What does “credibility” really mean?

A while back, I was interviewed by a writer for a trade magazine regarding the most desirable characteristics in sales.  She asked me what the #1 characteristic a salesperson needed to possess to succeed with his or her customers.  I know that she was expecting me to say, “Trust,” but I didn’t.  I said, “Credibility.”  She was taken a bit aback, and said, “What do you mean?”

I replied that my definition of credibility is this:  Credibility means that people believe what you are saying because it is you that says it.  They don’t feel the need to check your sources, research your facts and claims, etc.  Credibility means that, in the customer’s mind, “Troy said it.  That’s good enough for me.”  The writer asked, “Isn’t that just another word for trust?”  I replied, “No, not at all.  Credibility works at a higher level than trust.  Trust is simply one of the prerequisites for credibility.”  I explained it to her, and I’ll explain it to you.

In professional selling, trust means that the customer believes that you would not intentionally steer them wrong, and that you have their best interests at heart. That word, “intentionally,” is a big deal.  “Trust” means that the customer allows for you to make mistakes in your verbiage, in your claims, in your references, and in your recommendations – and if the customer allows for these mistakes, that means that they will back-check at least some of those potential mistakes.  You cannot have credibility without trust, but you can have trust without credibility.

See the difference?  Credibility means that they don’t back-check you.  Can we agree, then, that credibility is a much higher level of dialogue with the customer?  Let’s talk about how to achieve it.

First, achieving credibility means taking something of a sales Hippocratic oath:  “First, do no harm.”  In sales, that could mean, “First, make no false statements.”  This is a big problem for salespeople for a couple of reasons.  The first reason is that salespeople want to be seen as experts – even if they’re not.  Now, I’ve said before that becoming an expertise provider should be the goal of every salesperson; part of expertise, however, is realizing what you don’t know.  The salesperson who decides to “wing it” and gives a false answer forever calls his claims into question.

The second reason is that salespeople fear giving the “I’ll get you that answer” answer to a question because it can slow down the selling process.  Well….maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t.  The advent of technology means that we can be far more prepared with resources to answer questions than we used to be.  I once sold for a distributor of bearings and power transmission products that represented and stocked over 150 product lines.  If I needed technical information on all of them, my car wouldn’t have been able to store all the catalogs and technical documents I needed!

Today, however, we can carry all those documents – or access to them – on a smartphone.  Think about it for a minute.  What if you carried all your technical information on micro-SD cards (or whatever memory source your phone takes), labeled, so that if you had a particularly tough question to answer, you could simply load the proper document on your phone and give the CORRECT answer?  That wouldn’t slow the process and your customer would respect your efforts.  This, by the way, is one way that even rookie salespeople can generate credibility very quickly.

Another way of generating credibility is getting in front of particular problems.  If there is going to be a problem such as a delayed delivery, incorrect product spec, etc., the credible salesperson finds out about it before the customer, and communicates with the customer as soon as possible – rather than just letting the delivery happen incorrectly and letting everything hit the fan.

A third way of generating credibility is never throwing your team members under the bus to the customer.  This is difficult, but it’s the most common way I see that salespeople blow any potential for credibility.  You win as a team, and you lose as a team – and when you lose, the credible salesperson says, “we messed up,” not “they messed up.”  Take the lumps for everyone else – and then, fix problems in-house and behind closed doors.

Finally – and I know that this will hit some of you hard – credible salespeople stay at their jobs for a reasonable period of time.  I talk to a lot of salespeople who change jobs on a frequent basis, and it hurts your credibility, both in the interview process and in the selling process.  If you’re going back to your customers on an annual basis and saying, “Guess what – I’m selling something different now!”, you’re not going to have any credibility whatsoever.

Gaining credibility requires more than sales skills.  It requires discipline in your actions and your conversations.  It is, however, worth the effort, because it’s the highest level of business relationship you can achieve.

Many companies claim to be “sales organizations.”  Few are.

In my years of experience in working with (and for) companies large and small, I have discovered that there is a common element to the most successful businesses.  The most successful companies have asales culture.  A “sales culture” is a philosophy that permeates the company, from the corner office to the loading dock, that says, essentially, “We are a sales organization, and everything else we are able to do is a product of our ability to profitably sell our products or services to our customers.”

This isn’t a philosophical statement; it’s reality.  The only difference is whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.  It’s reality because no matter how good your products or services, if you can’t persuade someone to exchange money for those products or services, there’s no reason for production or service to exist, and hence your business will cease to exist.  An acquaintance of mine attempted to make a go of it as a financial consultant, and to be frank, he was the most brilliant financial guy I’ve ever met.  He’s now working for someone else as a CFO – because despite his brilliance, he was unable to make a single sale.

It’s easy to define yourself as a “Sales organization;” it’s harder to live it.  That’s because your company culture is the sum total of all of the messages – spoken and unspoken – that you send your employees.  Your culture is defined by the things you say, the people you hire, and the actions you take.  For instance, I once worked for a company that constantly claimed that the sales managers were the most important department managers in the company; yet, when it came time to promote department managers, the sales managers never got a look.  That let us know where we really stood.

The most successful companies both acknowledge and embrace the idea that they are first and foremost a sales organization, and that culture flows from the top.  It flows from the top because it must.  Despite the protestations of those who advocate bottom-up leadership, the reality is that any corporate culture is set not by the employees at ground and field level, but by the overriding philosophy of management.  That’s you, by the way.  So, let’s assume for the moment that you have decided that your company needs to accept and embrace a sales culture.  How do we go about that? Here are two quick ways.

Set the mission:  First of all, whatever your mission statement, throw it away.  I know, it’s something that you’ve put a lot of thought into and probably has some great phrasing.  It’s probably also something that your employees couldn’t remember if a gun were put to their heads.  Let’s replace it with something simple like this:  “We are a sales organization, and we grow profitably by Acquiring new customers, Developing current customers to greater profitability, and Retaining profitable business.”  Use this as the mantra that guides your company’s decision making.

Reinforce the culture:  As you’ve probably guessed, it’s not enough to have some meetings, say “we are a sales organization,” and call it good.  Cultures happen because they are reinforced, directly or indirectly.  For this to work, key decisions must be made based on the new mission statement:  “Does this decision help us to acquire, develop, or retain customers?”  That doesn’t mean that non-sales departments starve; that new machine for the plant may be completely justified by its benefits in product quality.  The raises for the production staff may be appropriate to reward them for their part in acquiring, developing, and retaining customers.  It does mean that your company has one universal criteria for spending, personnel allocations, and any other key decision making.

The Benefits:  There are numerous benefits to aligning your company around a sales culture.  The biggest is this:  Sales focused companies tend to produce excellence in every department.  The reason is simple:  Companies with a strong sales department cannot stay bad or mediocre in other areas; if they do, those sales gains will quickly be lost through customer dissatisfaction and attrition.  As noted earlier, good sales departments tend to lift other departments through necessity.  This is not true of other departmental objectives; an excellent production department seldom creates pressure on other departments to up their games.

On the whole, organizations that center their culture around the process of profitable growth tend to achieve that growth, year after year.  It’s not easy, but the results are worth it.

Salespeople who are “actively engaged” are the most productive.  Here’s why.

Here’s a fun little stat to start your Thursday.  Gallup, on a quarterly basis, surveys employees to learn how many are “actively engaged,” “disengaged,” or “actively disengaged” in their work.  The specific quarter never seems to matter; the percentages tend to be consistent within a few points.  Typically, only 30% are “actively engaged,” meaning that they feel an emotional connection to their workplaces and are likely to be highly productive.

50% are “disengaged,” meaning that they go through the motions.  20% are “actively disengaged,” meaning that they are actively working to hurt the company that they are working for.  In my experience, that’s a typical distribution of salespeople, as well; the “actively engaged” people are the top performers.  However, one thing that I find in selling is that many salespeople will say that they are engaged without being engaged.  If you’re wondering if you’re really “actively engaged” or not, here are some characteristics of an engaged salesperson.

They Maximize Customer Contact:  You know what your customers’ and prospects’ “window” is.  The “window” is that space of time where your customers are available to be contacted.  For most in the B2B world, it’s 8 AM to 5 PM weekdays.  Whatever your “window” is, the engaged salesperson works – CONSTANTLY – to maximize meaningful customer contact during those hours.  That means dedicating yourself to setting appointments, optimizing your schedule to minimize drive-time and other distractions, and spending as much face time as possible with your customers and prospects.  Here’s another stat from my own surveying.  Most salespeople spend less than 8 hours per week eyeball-to-eyeball with customers.  The best will get 15-20.

They Make Every Call Meaningful:  I’ve been talking about something that I call “The Purpose Driven Sales Call” for years.  Most sales calls are agenda-free, and value-free, for both the salesperson and the customer.  When I was in the industrial sales business, we called them “P.R. Calls.”  Even on those calls, there was some potential value attached, since my customers had to deal with a salesperson (me or a competitor) to place their orders.  Since the Internet has allowed customers to order without us, the P.R. Call is obsolete.  The engaged salesperson makes sure that every call has an agenda attached, and that agenda will be based on a “win” for the customer, and a “win” for the salesperson that will allow the salesperson to advance the relationship.

They Don’t Have to be Told Twice:  Recently, a client came to me with a concern.  It seems that one of his new salespeople hadn’t built a LinkedIn profile.  As you know, I’m not a believer that social networking is the be-all and end-all of selling, but let’s face it – in today’s world, if you don’t have a quality LinkedIn profile, you’re a long way behind the times. It seemed that this client had instructed his new salesperson that a LinkedIn profile was a basic part of his job, and that the salesperson had neglected to set one up for six weeks.  To me, that’s a concern; salespeople shouldn’t have to be told multiple times to use important sales tools.

They are Self Reliant:  I’ve always viewed the salesperson as an independently functioning business generation machine.  This relates a bit to the point above, but entirely too many salespeople have to be told to prospect, given leads, handed this, and handed that.  Don’t get me wrong – resources like marketing campaigns, etc. are nice – but if those aren’t available, the engaged salesperson finds ways to make things happen on his/her own.

They are Constantly Focused on Growth:  This is probably the underlying characteristic of the engaged salesperson.  He/she wakes up in the morning asking, “What can I do today to grow my business?”  and ends the day asking, “What did I do to grow the business?”

As I said above, most salespeople – unfortunately – simply go through the motions.  The truth is that engaging yourself isn’t that much harder, it’s far more rewarding, and it’s a heck of a lot more fun.  Be honest with yourself.  If you’re not fulfilling the above points, today might be a good day to start.

Good advice for baseball hitters turns out to be good advice for salespeople, too.

Well, it’s another summer.  That means another baseball season.  And of course, that means more agony for those of us who are long-suffering Royals fans.  These days, I can’t even type “Royals fan” without automatically putting “long-suffering” in front of it.  Not to go into detail, but the team went up….then down again…and now back up.  The team’s recent upsurge has coincided with the appointment of Hall of Fame Royal George Brett as hitting coach.  One thing he said early on, when interviewed about the team’s anemic offense, struck me.

“We’ve got to start having quality at-bats,” he said.  “That means going to the plate with an idea and focusing on the fundamentals and the result you want.”  Well, the team is still struggling with that, but I agree with him.  In fact, I think one of the biggest things that holds salespeople back is the lack of a quality at-bat.  I’d suggest that most salespeople have one of those maybe once in every 5-10 sales calls.  Let me explain what I mean.

A “quality at-bat” in the sales world – using George’s definition and mine – begins with “having an idea and focusing on the fundamentals.”  In selling, here are the attributes of a quality at-bat:

Having a planned result in mind for you:  What do you want to achieve with this call?  Hint:  A “PR” call where we’re going to sit down and talk about sports isn’t a planned result.  Ask yourself this: How do I plan to deepen the relationship or advance a sales process when I’m in front of this customer?  If you can’t come up with an answer, you’d better get one before you open the door.

Have a planned result in mind for the customer:  In today’s selling world, it’s not enough to have results in mind for ourselves; we have to have a way for the customer to gain through the call.  You can do this by imparting knowledge, by asking good questions, by bringing something to the table that the customer wasn’t aware of, but that can generate a positive result for the customer.

Be prepared enough to be able to change the above plans as necessary:  One of the biggest attributes for a hitter is the ability to make adjustments on the fly to get the result you want.  Maybe you prepared for a fastball pitcher, and he’s primarily throwing you curves and change-ups.  If you’re still focused on the fastball, you’re going to fail.  It’s the same in selling.  We can create the best plans in the world, but if you don’t have the mental acuity to shift and change on the fly as the sales call and the customer requires, you’re going to fail – and you’ll lose business (and your future at-bats) to someone who can.

Have a quality conversation:  The one thing that is irreplaceable by the Internet is the sales conversation – the ability for the customer to have, in real time, a two-way discussion about his/her needs with someone who is expert in their business and in their products and services, and who can use that knowledge to benefit the customer.  Don’t ever short-change this.  This also means that we have to cast aside old techniques that are designed to maneuver the customer into ‘ordering NOW’ and instead focus what the customer is actually saying, react to that, and generate a positive result for both parties.

Be mentally charged:  This one is going to be controversial.  Numerous experts will tell you that you should NEVER, and I mean NEVER, eat lunch alone on a working day.  I do, quite frequently.  I always have.  It’s not because I don’t enjoy eating lunch with clients; I do. But, one thing I’ve discovered about myself is that I need a “mental recharge” period at some point during the day, and lunch is very convenient for that.  By a “mental recharge,” I mean a time during the day where I can relax, disconnect a bit from selling (or whatever I’m doing), and re-focus myself.  My sales calls and meetings are better afterwards.  It doesn’t have to be lunch, and it doesn’t have to be long.  Several years ago, I managed an inside sales department.  I discovered, early on, that my top salesperson used to come into my office and complain about something (usually a bad customer call) for about 15-20 minutes every day.  I was concerned about her “negativity” until I realized that she would come in, vent, and then go out and kick tail for the rest of the day.  She was awesome until the vent, and awesome after.  And if that was my investment in helping her succeed, that was a good investment.  That was her “recharge.”  Find yours, and take one ‘recharge’ break a day.

Every time you go up “to bat” and you don’t have a quality at-bat, you’ve wasted your time and the customer’s.  If you focus on generating quality (and it’s not that much harder), your results will thank you.

There’s an important phrase you should know and live.  It’s only three words.

Sometimes, all it takes is three little words.  I’m serious.  Sometimes, three little words – the saying, the adoption, the believing – can make all the difference in the world.  I’m not talking about the classic “I love you,” or any variations thereof; nor am I speaking of anything that begins with “go” and ends with “yourself.”  Although I must admit that all those phrases have their time and place.

No, I’m talking about business, and the three words I’m referring to are:  sense of urgency.  When I look over the various winners and losers I’ve seen in the business world, those three words tend to define the difference between winning and losing.  In a nutshell, winners have the sense of urgency; losers do not.  When you’re analyzing your own performance or that of your salespeople, ask yourself, “do they display a sense of urgency about their jobs – or not?”

One might think that tighter economic times, such as the ones we’re in at the moment, would provoke greater sense of urgency on the part of those whose responsibility it is to make things happen.  Often, however, the result is the opposite, because urgency’s enemy – fear – sets in.  Salespeople who would otherwise be highly motivated to make calls get nervous and apprehensive about “the economy,” and thus calls go unmade (“I’d rather call them when the news is better.”  Of course, since “the economy” is simply the cumulative effect of individual decisions to do or not to do business, every such postponement actually makes the economy a little worse.

Let’s take a look at some of the roles within (your?) company, and look at how a lack of urgency can negatively impact sales success.

The salesperson:  This is fairly easy.  In fact, we just discussed such an example above.  However, I see a lack of urgency in many different parts of the sales process.  As an example – recently, an out-of-town company prospected me to purchase a fairly innovative marketing program.  Coincidentally, a local KC company contacted me the very next day, offering a similar service.  I know and like the owner of the local company, and I am a buy-local guy when it makes sense.  So, I met with them and discussed some possibilities.  I then waited for a proposal.  And waited.  And waited.  Meanwhile, the out of town company is calling me to follow up.  When I finally received a proposal from the local company (after not one but two calls asking if they wanted my business or not), it was less targeted to my needs than the one I’d received well before from the out of town company.  Reasoning that if the local outfit didn’t have a sense of urgency about winning the business, they were unlikely to have one when it came to servicing the business, I went with the out of town company.  I’m pleased with my decision – but if the local company had followed up aggressively, they’d have won the deal.

The sales manager:  Sales managers can lose sense of urgency in many ways; the decision to make changes in personnel, for instance, becomes a lack of urgency.  The most common way for urgency to get lost at the sales management level is when changes are desired by ownership, and the sales manager is lackadaisical about pushing that message to his reps, and making sure that the right things happen.  The biggest way the sales manager can reflect a lack of urgency, however, is simply by not making certain that his reps are maximizing their 40 hours per week.
While there are other ways “sense of urgency” can hamper companies at every management level, hopefully, you’re getting the idea.  Sense of urgency means maximizing every lead, every call, every proposal, and every hour.  If you’re doing it, great!  If not, remember those three little words.

Fear can either motivate action or inaction.  Make it motivate your actions.

Two weeks ago, I attended a “Coaching Camp” for speakers run by Darren LaCroix and Patricia Fripp.  If this sounds familiar, it’s because this was my second time attending one of their camps and being coached by these two.  If you happen to be a speaker (aspiring or professional), I give these two the highest of recommendations. It was inspiring for me, in more ways than one.

At these camps, not everyone is coached (I was).  Most are there as “observers,” to soak up the information, learn, observe, and serve as the audience when the coachees are speaking.  And, some observers are more vocal about their feedback than others.  One such person caught my attention because he was very vocal and opinionated about giving feedback, advice, and staking out his position on what a coachee’s speech ought to communicate.  Some of his feedback I agreed with, some I didn’t (and in the interest of full disclosure, he had quite a bit of feedback for me that I disagreed with); that’s normal.  What wasn’t normal was my experience with him after the camp was over.

As it turned out, he’s from Kansas City, too, and he and I were on the same flight home.  As we were waiting for the plane, I asked him about his background as a speaker.  He indicated that he didn’t really have one – he’d been attending these camps and other functions for a couple of years, “honing his message,” and learning.  That’s OK, of course, but my mind immediately went to a rather vocal disagreement that he and I had had the day before during my coaching time.  “Wait a minute,” I said.  “You’ve never spoken anywhere, and yet you knew more about what I should do than I do?”

He explained that he was still working up to the chance to speak somewhere.  I attempted to be helpful. “Look,” I said, “There are 32 different Rotary clubs in Kansas City.  Each one of them needs to fill a podium 52 weeks a year.  That means that just in the Rotary, there are 1700 speaking slots that need to be filled, and they’re always looking for speakers.  If you’re serious about speaking, you should start contacting these people and getting up on stage.  That’s the only way you’ll really get a feel for your abilities and what you have to improve.”

He responded that he didn’t feel that the time was ‘right’ yet.  The truth is that I hear this all the time – from speakers and from salespeople.  Salespeople are constantly waiting for the time to be ‘right,’ when in fact, the ‘right’ time may be passing them by.  How do I know?  Because it happened to me.

Back in 1997, I targeted an account that was a big user of industrial plastics – which I happened to sell.  And I prepared.  Boy, did I prepare!  I researched.  I honed my message.  I practiced.  I even role-played my sales calls.  And then – finally, after a period of about five weeks of doing this – I called the plant manager.  The plant manager informed me, “You’re too late.  I just signed a contract two weeks ago with a different company.”  I was crushed.

It was, of course, my fault.  Had I made my first call on the prospect weeks before, I might have had the opportunity to be part of their buying process. I might not have made the sale – but I’d have gotten dealt in at the table.  By waiting, I missed the opportunity.  That particular opportunity never came back to me, either; they had signed a three-year contract, and by the time it was up, I had moved on to a sales management position elsewhere.

I missed because I was motivated by fear – the fear of failure.  Since then, I’ve been motivated by the fear of missing out.  I prefer the fear of missing out much better; it causes me to ACT instead of prepare.  I see salespeople all the time who look for the perfect phone script, the perfect questions, the perfect words – and they usually don’t exist.  Instead, they miss out on potentially great opportunities because they don’t get into the arena.

Whether you are a speaker or a salesperson, my advice to you is simple.  Whenever you think of delaying an action, ask yourself this question: “If not me, who?  And if not now, when?”

When people wave their red flag in front of you, do you really see it?

I’m not the biggest person in the world for short, pithy statements, but one of my favorites (which, as far as I know, is only attributable to me) is this:  People will show you how they will fail.  Whether we’re talking about jobs, business relationships, or personal relationships, it’s a truism.  There’s a corollary statement to that one, too:  You will fail if you ignore these signals.

I was reminded of this as I discussed a customer relationship issue with a client of mine today.  My client has a key account that was in the process of taking their business elsewhere.  This happens to be a company that I am fairly familiar with; their culture is anti-sales and anti-relationships.  When my client and I worked back through the initial sales process, I discovered that they had told my client’s salesperson that he would forever be dealing only with the purchasing manager; that their key managers simply didn’t have the time to deal with salespeople.

“So,” I said to my client, “they told you up front how the relationship would go bad.  Or, more properly, they told you that you would never have a relationship.”  My client stared at me for a second, and then said, “Yes, I guess you’re right – but we’d always done everything they asked!”  I responded that I’m sure they did, but that there was no value to this with the company.  In short, the customer had told my client of the eventual failure of the business relationship – but my client was so excited simply to have the business that he didn’t make any plans for the eventual collapse.

In short, my client ignored the red flag waving in front of him.  That’s the source of most bad hires, most bad deals, and most bad relationships.  We already have the senses to spot the red flags – it’s just that, as natural optimists, we don’t find them.  So, to help you out, here are some of the most common situations and red flags that will happen to us in selling:

Lack of Respect:  This happens all the time, and salespeople are the world’s best at ignoring it.  Does your contact regularly leave you cooling your heels in the waiting room?  That is a lack of respect for your time.  When I was selling, I would wait – occasionally – for a maximum of 15 minutes past the appointment time.  “But, Troy, if I don’t wait, my competitors will, and I’ll lose the business!”  Nonsense.  I found that if I simply left after fifteen minutes, telling the receptionist to have my contact call me to reschedule a meeting for a time when it was more convenient, that I seldom had to wait again.  And I NEVER lost a customer because of it.  Salespeople constantly want respect from their customers – but if you don’t respect the value of your own time, how do you expect the customer to respect you?

Restricted Contacts:  This is one of the biggest ones, and it happened to my client.  My client knew – and the customer’s contacts knew – that the Purchasing Manager was not the ultimate decision maker, nor the economic buyer, of their services.  By not allowing the salesperson to meet the end-users or the key influencers, the customer was letting my client know that they were contributing no value, and that establishing meaningful relationships was not part of their company culture (and I’m familiar with the company – relationships with vendors are not in fact part of the culture).  That doesn’t mean that my client shouldn’t have accepted the business, but it does mean that they should never have counted on the business.

Slow Pay:  Sometimes customers will pay in a slow fashion because the money is tight. More often, however, slow pay is due to the same lack of respect that I referred to earlier.  Customers that habitually pay slowly may be telling you that there is a problem with the relationship; are you listening?

In the Hiring Process:  This deserves its own article, really; I’ll just hit a few of the high spots here.  I’m constantly amazed by managers who interview and hire salespeople who show up late for interviews, who can’t compose a decent sentence, who have major mistakes on their resume’, or who show them in other ways why they shouldn’t be hired.  We do these things because we end up liking the person and making an emotional investment in them; hire in haste and repent in leisure.

I advise you to watch and listen for the red flags when you hear them – when someone shows you how they will fail, take heed – and they will ALWAYS show you.

Sometimes, the most important questions that you ask aren’t the ones you ask your customer.

  Sometimes, the most important question can be one that you ask yourself.  I saw an example of this recently; I was discussing a particular sales call with a salesperson who worked for a client.  After describing the call, he said, very frustrated, “Troy, I just don’t understand WHY they didn’t buy!”

“Don’t you?”  I asked.  He started to respond, and I said, “Hold on.  Think about that question before you answer, and give it some real thought.  Why didn’t they buy?”  He took a minute or two, and then – grudgingly – admitted that the customer might have had some legitimate reasons for not buying (at least in the customer’s mind).  “But,” he said, “If he’d raised those objections, I could have dealt with them.”  Ultimately, the salesperson failed not because of the questions he asked the customer, but because of a question he didn’t ask HIMSELF.

That question is, “Why WOULDN’T they buy from me?”  I know, I know.  This runs contrary to so much sales teaching, where we are supposed to focus on the reasons why the customer would buy.  However, sometimes, understanding and anticipating why the customer wouldn’t buy is the best way to give the customer reasons TO buy.  As I’ve noted before, the buying decision (particularly in the B2B world) is typically based on logic first, with emotion second.  You’re a logical, thinking human being, just like your customer.  Why not mentally take a moment or two during the sale, process the information given as your customer would, and ask yourself what you would do given the same set of parameters?

True consultative selling (which most salespeople claim to be, yet few really are) requires you to mentally place yourself on the same side of the desk as the customer, process the given information against the needs, and – as a CONSULTANT – help the customer better his/her condition through a purchase.  Again, that’s not a suggestion – it’s a requirement.  And when you do that, what do you find? Do you recognize that it’s truly a good spend, or do you discover that the situation is more like one of these?

The customer doesn’t know enough to buy (or you don’t know enough to sell):  During the Investigation phase of the selling process (if you need clarification on that, it’s fully explained in my book), the customer is seeking a full discovery of needs, and then a complete matching of product or service to fit these needs.  Notice that I said “full discovery” and “complete matching;” this requires a comprehensive questioning and then a full presentation.  Doing this can be scary for the salesperson.  Salespeople will settle for incomplete discovery and partial presentation if they can suggest the solution to a need through it.  Rest assured that the complete set of needs is still within the customer’s head – and if you haven’t fully probed it, they’ll buy from a salesperson who will.

You don’t solve their problem or improve their condition:  Customers buy because they believe the money is better spent than saved; products that solve problems or improve condition justify the spend.  This is where the salesperson enters a ‘pushing the rope uphill’ scenario.  Once again, if you were the customer, what would you do?  Would you spend on a product or service that didn’t create an improvement?  I’m guessing that you would not.  So why would your customer?

You don’t represent good value for the money:  Even if you solve the problem or improve the condition, and even if you have fully discovered needs and presented, this one can get you.  Salespeople always interpret this objection as a simple “price” objection, which is only true a minority of the time.  Ultimately, if you’re asking the customer to spend more money or new money, the additional spend must be justified.  Is it?  Again, place yourself on the same side of the table, divorce your emotions, and ask yourself if what the customer gets for the money is truly justified?

Relationship issues: This is where emotion enters into it.  If you’re trying to break an existing relationship, you have a bar to leap over, and your customer sets the height of that bar.  If you haven’t probed the relationship with their current supplier (which many salespeople don’t, out of fear), you won’t be able to understand where that bar is set – never mind knowing how to jump over it.

Ultimately, successful selling is an information exchange – both sides give information, both sides receive information, and both sides process the information.  Only by understanding how your customer processes the information can you understand how and why your customer will buy. So, my advice is this:  Late in the sales call, ask yourself this question:  “Why WOULDN’T they buy from me?”  And be honest.  Your own answer might surprise you – and help you snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

You can win the first sale, and yet destroy the relationship attempting a second.

Sometimes, the best sales war stories come from non-salespeople.  I heard one yesterday that was a doozy.  I was visiting one of my best friends at an apartment complex that she owns (she’s been in that business for fifteen years).  My friend is smart, educated, and most of all, business savvy.  She’s also loyal to a fault, unless you give her a reason not to be.  She told me about a salesperson who gave her reason not to be.

Several months ago, she had new windows installed in her house.  She liked the salesman and respected him, and the company did a good job.  Now, her apartment complex needs some windows.  Sounds like a great opportunity (there are many more windows in the apartment complex) and nearly a slam-dunk for the salesman, right?  Yes, it should have been.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t, and the reason was the way the salesman handled the call.

The salesman discovered what windows she needed, presented some options, and then started in on the high-pressure “buy today or the price will go up” tactic.  This is, of course, one of the oldest tactics in the world.  It’s cheap, heavy-handed, and customers spot you coming a mile away.  More importantly, it’s almost always a lie.  My good friend and I have one big characteristic in common.  Once you lie, we brand you a liar, and remove all credibility from what you have said.  She ordered the salesman out, and he will never return as long as she owns that complex.

So, where did the salesman go wrong?  He messed up in several areas.  Let’s look at them:

Not assessing the customer’s needs: The salesman’s assumption was that my friend wanted to do a mass window replacement, doing all or nearly all of the windows in one shot.  That wasn’t the truth.  My friend wanted to ‘stage’ the replacement, doing a few windows at a time to manage her cash flow.  That’s not uncommon in this business.  Why didn’t the salesman know this?  Because he never asked.  Questions unasked are answers unheard, and sometimes the key to the sale can lie in those answers.

Not understanding the time frame:  The salesman assumed that there was a high sense of urgency to the purchase.  There wasn’t.  My friend was willing to start the project in a short time frame, but needed to run some numbers first.  The salesman, however, assumed that the customer’s sense of urgency in buying matched his sense of urgency in selling.  It did not (and really, it seldom does).  The salesman wanted the sale right now, and attempted to make that happen.

Not understanding the relationship:  He treated my friend like any first-time customer.  In doing so, he did both himself and my friend a major disservice.  He did my friend a disservice because he didn’t accord her the respect earned by a repeat client.  He did himself a disservice because he had progressed beyond the “Occasional Buyer” relationship level and on toward the “Habitual Buyer” or maybe even “Loyal Customer” level.  By not recognizing that, he torched his relationship.

Using outdated sales tactics:  The old “buy today so the price doesn’t go up” is called “the old” because it is exactly that – old.  It’s been around since salespeople have been around, and what’s more is that customers have been educated to it.  It’s almost always a lie. I’ll never forget the first (and last) time I was called on the lie.  The customer’s name was George.  He was looking at a brand new 1990 Thunderbird, and it was a Saturday morning.  I had been selling for about four months.  George really liked the T-Bird.  As my close, I confidently said, “And, George, if you buy now, I can get you this price, but that won’t be good after today.”

George looked me in the eye and said, “So, if I come in here Monday with a check written for that amount, you won’t sell it to me?”  I was dumbfounded.  George was right and I’d just lied.  Of course we’d sell it to him.  What could I do?  I just sat there silent for a minute, processing this….and then I laughed.  “You’re right, George.  You caught me.  And let me tell you this – no customer will ever catch me that way again, because I’m never going to use that again.”  George smiled.  I could tell he believed me.  I asked him what he had planned for the weekend.  “I’m going to go to the lake,” he said.

“Sounds like a good time.  Tell me, would you rather do it in this new Thunderbird or in your old car?”

George smiled and said, “That’s why I’m here.”

Thirty minutes later, he drove out in his new Thunderbird.  Now you’re wondering if I’ve ever used the ‘buy before the price goes up’ tactic again.  The answer is yes.  About a half-dozen times in the 23 years since.  And every time, it’s been the truth.  Most of the time, manufacturers were about to change pricing and it was out of my control.  In those cases, I felt that it was only right to give customers the advance knowledge.  Twice, I’ve let prospective clients know that my speaking fees were about to go up, and that the proposal in front of them would no longer be valid in a few days.  One booked at the lower price.  One attempted to catch me in a lie…and they ended up booking at the higher price.

So, what are your take-aways from this?  First of all, forget the old, hackneyed tactics.  Those hurt you with every customer.  Second, make sure to assess the situation (yours and the customer’s) before you define your sales approach.  Your customers will thank you for it.  The salesperson had won the first sale to my friend (her house) but managed to destroy his relationship attempting the second sale.

What you carry with you from your past experiences can greatly affect the success of your future experiences.

I have a female friend who is moving back out into the single scene again.  She’s filled with trepidation over the issues that come with dating in your early 40s, and she asked me for some advice.  Basically, I told her that if she wanted something, she should simply ask for it – even if that pushed her outside her comfort zone (and as it turns out, asking men out is WAY outside her comfort zone).  I then used a quote from one of my mentors, Patricia Fripp:  “Life is a series of sales situations.  If you don’t ask, the answer is always ‘no.’”

She then asked me a very interesting question.  She said, “Come on, Troy, you know how rough it can be to ask someone else out.  Tell me about one that really crushed you.”  And then a funny thing happened.  I honestly, truthfully couldn’t remember one of those moments.  It’s not that it didn’t happen – believe me, I got shot down a lot – but none of it stuck with me.  I realized that, therein, lies one of the big secrets to selling success.  Oh, and then I broke my kneecap on Saturday, which reinforced my thoughts.

After realizing that I couldn’t remember a ‘no’ from my dating days, I probed my memory banks further, and started thinking about the many “no’s” that I’ve heard in the world of selling.  Here, there were some that I could remember.  Interestingly enough, however, every “no” that I could remember from selling had a lesson attached to it; i.e. I lost the sale because of a mistake that I made, not because of general ‘rejection.’  Lost sales have only been impactful enough for me to remember if it was my mistake that caused me the sale.  Hmmm….now there’s food for thought.

I knew I was onto something that would be valuable to you, and then I took a road trip.  I left with my wife and a couple of friends on a motorcycle road trip around Iowa last Thursday.  On Saturday morning, it happened.  The leader of our little group, approaching an intersection that we had planned to simply pass, suddenly slowed and put on his turn signal.  I was following him in a staggered position (on the other side of the lane from him).  Those of you who know me know that I’ve only been riding for about a year.  My instinct told me to continue straight through the intersection, stop safely, and then turn back and see what the situation was.

Then I decided that I could make the turn.  Wrong decision.  I slowed quickly, hit a small patch of gravel, and went down at about 25MPH.  My knee hit a rock or something, fracturing my kneecap.  That was the only injury I suffered; I was wearing quality protective gear such as a jacket and Kevlar lined jeans, as well as an expensive, high quality helmet.  To make a long story short, I spent the next two nights at the hospital in Carroll, Ia, getting my knee surgically repaired.  I’m back home now, and my mobility for the next few weeks will be reduced.  Fortunately I can still work.

I’ve been asked if I’m going to ride again (yes), if I’m going to be miserable for the next few weeks (no), and if I’m angry at the other rider (no).  Don’t get me wrong; I’m not delighted to be hobbling around on crutches, but the result could have been much worse.  Besides, all of the answers above come from a philosophy that has helped me succeed.

I choose to leave past negative experiences in the past, where they belong.  That’s why I can’t remember women who I asked out on a date and who turned me down.  I have made a conscious choice that those events will be left where and when they happened.

I retain those experiences that taught me lessons.  I can remember failed sales efforts in the past – IF the failure resulted from a mistake that I made, and that I learned from.  I can still, for instance, recall a sale that I lost in my first year of business because I tried for the second sale before I won the first.  That one still sticks in my craw a bit because I know better now, and I knew better then.  However, lost sales that simply resulted from a bad fit?  I honestly can’t remember them.

I choose not to dwell on current pain or negativity.  As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in my recliner with my laptop on my lap (funny how that works).  My right knee hurts.  It’s not agonizing; it is, however, achy and annoying.  The doctors gave me medication to manage the pain, and it’s doing so about as well as can be expected.  Yet, this morning, I’ve completed two telephone consultations with clients and locked in two speaking engagements for the first quarter of next year.  That’s because I have made the conscious choice to focus on things other than my knee.

These attributes, in my opinion, are core attributes of a successful sales attitude.  The successful salesperson keeps successes current, and leaves failures in the past.  When obstacles occur, the successful salesperson finds ways to adapt and improvise to work around them.  Here’s your take-away from this article; think of it as “four ways to make the most of every sales opportunity:”

1. When you fail on a sales call, examine it quickly for lessons to be learned – and then leave it behind you.  Nothing kills the next sales call quite like the last unsuccessful one.
2. Keep reminders of success close by; consciously remove reminders of failure.  I once visited a company where salespeople pinned contracts that fell through to their walls.  Not surprisingly, they weren’t getting many wins – because of the constant reminder of failure.
3. Don’t live in your pain.  My knee hurts right now and it’s hard to get up and move around – but I am focusing on the work that I can do at the moment, coupled with what I will be doing when I am able.
4. Allow customers to re-sell you.  When you’re in a slump, one of the great things to do is ask current customers for testimonials; they can re-sell you on why you do what you do in the first place.

During my conversation with my female friend, she said that she had asked two guys out in her life – one in high school and one in college – and they had both been bad experiences, and because of that, she was afraid to do it again.  My first response was, “Wow – that is a long time to carry that around!”  What I realized, though, is this – in life, what we carry with us from our past determines our future.  When you carry bad sales calls into your next sales call, you poison that well.  Instead, carry your wins with you – and you’ll find that they repeat themselves.