Are your Salespeople asking the right questions.......

to add value to the conversation with and informed self driven prospect.

Reading a contribution by Paul McCord to an interesting discussion on sales force ineffectiveness started by Dave Brock over at The Customer Collective, lead me to this question. I think it is a real challenge we have to become aware of and have to have answers to if we want salespeople to be able to continue bringing value to their interactions with such prospects. Bringing this value is key for the salesperson to build credibility and establish a relationship to generate sustainable revenue streams.

Most buying processes, today, start by a search on the net. This allows prospects to form an opinion about a product or service and its potential suppliers without needing the help of the salesperson. Before the Internet, salespeople were the gateway to this information. What is left now is the mistrust and fear from prospects to be manipulated by the sellers. Before they did not have the choice than engage with the salesperson anyway. Today, prospects are given means to form the opinion keeping the salesperson out of the loop until late in the buying process. .

As if this were not enough, new lead generation and lead nurturing tools, mostly operated by the marketing organizations, cause that the initial contact between the prospect and the salesperson is even later in the buying cycle.

When a sales person finally can establish contact with the prospect, this prospect is already very advanced in the decision process. Salespeople just wanting to close a deal, probably will even be happy about this. They run though the risk that they might become obsolete very soon, if all they do is taking the order. The number of purchases customers are able and willing to make via the Internet without direct human intervention from the seller is growing daily.

For purchases where the customer is not willing or able to make the purchasing decision without a salesperson's help, we have to consider modifying the approach of needs analysis as it is taught today.

While a patient, seeing a doctor, will accept that the doctor goes through his/her diagnosis procedure despite the fact that the patient formed an own opinion about his/her state of health, a prospect having formed an opinion about a solution is very unlikely to accept the standard needs analysis procedure from a sales person. Such an analysis would be perceived as a waste of time. Studies done with buyers in the IT sector revealed that they already think salespeople are making the sales cycle too long compared to how they want to buy.

Why is it more difficult for a sales person to use the classical needs analysis scheme with an informed self driven prospect? Prospects rarely see a sales person as a trustworthy authority for where they seek help. Their impression will be reinforced by the fact that chances are high the salesperson will not be able to help immediately. Prospects will ask for help in their decision on a level where the salespersons first must consult with other functions within their organization. Salespeople risk giving the impression of 'just being a conduit without much value added'.

Nevertheless, a salesperson seriously interested in building a relationship instead of closing a deal,has to make sure that the prospect has not formed any wrong perceptions about a certain offering. Purchases done on wrong perceptions will end up in customer dissatisfaction.

Guess who the customer is going to blame if this were to happen, the sales person. “He/she should have told me so that this offering does not fit my needs”. It is an irrational reaction. First the prospects mistrust salespersons and make it difficult for them to fulfill their role of a consultant. When expectations are not met, customers need somebody to blame. Ironically, they accuse the same person, that they before did not let do the job properly. We cannot change the customer. So we have to adapt the behavior of the salespeople.

The remedy, I suggest is to modify the questions we ask informed self driven prospects.

Using confirmation questions could be the way forward to provide value for interaction with such prospects. Why not start with something like “I assume you have set your mind on this solution X to help you improve your business in area Y.” I think few prospects would object being asked this type of question . It acknowledges the fact that the prospect is already far advanced in the decision process. It also signals that the sales person is focused on the customer's business outcome and wants to make sure that the solution meets the prospect's expectations in this respect.

For such an approach to work, we not only need to focus on the questioning technique used by the salesperson. Being able to ask this simple question requires, that the salesperson understands what business problem a particular offering solves.

Ask yourself where the salesperson can get this information within your organization? I would not be surprised if no place could be found where this is readily available. Salespeople, aware of the need for such information, will thus have made up their ideas by themselves. Leaving salespeople alone in this important task, creates the risk of ending up with unsatisfied customers. Sales people might have formed wrong perceptions for themselves and despite good intentions will end up perpetuating their wrong perceptions to their prospects. The customer will thus end up with unmet expectations.

Preparing salespeople to add value to informed and self directed prospects will require new approaches for sales enablement. Teaching people what a product does, how it compares to competition etc. is relevant because salespeople are expected to know more if they want to gain credibility with their prospects .But it is not sufficient. Sales people also and maybe first need to understand what business outcome a customer can expect from buying a certain offering. I consider it a task of marketing to create this understanding.

Successful sales enablement will thus start with marketing expanding their focus and understanding themselves as a service provider to the sales force. After all they were instrumental, with their websites, lead generation and -nurturing systems, creating the new environment salespeople have to live in.

Is There a Future for Professional Selling?

Yes, but not in the form we know and practice selling today. This is one of my takeaways from the round table discussion between Nigel Edelshain, Jonathan Farrington, Jill Konrath, Linda Richardson and Dave Stein over at the Top Sales Experts. Especially “order takers” and 'glib talkers” will have a bleak future according to Jonathan Farrington. Intelligent strategic orchestrators and business advisors looking to develop long term allies however will have a bright future according to him. Jill Konrath seconded that she hopes that sales is really changing that much.

So we should expect a lot of organizational transformation within sales forces. However, and this is my second take away, the salespeople are not the primary target for this transformation. The sales profession -if we want to use this term despite the fact that from a scientific standpoint 'sales' is not yet a profession- faces not only a leadership crisis but a disaster as Dave Stein put it.

The transformation has to start at the very top with company leaders. They should get rid of the myths that super salespersons make good sales managers and that the necessary competences come with the title. Sales Management is an occupation in itself requiring different specific skills than those of a sales superstar.

Relying just on tribal wisdom, where newly appointed sales managers draw on what they have observed their own managers doing, will not bring the desired result as it is very likely that these managers were not properly prepared for the job either. In addition their understanding of selling and of their job role might be outdated and not fit in today's unforgiving economic context.

In my own opinion there will be no room left for purely action and result oriented managers trying to manage outcomes. It makes little difference if they rely on data from their own home grown spreadsheets or on sophisticated analytical CRM tools in their attempt to manage these outcomes. Outcomes are lagging indicators even if they come in the disguised form of forecasts. Management actions based on these metrics will always be too little too late. The future belongs to sales managers being able to interpret leading indicators helping them to derive coaching needs of their sales people.

The panelist were all in agreement that being able to coach people is a very essential skill for successful sales managers going forward.. There is however a huge skill gap with current sales managers. Linda Richardson's re-edited book on this subject will help fill this gap. As a questions from a listener indicated, a significant number of sales managers has though not only a skill gap but an outright attitude problem towards coaching. Let's hope for them that they can be convinced by appropriate business cases to avoid being phased out.

The dilemma for preparing sales managers for their job is though deeper. While a lot has been written with the salesperson in mind, there is a lack of a body of knowledge from which sale managers can be taught how to do their job. This is the reason why already three years ago, I started my blog with the sales executives and managers in mind.

In a webinar that I will hold on the Top Sales Experts platform at the end end of April 2009, I will introduce a method on formulation of sales growth strategies , which hopefully will contribute a further puzzle piece to this much needed body of knowledge about the sales management process. You can register for this event here.

Sales Managers: How to Provide for Your Team Members on a Shoe String Budget

Over at “eyes on sales” colleague Paul McCord, gives some real practical advise on how Sales Managers can still provide for their Team Members even, if in an attempt to lower cost of sales, their budgets have been cut to the bare minimum.

These days, using budget cuts is no longer an excuse for not helping upgrading the talent in your team . As Paul points out, there are free training resources in abundance available be it on the net or in form of books and articles. I personally find the iTunes Store a very useful source for inspiring podcasts. It is just amazing what resources you can download for free from there.

Using this material in sales meetings seems just such an obvious option. The team members don't even have to set aside reading time to prepare for the training part of the meeting. They can use unproductive time (e.g. traveling to and from work) to listen to these sometimes excellent materials. If carefully selected, there is material available that could be recommended as a refresher to be listen to on the way to the customer.

Sales Managers hardly need to worry about the cost of providing iPods or other MP3 type readers to their teams. Chances are that their salespeople own already one or more of those devices. Marketing departments love them as vehicle to broadcast their messages.

Although acquiring the know how is made easy, putting it into use is another matter. Here is where sales managers can provide added value by helping their teams to practice on the newly gained knowledge in a save environment, before trying it out with real customers.

Granted, it takes sales manager's time to find these and other resources like blogs, articles and books and then make a suitable selection for the team. As a sales manager ,you could thus also take the attitude, as it is so easy, let your salespeople can find these resources by themselves. The risk you run with this attitude is that everybody might pick a different source best fitting with their individual preferences. You will end up with an organization operating what CSO Insights call an organization with a Random Process. I recommend you consult their “Sales Performance Optimization 2009 Survey Results and Analysis” where you will learn that this approach might cause you sleepless nights.

Since last week, sales managers have now an new resource at their fingertip helping them to develop their people on a show string budget. Top Sales Experts 2.0 (TSE) have opened their door last week. On this site some 60 well renowned sale experts from around the globe offer a repository of their articles they have written. You will find also a library of 'How to guides'. Podcasts etc. There is also one place to go to consult their Blogs. By clicking here you can subscribe to this resource at a preferential early bird rate.

Full disclosure: I am proud to be a member of TSE.

This is the link to Paul McCord's article. CSO Insights can be found here.

If I Was a Sales Executive...

looking for resources to help me upgrade the talent of my people, to whom would I turn?

There is certainly an abundance of information starting from books over websites to blogs, pod casts, and social networks I can use to get a first impression of what is available on the market of sales training, sales enablement or sales effectiveness offerings all aimed at upgrading the talent of a sales force. At the second glance, this abundance, apparently giving me a lot of choice turns out to me more a curse than a blessing. The sales consulting, training and coaching industry offerings are full of juxtapositions making choices difficult.

I just have to look at my bookshelf where I can find a book entitled “The Death of Demand” right next to one entitled “There is a Customer Born Every Minute” or “ Death of a Salesman” next to “Birth of a Salesman” contradicted by yet another title “Selling is Dead”.

If I go on the Internet, looking up 'Cold Calling' for example, I will find proponents absolutely convinced about the effectiveness of that discipline claiming to be “Queen of Cold Calling” opposite a self declared guru claiming “ Never Cold Call Again”.

Sometimes, the contradiction appear right in the same presentation. Just the other day, I heard that in these tough times; one has to get in front of more customers than in previous years to have a chance to make even the same amount of revenue. And a few sentences later, I heard that the priority is to take special care of your existing customers, they are your gold in these harsh times.

Although I have learned that great leaders rather think in terms of 'and' than 'either or', I have difficulty to adhere to this advice faced with the above juxtapositions. On the other hand, I think it is not worthwhile to get into these discussions who is right and who is wrong, popping up in blogs and social media platforms quite frequently.

You certainly know the stereotype of what a lawyer would say faced with such questions “It depends”. Well this is not exactly helpful either for making a decision, but it helps us to be aware that all these statements were made in a specific context. One can further assume, that in that specific context, there is a least anecdotal evidence, that the varied proposed methods have each lead to some success. Although it will probably be difficult to discern whether this was due to the 'placebo effect' or a real remedy.

The obvious next question then is: What is the context, we should consider, when evaluating the organizations and persons giving these contradicting advice? Does it depend o the industry, the geography, the sort of goods or services sold or on the period these described methods were invented and applied in?

This last aspect, the period when methods were invented or applied, is probably the first one helping us to narrow down the choice of potential candidates suited to help the sales executive to upgrade talent. There is so much written about sales from the perspective “I have done this, it brought me success, try it, there is no reason why it should not work for you”. The way customer buy have changed dramatically over the last few years increasing the danger that such advice might therefore be obsolete in the current circumstances.

Understanding how customers want to buy is therefore the relevant context in which I would judge the suitability of all the different methods available. For many sales executives, this is though the biggest hurdle to jump; to shift the mindset from an 'inside out', to an 'outside in' approach.

As a next selection criteria, the executive can then use the fact, that whoever is offering services to upgrade sales talent, is selling as well. If I were an executive, I then would narrow my choice of potential service providers to those of whom I could say: “I wish that my people could sell in the same manner as this person is just selling to me”. Using this criteria, there is at least a higher likelihood to work with someone, “walking the talk”.

Having worked with thousands of sales people, I have come to the conclusion that authenticity and relevance are key elements needed by someone wanting to help shift the performance curve of a sales force by upgrading the talent.