You cannot ignore the present. It’s where your sales are!

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My sales perspective flies in the face of traditional selling. And it’s not just a disruption, it’s the new way of sales. What’s your perspective?

Here are seven realities to get your thinking started:

FIRST REALITY: Traditional selling is aggressive – telling, pitching, manipulating, and closing. This old-world approach to sales is over and has been for more than a decade.

SECOND REALITY: The first sale that’s made is the salesperson. If the prospective customer does not by you, they’re not buying anything.

THIRD REALITY: The customer is as smart or smarter than you are. The internet has provided them with competitive savvy and social media has provides proof.

FORTH REALITY: Your customers and prospects are busy with THEIR stuff and may have little or no time to be bothered by you and your stuff. It’s so much more powerful when they find you in time of need.

FIFTH REALITY: Customers and prospects want intellectual engagement about how THEY WIN, not a sales pitch! They do not care about your urgency to make quota. They only care about their urgency to make profit.

SIXTH REALITY: The prospective customer must perceive value in your sales offering, trust you as a person and as a company, perceive that they win as a result of purchase, and be able to visualize outcome after purchase (maybe with the help of your video testimonials).

SEVENTH REALITY: You better have a social presence and a social reputation that proves your worth to others, and provides peace of mind to the prospect.

Look at this list – carefully – and see if what you do, the actions you take, or any of the strategies about how you sell are contained here. If they are, you will consistently lose to the ‘new way.’

  • Cold calling. If selling has a dark side, it’s the cold call. Total interruption of others (the prospect), and predominantly a waste of salespeople’s time. Higher than 90% rejection rate and the major cause of sales failure.
  • Hunting and farming salespeople. This is basically a sales specialist making a sale and then running away. Leaving behind the service department, or inside sales, or the delivery guy, and the customer to feel desserted. Hunting and farming is the worst case for relationship building ever created.
  • Find the pain. Perhaps the rudest of all sales processes, it’s “probing” to make prospects feel uncomfortable. This is an old-world tactic, where the salesperson miraculously proposes a solution to an issue that the prospect has. The solution is not the issue. The issue is that finding the pain is the focal point of the sale. No value, no engagement, no connection – simply manipulation. The only thing more idiotic (and more rude) than “finding the pain” is cold calling.
  • Pitch the product. Telling your prospective customer stuff about your product that they could’ve found online in three seconds, or that you could’ve emailed them in advance of your meeting. Customers do not care what you’re selling, unless you’re showing them how they win as a result of purchase such as how they will produce more, and how they will profit more. Start there.
  • Overcome objections. “Your price is too high.” Really? You still dealing with that? Where’s the value? Where’s the testimonial? Where’s the relationship? Where’s the trust? Where’s the social proof?
  • Close the sale. Manipulative closing is a thing of the past. The sale is made emotionally, not manipulatively.
  • Proposals and bidding. This part of selling will never go away, but can be significantly reduced with loyal relationships and proven quality.
  • Insincere follow-up. Call looking for money.
  • Customer satisfaction. J.D. Power and Associates gives ‘customer satisfaction’ awards to airlines. Do I need to say anything more about how ridiculous customer satisfaction is?
  • Ask for (beg for) referrals. If you ask for a referral once, and the customer does not give you one, and you call again reminding the customer that they promised to give you a referral, and the customer still does not give you one, they will never take your call again. Instead of asking for referrals, why don’t you give one?
  • Low or no social media presence. Failure to understand the fact that social media is a combination of attraction, proof that you are you say you are, and a sales tool.
  • Low or no social media awareness. Inability or refusal of salespeople to participate gives your competition an ability to use it and dominate.
  • Low or no relationship. The quality of the relationship allows you to make multiple sales, earn more profit, earn referrals, and gain their testimonial proof. If you’re lacking in these four areas it’s your relationship report card, and loss of sales or profit, or both.

    • Me? I prefer to be assertive. Assertive salespeople ask. Aggressive salespeople tell. Assertive salespeople go for the customer. Aggressive salespeople go for the sale.

    Which one are you? It’s the difference between the old way and the new way.

    The ‘new way’ is next week – stay tuned!

    Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

    About the Author

    Jeffrey GitomerJeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

    Customer Retention: Stop Rolling the Dice

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    Banking on a steady stream of new business can be like gambling away your future. It’s a well-established fact that customer retention can yield a huge return—yet companies still struggle to make it happen. Doing things like creating a more positive customer experience right from the start and identifying the root issues that cause customer churn can ensure a stable and prosperous future.

    Below is an infographic from Sparked that illustrates the dangerous mindsets companies have that ultimately lead to churn and a significant loss in profit.

    BPM Process Methodology

    Click here to view the complete infographic.

    Macro Maps Help You Align Processes and Strategy

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    StrategyDriven Process Management Article | Macro Maps Help You Align Processes and StrategyWhen organizations first start doing process improvement they use a myriad of ways to decide which processes to improve first, such as:

    1. IT bought some software and needs to install it, so let’s look at the current process first.
    2. A leader raised his hand and said, “I’d like to start with this one.”
    3. A department wants to improve the process because it would help in a key initiative.
    4. An ‘easy’ process is chosen to start on.

    But after a number of processes are selected with this ‘whoever is interested’ approach, leaders and process Improvement practitioners see that it would make sense to select processes that are underperforming, would provide increases in market share and revenue, or would directly support key strategic initiatives. In order to do that, you need to have an understanding of core process in the company now. A Macro Map can help.

    A Macro Map is a graphical rendering of an organization as a portfolio of processes. (Many thanks to my colleague Jerry Talley for initially developing this concept of a Macro Map. [www.jlTalley.com] He and I have been using it and improving it ever since.) Here’s an example:

    Student Services Macro Map

    In this example, the core processes (ones that produce the key outputs of the organization) are highlighted in one section, support processes in another section, and customers in the third section.

    How do you Build a Macro Map?

    I suggest starting with a small group of executives/managers who know the work of the department or division. (If you are doing this for the whole enterprise, you will need to build it by groups and then form the total picture, making sure to show the cross functional processes.) Build the first draft of the macro map with them, and then take it to staff and have them verify it and add to it. Below are some specifics to help you with the method.

    With the managers:

    • Begin with listing the customers – the people who receive or use the output.
    • Then list the core products or services delivered by the department.
    • Now identify the processes that produce the core products.
    • Then identify the processes that support the delivery of the core products. Examples of these could be planning, scheduling staff, research, securing resources.

    Then take the map in graphic form to a representative staff group.

    • Explain how you built the first draft of the map with the managers, and what its components are.
    • Start with the core processes and ask them if anything is missing or needs revision.
    • Then go to the support processes.
    • Ask them if they can see the components of their job in different place on the Macro Map. What components of their job are missing?
    • Keep adding and revising the map as suggestions are made.

    How the Macro Map is Used

    • The Macro Map provides a list of the portfolio of processes for the department or organization. This enables anyone to compare the voice shouting the loudest for a process selection to be compared to the whole portfolio. START HERE
    • These processes are categorized, so it’s easy to see which are the core ones supporting customer deliverables, and what other types of processes there are. (This helps to make it clear which ones are the most important to the customers.)
    • Add quantitative data to the Macro Map. The Macro Map below is the same one as shown at the top, but now it has data showing number of hours worked on each process and the customer satisfaction ranking. It is obvious which ones demand the most employee time. And for this organization, where the goal was to streamline processes, reduce workload, and not hire additional employees, it was obvious which ones to work on first.

    Student Services Macro Map with Data

    Some organizations create a Business Architecture graphic to show how business strategy, functions, processes, technology and data relate. The Macro Map is simpler than that and focuses on processes and customers. When you add baseline data to a Macro Map, you visualize the criteria that the organization has chosen to use to prioritize their projects. In the example for Student Services it was employee hours and customer ratings. Those might now have been my choice, but the organization had these metrics and they worked fine. When doing the first Macro Maps I like to keep the measurement simple – not requiring weeks to gather. Other measurement criteria could include costs, throughput, comparisons against competitors, variability, market share, risk, or alignment with the strategy. Quantitative measurement values point to the top three to five processes, but leaders need to consider some other parameters – namely time to complete, complexity, cost, etc. that could influence the choice of one project or another.

    The macro map is a wonderful info graphic to display and categorize all the processes. It also gets executives and employees engaged in thinking about the big picture by process, and helps each one relate it to their own work. And it doesn’t take that long to build. Try it!

    About the Author

    Shelley SweetShelley Sweet, the Founder and President of I4 Process, and author of The BPI Blueprint, is a highly respected BPM Practitioner. She provides consultation, workshops and training programs for clients ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, educational institutions, and government organizations. Her programs are based on a unique 3-PEAT method of modeling processes and analyzing data that accelerates operational improvements, and builds leaders and employees who sustain operational excellence. Want to learn more about BPM metrics? Email Shelley at: [email protected]

    Help Buyers Buy: Facilitate The Buy Path, Then Sell

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    Your solution is the last thing a buyer needs. Literally.

    The sales model is a solution placement model. It does a fine job assessing needs, pitching, presenting, and placing solutions. Yet we close no more than 7% of prospects from first call, spend huge amounts of money creating presentations, sites, and marketing materials bring that in a fraction of the business they were designed to, spend inordinate amounts of resource responding to RFPs that fail, and attempting to make appointments with prospects who either reject us or don’t buy. We waste at least 90% of a sales professional’s time. As a result we hire more people and set our budgets accordingly.

    We have great solutions. Our sales folks are professionals. What’s the problem?

    The problem is that buyers don’t buy the way we sell. In fact, a purchase is the last step buyers take along their buy path, and we sit and wait for them to traverse their steps without having the proper skills to influence their journey from the start.

    A Buying Decision is a Change Management Problem

    To understand how buyers buy, we must understand systems and change. Buying anything, from a shirt to a company, a training program or a piece of software, is a change management activity. Something that has existed, and worked well-enough for a period of time, will be replaced by a relatively unknown entity. Change. And change is systemic: anything that touches the new element will be affected in an unknown way and potentially mess up the system. And systems won’t abide by disruption; we learned that in 6th grade chemistry.

    Like all of us, buyers live in systems; everything within them chugs along together like a set of gears so the system remains stable. Stability – the status quo – gets maintained with rules and processes and job descriptions and relationships. Whatever doesn’t fit within the system gets chucked out because the system is sacrosanct. When there is a problem, the system creates workarounds so it can continue functioning; the problem then becomes part of the tapestry of the system. Only when there is no other option will the buyer face the potential disruption of bringing in something that is outside the system.

    In order for buyers to buy and be willing to have something foreign enter their system, they need to first manage systemic change: they must get buy-in for the change, design new rules or roles, replace the old solution in a way that insures equilibrium is maintained, and last but not least, involve the managers, department heads, and sundry people who will touch the ultimate solution – folks not necessarily direct stakeholders or decision makers, but folks whose jobs will be effected by the change. Without managing this change, they will buy nothing, regardless of their need or the efficacy of your solution.

    A buying decision is a systems problem. And sales acts as if the buyer’s problem were an isolated event.

    Buying Includes a 13 Step Buy-in Change Process

    There are unique change management issues that must be addressed before a purchase can occur. Indeed: until there is a clear path to change, there is no way to even know who is a prospect; before every appropriate voice is assembled and heard, there is no way to define a need. As outsiders focused on placing solutions, we have no ability to enter into the buyer’s environment and facilitate these activities because they are idiosyncratic and personal. And the time it takes them to figure out how to manage the backend change is the length of the sales cycle.

    We’re currently entering at the end of the decision path: the very last thing a buyer needs is your solution. The last thing. But we can enter earlier. Here’s what we should be facilitating that is currently outside our purview and skill sets:

    1. All – ALL – who will touch the new solution must have their voices heard. Usually it takes buyers a while to understand who must be included on the Buying Decision Team. In a small sale, it’s easier than a larger sale, but the process is the same.

    It’s possible to facilitate our buyers in both assembling the full Buying Decision Team on the first or second call, and their discovery of the types of systems change they would need to address. They have to do this anyway: helping them speeds up the buying process and gets everyone at the table for an appointment.

    2. Before a purchase, every element that would be disrupted needs to know how to compensate for change: tech folks must figure out their new scheduling or find outsourced support; sales and marketing must have a unified strategy to share budget; HR must get the right groups together, etc. It’s unique in each situation, although totally independent of need.
    Sellers can use a facilitation model to navigate buyers through their change before they sell, so all areas that will be affected will know how to manage the change and be ready to buy. This speeds up the sales cycles and makes the seller a part of the Team.

    9 out of the 13 steps in a buying decision involve systems change and include idiosyncratic, historic, and personal activities. Using only the sales model or marketing, a seller has no place at the table until it’s time to choose a solution. But we’re missing great opportunities to become real relationship managers and trusted advisors and suffering much longer sales cycles than necessary.

    Use Buying Facilitation® with Sales

    Selling and buying are two different activities. Change the way you are entering. Stop:

    • pitching, presenting, or discussing solutions before buyers have defined their route to change;
    • trying to get an appointment until the entire Buying Decision Team is assembled;
    • assuming because you’ve spoken to one or two people there is a need;
    • assuming that because there’s a need it’s a prospect;
    • basing your sale on your solution;
    • basing your sale on price (it has nothing to do with anything).

    Instead, before selling:

    • facilitate excellence and buy-in, from the first call with the gatekeeper;
    • be a neutral navigator throughout the steps of change;
    • help assemble the complete Buying Decision Team (even for a small sale) with you on it;
    • recognize when a system cannot change and when it’s no longer a prospect (it’s got nothing to do with needing your solution).

    Buyers don’t need you: they need to solve a business problem. And the business problem involves more of a solution than just your product. It’s time to help buyer’s buy.

    About the Author

    Sharon Drew Morgen is founder of Morgen Facilitations, Inc. (www.newsalesparadigm.com). She is the visionary behind Buying Facilitation®, the decision facilitation model that enables people to change with integrity. A pioneer who has spoken about, written about, and taught the skills to help buyers buy, she is the author of the acclaimed New York Times Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

    Need help developing content, tools, training or questions that will enable a buyer’s buying decision process? A speaker at your next conference? Contact Sharon Drew at [email protected] or visit her website: www.buyingfacilitation.com.

    Salespeople have questions. Jeffrey has answers.

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    I get a ton of emails from people seeking insight or asking me to solve their sales dilemmas. Here are a few that may relate to your job, your life, and (most important) your sales thought process right now.

    Jeffrey, Years ago I took your advice to get into Twitter for my business. What do you think of only paid clients having access to tweets through an approved followers account? Mike

    Mike, If you do it that way you need two accounts. One that you give to everybody in the world and one that you give just to an elite group of people. And if you do the elite group of people, notate on your Twitter page that, “This is for my clients only. All others, if you’re looking for this great advice, you have to become a client of mine. Here’s how…” And use it as a lead source. Best regards, Jeffrey

    Jeffrey, Do you think it’s a waste of time to call a guest that has just checked out of my hotel to thank him or her for staying with us? What would be the best way to gain their repeat business? Evangeline

    Evangeline, If you’re going to call a customer after they’ve stayed in your hotel, first of all, you better make it short and sweet. Second of all, the value must be for them. Don’t ask something like “How was your stay?” because they’re going to say, “Fine.” I want to know what the best thing about their stay at the hotel was. Did the hotel accomplish their goals? Oh, that’s cool. On a scale of 1-10, how was the food? On a scale of 1-10, how was the shower? On a scale of 1-10, what was the quality of your room like? On a scale of 1-10, how fast was the Internet? Those are the things that bug customers. I’m in hotels 250 nights a year. They’re the ones that bug me. So get those things. Get their opinion, based on a scale, or based on some words, not just “How was it? It was fine.” Don’t pat people on the head and ask a bunch of stupid questions. Get them engaged. And then you can say, “Well when are you coming back?” That’s all you need. Jeffrey

    Jeffrey, When I send out quotes and proposals, clients seem to take their time reviewing the information and completely disregard the respond by date on the quote. I feel clients don’t respect this time frame and, in addition, I feel that we, as salespeople, end up on the defensive explaining why we’re following up. I feel clients today want everything for nothing, expect the best from a company, and yet, they just do not seem to care about the value of what they’ve requested. How do you know when to just give up on a client like that and move on? Aaron

    Aaron, Clients want everything? Give them everything! Clients want value in the proposal? Put value in the proposal! Leave your prices out of the proposal so they have to call you to get it. “Oh, prices? Yea, you have to call me for those.” Come on, use your head. You’re not sending a quote out, you’re building a relationship and the quote is basically something that confirms the sale. What are you doing with your time? And don’t cast yourself with a bunch of other salespeople. This is you. Don’t be defensive when you’re following up. Do you know what a total waste of time that is and you look like a jerk, literally. Be offensive. Explain more reasons why they should buy. Talk about their motive. Talk about their value. You don’t even know why they want to buy. You’re just sending out a proposal on a wing and a prayer and hoping. Not good. Best regards, Jeffrey

    Jeffrey, I’ve recently moved into cruise sales. I find that customers in the travel industry shop for prices but after the prices are given the customer will disappear before any real discussion takes place. How can I turn these prospects into a sale? Ben

    Ben, The first thing you want to do is get to a real discussion before you give the price. Find out why they want to take a cruise. Is it a honeymoon? Is it a 10-year anniversary? Is it just for the heck of it? What are they trying to do? At the end of the cruise what do they want to have happen? What do they want the outcome of that cruise to be? That’s their emotional trigger for buying. And I want to know about the best cruise they’ve ever been on? I want to know if this is their first cruise or their 100th cruise.

    I want to assure them my cruise may not be the actual lowest price but it’s always the best value, because when people get off a cruise, they’re going to remember three things:

    1. What happened? Did anything go wrong?
    2. How was the food?
    3. What did they do? How was the view like if they went by the mountains? What were the ports like if they were adventurous?

    So Ben, your job in this process is to uncover all their stuff before you give the price and set a firm meeting – I mean a firm meeting, a day and a time, not like early next week; Monday at 1:30PM – to talk to them after you give the price so you can reconnect. Got it? Best regards, Jeffrey

    Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

    About the Author

    Jeffrey GitomerJeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].