  I had to do so because they were unprofitable and weren’t making my company any money – which is to say that they weren’t making ME any money for the inordinate amount of time I spent with them.  My boss made the same offer to me (blame him).  Instead, I looked the customer in the eye and explained that my company was not profiting from their business, and neither was I.  Either the pricing had to change or we couldn’t serve their needs any more.  They went elsewhere for six months and then returned at a profitable price.

Look, I get it.  Salespeople are trained to push off decisions on “the boss” all the time.  When I first started selling cars, I worked at a dealership that used the old system of ‘taking the offer to the boss’ and seeing what he said.  The salespeople weren’t perceived to be the negotiators, nor were they empowered to really negotiate.  Ultimately the customer ended up wanting to talk to ‘the boss’ most of the time, and ‘the boss’ had to get involved in the sale about half the time.

When I left that dealership, I went to another one that had a radically different stance.  At this one, my manager would ask me what car I was working, and if there was a trade in, he’d go look at it.  Then he’d tell me, “OK, this is where we have to be at a minimum.  You know you get paid on profit, get what you can get.”  It was a revelation.  I sold more cars at that dealership, achieved higher profits and commissions, and rarely did my customers even consider asking to speak to ‘the boss.’  Why?

Because they already felt they were dealing with someone important.  And we achieved better results. Like I said, the owner’s ‘blame me’ idea came from a very good place; he was trying to ease the blow for his salesperson.  But there were unintended consequences.  Much of the time, however, the consequences aren’t unintended.  Companies like to keep salespeople in the dark, and in truth, too many salespeople simply lack the courage to stand up to the customer.  Neither is helpful.  Here’s what the customer wants from you:

They want to believe that you (the salesperson) have the power to make decisions that affect them. Not just discounts, but service levels, timing, etc.

They want to believe that you can create positive outcomes for them.

They want to trust that you have their best interests at heart.

They realize that you need to make a profit to stay in business.  If they don’t, find another customer.

They want to believe that you can help them solve their problems – or can and will connect them with the resources to do so.  If you’re selling a technical product, you don’t need to be an engineer-level expert.  You do, however, need to have a basic level of competence, and you need to know when to get out of the way.

Customers can buy almost anything these days without the intervention of salespeople.  Hence, the only reason for salespeople to be involved is to make the buying experience more positive.   By doing so, you earn the time and energy they spend with you.  The only way to do that is to make yourself the ‘important person’ in the relationship.

You can know too many sales tactics – here’s why.

Sometimes, what you DON’T take into a sales call is more important than what you do take in. Sometimes the stuff that you take into a call is nothing but extraneous head-trash that gets in your way – and more importantly, gets into your customer’s way when they want to talk to you, and to buy.

What brought this to mind was a conversation I had with a young salesperson recently.  This person had been through sales training that was not mine, but is of the type that focuses on heavy techniques and word games.  What resulted, in her case, was probably the worst case of training malpractice I’d ever seen.  She was so focused on remembering what technique to use at what time (and what the names of the techniques were) that she was unable to have a reasonable conversation with a customer.  Like a bodybuilder who trains so much that he becomes musclebound and has difficulty functioning, she was so technique-bound that she couldn’t just talk with her customers.  There’s a fix for this, though.

You see, I’ve always preached that sales should flow as a focused conversation.  The focus comes from your questioning and comments; the conversational nature comes from never forgetting that you’re talking to another human being, and that your job is to learn more about him/her and help solve problems.  If you’re remembering when to use your Double Inverse Outward Question with a Half Twist, that probably isn’t going to happen!

You see, we (salespeople) have trained our customers over the years to spot cheap tactics.  Use the Take-Away, the Firing Horace, or the Sharp Angle (yep, those all exist) on someone, and they can spot it a mile away.  The problem is that once you do that, you cease to be a person.  Customers trust people; they don’t trust cheap tactics – or the people that use them.

The other problem with the tactics is that, like a movie script, they only work if customers know their lines as well as you know yours!  For instance, let’s look at the Take-Away.  This is a technique designed to ‘reverse’ the sales dynamic by forcing the customer to ‘prove that they are worthy’ of buying.  It’s simple; you tell the customer that you don’t think your product is right for them, and they then want to buy so badly that they will sell you on buying.  The trouble is that it doesn’t work, for several reasons.

First, the customer doesn’t know that they are supposed to be selling you, so many times they will simply say, “OK, I understand, thanks.”  Then if you want the sale, you have to backtrack into selling mode – which makes a liar out of you. It’s the ultimate Catch-22.  Either the customer trusts you based on what you’ve done up until that point, which means that they trust your judgment that they shouldn’t buy – which means no sale.  Or, they are a bit skeptical of you, spot the cheap tactic for what it is, and it reinforces their decision not to trust you – which means no sale.

The second reason it doesn’t work is that, if you are telling someone that they shouldn’t buy something when you really believe that they should, you are a liar.  There’s no way to come back from that.  Once you’ve lied to your customer – and believe me, they will know it – you are forever branded as someone not to be trusted.  Of course, that’s just an example of these kinds of tactics; customers spot them all.

So, let’s talk about unpacking.  In the case of the salesperson I’m discussing, my advice to her was to forget about all those named tactics, forget about trying to remember what to say when, and to establish a few simple objectives for the call. Then ask questions that help you achieve those goals, and present the right products and services.  Have conversations with people!

The best thing to unpack from your head is pretty much any sales tactic with a name (like the ones I’ve mentioned earlier; there are many more).  Named sales tactics are more designed to sell sales training(because the trainer is ‘an authority’ if they know the tactic and you don’t) than they are designed to help you sell.  Skills (questioning, presentation, prospecting, etc.) are important – tactics and techniques just get in your way.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that, if you want to learn more about this, you should attend my Sales Boot Camp on July 26.  We’ll focus on helping you have those natural, focused conversations that will help YOU sell more.  Click here for more information.

I re-learned the value of training and coaching last weekend.  Read how.

Warning:  this column represents a peek ‘behind the curtain’ at me.  If you don’t want that, don’t read this! I’ve been in business now as a professional sales trainer, speaker, and consultant for a long time.  Nearly eight years now, in fact; my eighth anniversary will be on September 1.  That’s nearly one-fifth of my life, and just over one-third of my career.  That’s a long time to be “the expert.”  Being “the expert” is a very heady thing, and as those of you who know me know well, modesty and humility have never been my most prominent personal characteristics.

That’s why it took me several years to decide that I wanted and needed help with part of my skill set.  I have been doing public speaking since junior high school, and I’ve always gotten good marks and reviews. Still…..I felt that there was a level I wasn’t getting to.  I’ve been telling you for nearly eight years that the biggest obstacle in sales is fear.  Guess what? Fear was my biggest obstacle to overcome as well.  With the help of two of the best speaking coaches in the world, Patricia Fripp (fripp.com) and Darren LaCroix, (darrenlacroix.com) I overcame my fears.  There’s a lesson here for you, too, if you keep reading.

To make a long story short, I finally decided to take the proverbial plunge and attend a two-day coaching program for speakers like myself.  The fact that the program was in Las Vegas didn’t hurt, to be frank. When I arrived and got to know my fellow coachees, I felt a bit out of place; most were Toastmasters and working on pure motivational speeches, while mine was very focused on selling skills.  Moreover, aside from Fripp and LaCroix, I was the only professional speaker in the room.

When it was my turn to go, I got up and gave my 10 minute speech in my typical high-energy, rapid-fire style – and I got hammered.  Well, maybe not hammered – Darren and Patricia were kind – but they definitely showed me numerous ways to communicate my message in a more audience-friendly fashion. As they talked, and as we ran through several segments of my program, I saw ways that I could improve. Change my message or my take on selling? No way.  And they didn’t ask me to.  Instead, they found ways that I could refine both the message and the way I communicated it to be more impactful.

As I went through the program and got to know the other speakers, I saw that each of us had to overcome our own fears and obstacles to get there.  There was Erik, paralyzed from the chest down for the last 15 years.  Erik was in a wheelchair (of course) and was traveling on his own for the first time in 16 years.  For a man who once bought a one-way ticket to Southeast Asia with no real idea of where he was going and how to get back, this was a tremendous lifestyle change.  One thing that Erik still had was a rapier wit and he spared no one.  For instance, his advice to me before I went up for my last turn at the podium was, “Try to find some self-confidence, huh?”

There was LouAnn, who had been in a 20 year abusive marriage and rebuilt her life to be happily remarried, professionally successful, financially independent, and wanted to help other women like herself.  There was Dan, who had been stigmatized as a ‘loser’ in childhood through a variety of aberrant activities including a game he invented called “dog poop golf” (want to know that story?  Come to one of my programs and I’ll tell it), and has built a successful lean manufacturing consulting business.  In fact, all of us had our own fears or obstacles to overcome in order to humble ourselves and submit to coaching.

Without belaboring the details, I’ll just say this:  I’m one heck of a lot better speaker now.  My thought process has been refined, my visual and verbal communication improved, and the ultimate beneficiaries will be YOU – at least those of you who see me speak live.  More importantly, perhaps, I’ve been reminded of what you go through every time you enter the door to one of my workshops.  It’s a humbling experience, and I won’t soon forget that lesson.

Will this be the last program like this I attend?  No.  Now that I’ve restarted my professional development, I’m not stopping.

Have I changed my philosophy on sales and selling?  Not in the slightest.  In fact, that message has been clarified, honed, and polished.

So, I go forward excited, enthusiastic, and frankly, with a heck of a lot of work to do.  Thank you to Darren, to Patricia, to LouAnn, to Erik, to Dan, to Elaine, Jerry, Tom, and everyone else in the group that I didn’t thank in this article.  I’m better at my job now.  Good training and coaching does that for all of us.  So, if you need help – whether I can provide it or not – I encourage you to reach out, get the help, and humble yourself.  The real winner will be you.

You’re probably already calling on your best customers.

This week, you’re going to read about how you can find your most profitable sales opportunities.  They’re characterized by two things:  First, you’re probably ignoring them.  Second, they are already used to cutting checks to you.  They’re your current customers, and I’m betting that you’re ignoring them in the quest to find new customers.

Let’s get the “but, wait, Troy” out of the way.  “But wait, Troy, I already sell to my current customers!”  Do you really?  Or do you just make routine calls and take routine orders?  Or, “But wait, Troy, you always say that the big bucks go to the people who can generate new business!”  True – but that’s only because most of the people that sell to current customers don’t really sell to them; they just make the calls and take the orders.  Let’s talk about how to really generate new business from your current customers.

First of all, we need to differentiate between calling on customers and selling to customers.  Calling on customers is easy; particularly in repetitive sale environments, the sales call becomes like a milk route, or what I like to call the “donut call:”  “Hi, I brought donuts!  Do you have this week’s order?”  For too many salespeople, this is the order of business.

Selling to current customers is different.  Think about the things you do when you sell to a new customer. First, you must prospect and qualify, then you have to discover needs, then you present solutions, youpropose, and then you close.  All these steps still happen in a development sale (an upsell).  Here’s what those steps look like in development selling:

• Prospecting and qualifying:  All of your products probably aren’t right for all of your customers; hence, you must select those customers to whom you plan to sell different products or services.  The good news is that you can base this not on a cold call approach, but on a base of customer knowledge from doing business with them.
• Needs discovery:  You still must set a meeting with the decision maker.  When you do, you should do a quality needs discovery and questioning program.  Is the new product right for them?  While you’re at it, has anything changed in their environment that might impact your selling of your current products?  Don’t skimp on this step; you should always be asking good questions of your customers.
• Presentation:  Just as selling new customers requires matching needs with solutions, so does cross-selling or upselling.  Sell the fit, with benefit statements.
• Proposal:  This goes without saying; you still have to offer price and terms.
• Closing:  Do not be afraid of this step! Ask for the new product sale just as you would a brand new customer; customers that aren’t asked to buy probably won’t.  If you’re worried that the ‘close’ will damage the current relationship, the problem isn’t the close – it’s your relationship.

There’s a hidden bonus here.  Customer retention is more important every day.  The best way to retain your customers is to talk to them; the best way to make sure that you’re talking to your customers is to keep selling to them.  Plus, if there are any difficulties with the relationship, there’s no better way to find them than try to sell them more of your products and services.  And wouldn’t you rather hear about them than your competitors?

Good development selling requires commitment and planning.  This isn’t something that you wing; it’s something that you build into your sales program.  But if you do, your profits and growth will show it.

To Prospect or Not to Prospect?

Well….Jeffrey is at it again.  By “Jeffrey,” I mean Jeffrey Gitomer.  Now, I like Jeffrey Gitomer.  I think that Jeffrey, at one time, was the dean of sales trainers in this country.  Now?  Well….let’s just say I’m disappointed in him lately.  I feel that it’s vital, as a trainer, speaker, and writer, to be in touch with the challenges and opportunities that my readers and attendees are facing.  I’m not sure that all of my counterparts feel the same way.

My specific disagreement with Jeffrey comes in terms of prospecting.  Jeffrey has changed his stance on prospecting; his recent column in a local magazine here says that “Prospecting is a waste of time.  You’ll fail on 98 out of 100 cold calls that you make.”  Well…he’s probably pretty close, in terms of the numerical ratios.  And that is precisely why you should prospect.  Let’s talk about that…and about why sales trainers tell salespeople they don’t have to prospect.

Looking at Jeffrey’s numbers, he’s probably pretty close.  Let’s say that you sit down to make prospecting calls.  You’ve got a good call list (no ‘person who’ calls), and you’re going to make calls in sequence. You’ll commit to making 100 dials.

In typical B2B selling, you’ll talk to someone on about one out of every four calls.  By “talk to someone,” I mean that you will talk to a potential decision maker on every fourth call, roughly.  So you’ve gained the opportunity to talk to about 25 people who might be able to buy from you.

If you’re doing your calling well, communicating good value, and establishing interest, you’ll win an appointment on one out of every 3-4 calls.  Let’s call it four to be pessimistic, and we’ll round.  So out of 25 conversations, you’ll have six initial appointments with decision makers.

Once you have that appointment, your chances of generating a viable proposal are about one in two. That’s three viable proposals (a viable proposal is a proposal that has a strong likelihood of turning into a sale).

Your close ratio on a viable proposal should be anywhere between 1 in 2 and 1 in 3.  So, you’ll make 1-2 sales on that group of three proposals.

So, on your 100 calls, the ratios indicate that you’ll make 1-2 sales.  There’s Jeffrey’s “fail 98 times out of 100” statement validated.  But here’s the kicker:

A competent salesperson, calling in the proper fashion, can do 15-20 dials per hour.  So those 100 calls will take you anywhere between 5 and 6-1/2 hours to complete.  What other activity do you know of, performed competently, will predictably and reliably generate a sales funnel to produce 1-2 sales in that amount of time?  Me neither.

Don’t get me wrong; the things that Jeffrey suggests as funnel-fillers are all good ones.  Networking, referrals, writing articles, building a reputation – those are excellent ideas, and they’re all part of an integrated prospecting strategy.  But they are neither controllable nor predictable.  You can be the greatest networker in the world, and still go weeks and even months without referral business.  I’ve seen numerous salespeople fail while trying to network their way to success.

And also to be fair, he’s far from the only trainer telling salespeople not to prospect.  But if prospecting is so successful, why tell customers not to do it?  The reason, in my opinion, is simple.  There is no easier sell than telling salespeople that they don’t have to prospect anymore.  Salespeople typically dislike prospecting, so if you tell them they don’t have to, they love you.  But that’s doing a disservice to readers, in my opinion.

Recently I’ve had consultations with two entrepreneurs who were resistant to prospecting because they were ‘too busy.’  In each case, I was able to drill down on what made them ‘busy.’  Based on the information they gave me, their actual productive time (the time that they were working on projects) was less than 8 hours per week.  My advice to them?  Discipline yourself to do what you need to do – at least until you can afford to pay someone else to do it.

It’s called “discipline” because it’s not the favorite thing of most people; if it were, it would just be called “the stuff you like to do anyway.”  But, like any discipline, at the root of it is a behavior that produces positive change.

In today’s environment, salespeople must earn their place in the customer’s buying process.

I was interviewing a salesperson recently who was looking to change industries.  When I asked her why, she said, “Oh, because everybody buys their stuff on the Internet nowadays, there’s really no use for salespeople in this industry anymore.”  Well, there are a couple of problems with this.  First of all, I have clients in her industry.  They have successful salespeople that work for them.

The second problem is that, when I asked her what she had done to combat the Internet, I was greeted with a blank stare.  “Oh, you know, uh, price…”  That’s the sign of a weak salesperson.  Interview over. What I find is that salespeople complain and whine about price and the Internet without considering the most important aspect in the customer’s mind – a positive buying experience!  A new hobby of mine (or maybe a new twist on an old hobby) perfectly illustrates this.

I’ve just gotten into motorcycles.  Some of you who have read this space for years know that I’ve restored and customized cars for years, but bikes are new to me.  Between me and my wife, we own a grand total of four vintage Honda bikes (it wasn’t planned that way, just sort of worked out that way).  All of them need parts and work.  And wonder of wonders, there is a Honda dealership near my house.  When I say “near my house,” I mean that it’s closer than my closest grocery store.  3 minutes in the car and I’m there.

Not long after buying my first Honda (my wife already had two), I walked in to check the place out, drool a bit over the new bikes, and maybe find a resource for parts.  After walking around the showroom a few minutes, a salesperson came up and said hello.  He asked me if he could help me, and I told him that my wife and I owned three vintage Hondas, they all needed some restoration work, and I was also just wanting to look at the new bikes while I was there.  His response went something like, “Wow, those are old bikes (note – the model years are between ’75 and ’82 – it’s not like they run on wood wheels or anything)!  We don’t really do much with those old bikes, sorry we probably won’t be able to help you.”  And then he walked away.

Now, I’ve told this guy, who sells for a Honda dealership, that I’m a new rider and I already own THREE products made by his company.  Do you think that maybe, just maybe, I might be a prospect for a new Honda down the road (or Yamaha or Kawasaki, which they also sell)?  Or that even if his people couldn’t sell me parts, that I might be able to buy gear there like helmets, saddlebags, etc.?  I turned and walked out…quickly.  That might have been the end of my local dealer experience, except that my wife wanted to check out some other dealers.  So, we visited some others.  At one, which is the exact farthest from us in the Metro area, we had a great experience.

When we walked in, the salesperson greeted us and we told him the same story.  His response was, “Wow – those are some great old bikes!  Before you leave, make sure you meet Jay in the parts department. He’s kind of our classic Honda expert, and if we don’t have what you need, he can probably find it for you. Meanwhile, if you want to see the new lines, I can show you what they’re making now in case you ever want to step up to a new one.”  Result – we spent half an hour in the showroom talking with Mike, and between the two of us we spent around $500 with Jay in the parts department before we left.  And we’ve spent more since then.  I drive past three other dealers to get to this dealer to buy parts, and I’ve done so several times.

The point is that the second dealer treated us with respect, with consideration, applied expertise, and created a positive buying experience for us.  That positive buying experience means that I’ll check with Jay before I buy parts on the Internet, and you can bet that if I do step up to a new or newer bike, I’ll shop there.  They made a CUSTOMER, and formed a RELATIONSHIP.

When you’re competing against the Internet (or anyone else for that matter), you must ADD VALUE to the experience for the customer – if buying off a web page is as easy, convenient and pleasant as buying from you (or perhaps more so), then they’ll buy off the web.  So before you complain about “Internet buyers,” ask yourself – or better yet, your customers – what the buying experience is really like.  In the current time, salespeople must EARN their place in the supply chain.  It’s not just given to us anymore.

It’s time to become a self contained business generation machine.

Last month we had Independence Day.  I sometimes wonder if people know what that means. “Independence Day” means that we declared that we were a country no longer tied to Great Britain; for all purposes self sufficient and not beholden to anyone.  It’s a day to remember and to acknowledge – especially during a time when too many people are DEpendent.  No, this isn’t about politics – it’s about a Salesperson’s Declaration of Independence.

You see, my belief has always been that salespeople should be what I call “self contained business generation machines.”  The best salespeople – the top 20% that I keep referring to – get it.  They are able to generate new business and new growth consistently, reliably, and predictably, year in and year out. What separates them from the rest, at least in terms of independence?  Read on.

The best salespeople understand their role.  The role of the salesperson is to be like the role of the US Marines – the tip of the spear.  Without us, nothing good happens.  Most salespeople know this – or at least they are willing to SAY they know it – but do they live it?  Judging by the salespeople I talk to, most don’t.  Here are some of the things that I hear…and what they mean:

“What do they do for leads?”  Means that “I don’t prospect and all I do is receive.”  This is the kiss of death for any company that needs to grow through prospecting.  This one is usually followed by:

“Sure, I’m willing to prospect if you need me to.”  “Willing to” are two of the scariest words a salesperson can say.  “Willing to” means, “I truly hate it, I won’t do much of it, I won’t do it with any enthusiasm, and I’ll probably be looking for another job where they won’t ask me to do this while I’m collecting a paycheck from you.”

“What do you have for presentation materials?”  This can mean any number of things, but what it usually means is, “I feel that my presentation skills are weak, and therefore I want to know that I have plenty of paper to compensate.”

“What kind of support will I get?”  This one is tricky.  Sometimes this is a very legitimate question, and I’ve asked it myself.  Good salespeople want to know that the companies they work for, and the people they work with, are good at what they do.  Will the services and products be fulfilled well?  If there’s an issue, and the salesperson is in the right, will the sales manager support you?  These are good and correct issues.  On the other hand, sometimes it can mean that the salesperson expects everyone else to do 90% of the work, and he collects the commissions.  This is of course less desirable.

Awhile back, I had a client who discussed a potential new hire with me.  This guy had, they said, been very successful in their industry, and he was a great presenter.  He did mention during the interview that, at his last company, they had employed a telemarketer to set all his new appointments, and gosh it would be nice if my client did the same.  I said, “Whoa, hold the phone!”  What he was telling my client was that, if he had to prospect, they were sunk.  So to get the maximum effect out of one expensive employee, they needed to hire another expensive employee.  After about a 10 minute discussion, my client chose (wisely) not to make the hire.

The sales profession is changing rapidly, and if you’re not one of those self contained business generation machines, you’re going to be left behind – and maybe left out.  Information technology is replacing many things, and information technology can replace mediocre salespeople.  By “mediocre,” I mean salespeople who don’t prospect, who don’t ask questions, and who don’t add value for their customers or their employees.

The good news is that, for those self contained business generation machines, there will always be opportunity.  If you’re wondering if you’re one of those people, ask yourself these questions:

Do I consistently and reliably prospect, and turn those prospects into customers?

Do I ask my customers questions that get beyond the surface and uncover real, and deeply set, needs?

Do I present my products and services in such a way that prospects immediately see and understand the benefits, and that differentiates from my competition?

Do I hold price and profit?

Do I consistently create value for my customers, whether they buy or not?

Do I need my boss’s help to close the tough deals?

You’ll note that the above questions don’t start with “can.”  Anyone “can.”  They start with “do.”  Few “do.” If you’re willing to learn the skills, if you’re willing to do the work, and if you execute consistently and reliably, you’re adapting well to the changing world of selling.  If not….well, it’s time to think about a change, either in career or habit.

When does a sale happen?  There are four key elements, and here they are.

I’ve spent years talking about how and why a sale happens.  Until recently, however, I’ve not spent much time talking about when a sale happens, and that can be just as important a piece of information as how and why.

For a sale to happen, four things must intersect.  They are:  need, solution, timing, and perceived value. That’s a lot to have collide in the same place, and too many salespeople try to “push the rope uphill” when one of them doesn’t exist.  Worse, some salespeople don’t recognize when all four DO exist in the same place, and miss sales.  To add to the degree of difficulty, the four exist in a particular order in the customer’s mind, and sales tactics fail when they don’t respect this.

The first thing that must exist is a need.  A “need” is a situation that the customer has that can be resolved by making a purchase.  In the B2B environment, a Need exists when the customer would like to improve a Strength, fix a Weakness, create or capitalize on an Opportunity, or head off a Threat (this, by the way, is why “pain” as a motivator doesn’t do the job – it only covers one of the four potential motivators).  In the B2C environment, needs boil down to a perceived improvement in the quality of life.  Unless a Need exists, nothing else matters – you won’t make a sale, and you usually won’t even get an appointment.

The second condition for a sale is a solution.  This means that the needs must be assessed, and a potential product or service measured for its capability to address the need (solve the customer’s issue).  Sales fail here when the salesperson just knows that his product will solve the problem – but fails to ascertain that the customer also agrees that the product constitutes a solution.  Sales also fail when the salesperson doesn’t really believe that his product is the solution but bulls on regardless due to the need for a sale.

Timing is a critical aspect of the sale – and perhaps the toughest to get your hands around.  Timing is one of those things that is up to the customer to determine – not you.  Timing could be a function of finances – right now, cash flow is too thin to purchase. Timing could be a matter of circumstance – for instance, the personnel to implement your solution aren’t hired yet.  Timing could be any number of factors, and the only way to find out if the timing is right is to ask good questions – preferably big-picture questions about priorities – that discover what you want to know.

Finally, perceived value must be in place.  Put simply, “Perceived Value” means that the customer believes that his/her money is better spent on a product or service than staying in their wallet.  Again, it doesn’t matter if YOU think your product is a good buy – what matters is if the CUSTOMER thinks the product is a good buy.  Some customers’ tipping point is low – the perceived ROI isn’t very much.  Some other customers have a high tipping point – you have to demonstrate significant value before they will buy.

The next time you lose a sale – or the next time you have a proposal dangling and are wondering if it’s going to close – ask yourself if all four of these key factors are in place.  If not, move on.

The sales profession has seen more changes in the last ten years than in the eighty previous.  Here are the five biggest.

We live in a new world of selling.  My career started in 1990, and I often look back at the early 90s as (what should have been) the death throes of the old-time, old school manipulative sales tactics.  In fact, my first training as a salesperson used most of those old tactics.  When I got back to my job, I quickly learned that, the less of these tactics I used, the better I did and the more my customers enjoyed the experience.

As my career progressed, I’ve developed certain philosophies and ideas about how selling should be conducted.  I’ve also discovered, however, that it’s best to allow these ideas to evolve over time; salespeople who don’t evolve are left behind.  In fact, our profession has seen more changes in the past ten years or so than in the previous eighty – and salespeople are, unfortunately, getting left behind every day.

Today, I’d like to discuss the five biggest changes in the world of selling, as we find it today – along with the ways that you can evolve to keep up and maybe even get ahead of the curve.

Change #1: The need for salespeople to EARN our place in the customer’s buying process: When I started in selling, I had no real competition.  By that I mean that I had no competition for my place in the supply chain.  I had competitors for my customers’ business, of course – but the salesperson’s spot wasn’t threatened.  Whether I was selling cars, industrial supplies, or plastics, my customers HAD to deal with me, or someone like me, in order to get what they needed.  They couldn’t just order off the Internet.  A few customers chose to fax orders in, but even then they would get a confirmation call from me or my inside salesperson to make sure the order was right.

It isn’t that way anymore, folks.  Your customers can simply get on the Internet and buy what they need – no matter what it is.  That means that our burden has changed.  We now have to EARN our spot in the customer’s visitor chair, or they won’t see us.

Change #2: The end of old, manipulative sales techniques: Once upon a time, the sales training world was a different place.  Sales trainers spent decades piling new insincere, manipulative tactics on top of the old, insincere, manipulative tactics.  It worked like this: Come up with some way to manipulate people into buying, or into thinking they had no alternative to buying.  Then give your tactic a clever name – so your audience would think that you knew some magic technique they didn’t.  This made you “marketable” to your clients.  This begat the Sharp Angle, the Take Away, and yes, even the Firing Horace.  The trouble is that all those tactics have trained not only salespeople, they’ve trained our customers.  Customers can spot this junk, and when they do, you immediately lose your credibility.

Change #3: No more “Person Who” calls.  The “person who” call is low-end prospecting.  When I started in selling, our best prospecting tool was the phone book.  So, you’d call a prospect company and ask the receptionist, “Can you direct me to the person who handles industrial purchasing? (or whatever you were selling)”.  The receptionist would then direct you to the lowest possible person on the food chain who had any tangential contact with what you were selling – or worse, to the purchasing department.  You were as removed from the actual buying decision as you could get while still being physically on the premises.

Nowadays, there are simply too many tools available to find the real decision maker.  Savvy salespeople now find the decision maker, ask for him/her by name, and get an audience with the right person.

Change #4: Product knowledge is no longer king.  When I started in selling, one of the first pieces of wisdom they gave me was “Product knowledge is king, son.  Know your product better than the other guy, and you’ll outsell the other guy.”  Sounded great, right?  The trouble is that this isn’t a true statement any longer.  Your customers can now spend 5-10 minutes on the Internet and know your product’s features and specs as well as you do, making all that wonderful product knowledge superfluous.  It’s still good to know your product, of course – you lose credibility if you don’t – but that’s no longer the trump card.

Today, customer knowledge is the trump card.  If you know your customers better than your competitor, you can better understand, anticipate, and assess needs – and then translate that knowledge into benefits targeted directly at your customer and their situation.  Plus, other than very basic information, your competitors can’t access customer information remotely.  This creates a different – and frankly, exciting and challenging – burden on salespeople.

Change #5: The rise of information technology.  This is the change that underpins all the changes above.  What is driving most of these changes in customer behavior (and thus our world) is the rise of information technology, and the need for us as salespeople to adapt to a more knowledgeable, savvy, and educated customer base.  There are simply too many easily accessible information tools out there for customers to settle for meetings with us that don’t drive new and additional value over the Internet, and there are too many tools out there for us not to take advantage of them.  The Internet has made the sales world into the autobahn with no speed limits – and nobody is picking up hitchhikers.

So, how do you adapt to these changes?  Well, it’s not simple, but it’s doable, and here are the five keys to surviving and thriving in today’s world:

Adaptation #1: Commit to a Purpose Driven Sales Call:  If your sales calls are only driven by the need to drop off doughnuts and pick up this week’s order, you’re dead in the water.  Instead, have a purpose to your call that drives value and interest for your customer.  Become a student of their industry and pick up articles and tips to help them solve problems.  Get involved in situations that don’t directly impact your selling, and find ways to refer customers to resources.  Make every sales call count- and your customers will still see you.

Adaptation #2: Unpack.  Salespeople take a lot of baggage into calls with them, literally and figuratively. One of the biggest bags contains what I call “head trash,” or old techniques that don’t work anymore.  Get rid of that stuff.  If you’re trying to figure out what to get rid of, ask yourself this:  “Does this technique improve the customer’s experience or create value for the customer?”  If the answer is “no,” get rid of it. Hint:  Any sales technique with a name (the “Firing Horace,” for example) should be left behind.

Adaptation #3:  Get your prospecting act together.  There are simply too many ways to learn the names of key executives to settle for the “person who” call.  Instead, use databases like InfoUSA, Hoover’s, or ReferenceUSA (check with your local library – this one is free) to create call lists that include good info and allow you to ask for your prospect by name.  This isn’t even a 21^st century tool; it’s a 20^th century tool.

Adaptation #4: Focus on customer knowledge.  Most salespeople learn their product in depth, and their customers on the surface.  Instead, get to know your customers in depth.  What are their biggest concerns – their plans – their key needs?  What motivates them to come into work?  Instead of asking surface questions, ask questions that dig deeply and uncover information that your competitors don’t get. And don’t ever STOP asking those questions; customers change over time and so do their needs.

Adaptation #5:  Use information technology.  I’m constantly amazed by the number of clients I see that don’t use a contact manager or CRM system.  Those clients fall farther behind every day.  CRM is now cheap and readily available.  So are Internet based tools like Jigsaw, LinkedIn, etc.  All of these tools allow you to do a better job of connecting with, and relating to, your customers.  If you are sitting there thinking, “I don’t need to do that stuff,” your career has an expiration date on it – and it may have already passed!

I realize that, for salespeople who have been in the business for a long time, these can be challenging habits to change, but this kind of change is essential to survive in the new world of selling.  Dinosaurs didn’t adapt.  I see “Sales Dinosaurs” every day.  Don’t be one of them.