What Keeps Your Customers Up At Night?

I have observed, become skilled at, employed, taught, and discarded plenty of sales methods in my time. One need only to Google “sales and marketing techniques” to read an infinite list of systems. “Provoke” has by no means been a technique – until now.

Some may well pronounce that loads of sales people already provoke their prospects with the long-standing foot-in-the-door, bait-and-switch, or give-me-your-critique-while-I-hope-you-see-my-value modus operandi. Thanks to the March 2009 edition of the Harvard Business Review, I have been provoked to peep at sales with a tough set of eyes.

What keeps your customers up at night? What causes the chief executive officer (CEO) of your client to lie awake? Resolve these matters with your product or service and your customers will sleep well thanks to you.

No question about it: This is a harsh period to sell to business clients and the consumer public. Corporate and personal budget allowances just are not as abundant. Customers and businesses to which you sell are slicing their budgets. If you sensed it was tough to make a sale beforehand – when normally the lion’s share of a customer’s budget was due to existing binders – you’re finding out how much more difficult it can be when your portion departs in across-the-board budget cuts. Making matters worse, your customer relationships have lost much of their influence. With not as much capital to go around, proposals are subjected to higher levels of examination in buying organizations, and the managers you’ve conventionally dealt with are no longer the decision-makers.

The good news is you can, in spite of everything, make the sale. The bad news is for your competitors. They won’t be an enthusiast of this suggestion. That’s great news for you.

All of this would be painstakingly dispiriting if not for one truth: Companies have outlasted downturns before and some have even profited. Yes, there are companies that are buying. Are you selling?

In a nutshell, here is how adding some provocation to your sales skills works out.

1. Spot a problem that keeps a decision-maker up at night. If you were CEO of your client, what one hardship would you want to unravel this year? How could your product, service, or system make this a reality? You know the industry; You attend the trade shows; You study the periodicals. Now, what’s absent that would allow your customers to produce sales, boost customer commitment, reduce turnover, increase efficiencies, etc.?
2. Develop an inventive viewpoint with reference to the concern. “If XYZ client made use of my system, they would witness a sales increase of 30 percent. Profits would increase by 50 percent.” “If they don’t use my product, here’s how a competitor might get market share.” “In solid dollars, how does my service increase staff retention and lower turnover and additional training costs?” Get the picture? See in your mind’s eye that you are a wide-awake-in-the-middle-of-the-night CEO and uncover your solution.
3. Give traditional lead-generation methods the boot and go right for the decision-maker. Interview the CEO for a white paper you’re writing on your fresh outlook. Offer copies to all of his executive team. The time you spend interviewing the CEO allows him to impart burning problems and for you to put pen to paper on how your solutions repair the predicament. When over and done with, publish a complimentary, abridged article in your client’s state association publication. The CEO gets recognition – free of charge — and you get on-the-house marketing to a much targeted audience, the decision-maker, the one who can authorize the check issued to you.
4. Demonstrate you can fix the dilemma. Showcase achievement with clients who have used your product, service, or system. Explain the results. Transfer the results into what it means for your prospective client’s venture. I don’t know of any executive who won’t pay a dime for what will bring a dollar. Show how you supply these results.

Provocation-based selling goes further than the predictable needs-based, customer-centric, or consultative sales styles. These methods seek out existing concerns in a question-and-answer discourse with line managers. Provocation-based selling helps customers distinguish their competitive challenges in a new-fangled light that makes attending to detailed agonizing problems unquestionably pressing. This approach is not inappropriate for every selling state you will see in a slump, nor is it only legitimate under testing monetary circumstances. However, for many companies that perceive their old approaches are losing strength, its moment in time has come. And you are the one putting forward the point. A point that, if taken earnestly, can assist your customers in sleeping sound through what kept them up at night.

Night-night loyal customer. Sleep well.

 

 

Sales Cultures – Adapt, Migrate, or Die

I realized a vital message on the subject of long-term continued existence in the desert last week – Adapt, migrate, or die.

My family and I spend a great deal of time at a second home in the Anza-Borrego area of California’s Colorado Desert, 100 miles due east of San Diego. It is quite the location for activity – hiking canyons that lead to mountain peaks reaching 5,000 feet in elevation; racing dune buggies over 500 miles of sand trails at or below sea level; and, staying ready for temperatures that attain 120°F in the summer and plunge to 20°F in the winter.

Of grand interest to me is the immeasurable display of existence in a region that gives the impression of being so unfruitful. From the bighorn sheep on top of the mountain crags to the iguana-like chuckwalla hidden in the sands, wildlife is rich. From the ocotillo that springs to life after rain to the desert lily waiting good-naturedly underground, the mountains, valleys, and plains teem with life.

This life understands how to endure in the most chaotic of environments.

Last week, as my family and I made our way back to the suburbs, we stopped by the visitor’s center at the entrance to the Anza-Borrego State Park. Inside the park headquarters, we observed an exhibit describing animals that inhabit this desert. Frankly, I have seen the display countless times, but the heading – for the first time – fascinated me. “Life in the Desert – Adapt, Migrate, or Die.” And a business approach for sales cultures was born.

Can your sales culture live to tell the tale in the most unstable of financial environments? Will you adapt, migrate, or die?

Fact:  You don’t have the luxury of 24 months to build a “sales and service” culture.  Your customers won’t wait. However, time and again, I hear, “Our customers don’t want to be sold to…We don’t want to appear as pushy…We want to focus on service, not sales…Our competitors sell; we’re different…We’re not ready for a sales culture.”

Permit me to argue against those statements: If you want your customers to buy, you need to sell. You only push what others do not want. The highest level of service is sales (thanks to professional speaker Rick Olson). When your competitors sell, you lose business. If you are not ready for a sales culture, you are not ready to survive.

Adapt, migrate, or die.

That said, below are ten practices to build and preserve a sales culture that not only survives, but flourishes in a setting that witnesses extremes on an expected basis.

1. Acquire commitment to sales from your executive leadership and Board of Directors. A fresh culture will stipulate investment in training, resources, and systems.
2. Build enterprise-wide backing for sales. Your entire company will need to value the importance of sales and how each person can support efforts beyond their day by day activities.
3. Hire sales experts for sales positions. Sales takes backbone, tenacity, and time. Sales success is not instantaneous and can be far-away. It takes a definite skill and persona to accomplish something in sales.
4. Take sales training out of the training room and into practice. Sales manuals do no good on the shelf. Get your sales staff on the go without delay in exercising their skills.
5. Engage your customers in conversations that focus on your customer’s success and prosperity. Whether you make the sale without ado or later, your customers notice your commitment to a relationship.
6. Build a jam-packed pipeline of potential sales. Some sales will happen then and there. Others take time and follow up. Enough sales-based activity ensures a standard current of leads, prospects, and customers.
7. Pay for performance. Top sales leaders require top level pay. They do, in spite of everything, raise revenue. Reward them considerably.
8. Manage your sales team for most excellent results. Sales people do best when they sell. Allow them. Hire support staff. Check in daily for speedy coaching sessions. Invest in training that builds hard skills, soft skills, and outlook.
9. Set goals with your sales team. Your sales team knows the reality of results that are achievable. Bottom-up goal setting injects realism into your revenue planning.
10. Reward your sales support team. The sale isn’t certified until all of the paperwork is complete. This involves another person and, sometimes, several departments. In your incentive plan, include sales support in bonuses. It builds commitment to the process.
    

Every feature of a complete sales culture strategy – sales force organization, hiring, sales manager selection, training, compensation, technology, goal setting, and performance management – requires sales leadership to be just as strong as the sales force.  With a straight-forward comprehension of the entire process of recruiting, building, and managing a results-based sales and support team, progressive organizations greatly increase their chances of finding, satisfying, and retaining the best customers.