Managing Sales Attitude for Success

 

Attitude, “Positive” Sales Attitude
is one of the five “leading indicators”
of a Sales person’s likely Sales successes.

We know this from repeated research.

 

Attitude is linked to motivation and if all other things are equal,
the more motivated Salesperson sells more than the less motivated Salesperson.

Adverts for Sales jobs frequently ask for “positive” Attitude,
every job Candidate claims to have it, but how do you measure it?

There are several Validated, and Reliable (in expert hands) Psychometrics,
which give insights into a Sales person’s likely attitude
to their Product, Company, Manager, Customers and to themselves.

Here is a simple exercise, which is a good indicator of a Salesperson’s Sales Attitude.

1. List the five most important tasks you completed last year.

2. Now, put them into two groups:

· Group 1 Tasks you did to avoid negative consequences or to receive promised reward.

· Group 2 Tasks you did because they had meaning for you or your company in the longer term.

You can now “measure” their engagement, the number of Tasks in Group 2;
which will give a percentage of their optimal Motivation, intrinsic motivation.
Sometimes this is called “Self-motivated”.

The number of Tasks in Group 1 which,
were sub-optimal motivated by external events of Punishment or Reward
show their Ratio to External or Manager-based Motivation.

During interview this exercise,
and YOUR subsequent inquiry,
will give insight into how the Salesperson works.

It applies equally to your current Sales team!

Repeat the exercise with every individual.

Diagnose their level of Engagement, by using the two lists.

The more Group 2 items the Higher their engagement,
they have the Positive Attitude to do the Task.

The more tasks they have in Group 1 the less engagement they have,
the more variable their Commitment and their Attitude.
Then, the more work YOU will have i.e. to manage them by punishment and reward!

 

As a Sales Leader, the Sales Manager’s role
is to connect the Salesperson’s work to meaningful outcomes.

The lowest form of motivation [the least effective] is Carrot and Stick; people are not Donkeys.

Understand and share the meaning of work, FOR yourself,
WITH your Salespeople and FROM your boss.

“Cutting stone is just poorly paid, hard, exhausting work,
  but, being part of building a great building that then brings meaning!”

 

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Selling against Value, with Price.

 

In these frugal days, Price,
or as Buyers refer to it “COST”, is a very important factor in their Decision Making.

Sometimes, clever salespeople reverse the Price Advantage by offering more VALUE.

It’s a Formula:

Value = Benefits less Cost

Their “Added Value” comes from offering MORE benefits to cover their EXTRA Cost (higher Price)

For example:

They may claim that “due to lower running costs”,
their Total Value over five years is better than yours.
However, YOUR PRICE is less than theirs is, NOW!

 

 

So, “How do you WIN on Price?”

 

There is an embedded preference in most people.
In Human Decision Making we have a marked preference
for Rewards (payback or benefits) that arrive EARLIER.

 

People prefer Rewards sooner, rather than later.

Would you rather have $1 now or wait a year for $3?

If you chose a dollar now, then you are in the majority and you exhibit PRESENT BIAS.

 

You like the certainty of rewards now,

rather than the hope for reward at some future date.

A future which may, or may not, come!

When selling on PRICE, you have to appeal to your Buyers “Present Bias”.
The Value of a lower Price is available NOW.
The Value of “added” benefits only occurs over time and has a lower value than a Reward instantly available!

Who knows
if the projected value over five years will occur?
Who will get the credit, perhaps your successor?

The Time Value of Benefits discounts with time.
The certainty of reward and recognition of a lower Price, to you a lower COST, is available now.

 

 

So, when Selling on Price against a “Value” Seller, make sure you invoke the “Present Bias”.

Make sure your Buyer knows they can have their REWARD from you NOW!

How does PRICE link to Sales forecasts and missed Targets?

Read http://brianmaciver.blogspot.com.es/2012/03/ignoring-sales-forecast-and-missing.html?spref=tw

Do NOT spend money on Sales Training without doing a Sales AUDIT first

 

Dealing with Recession and Market Downturn
is causing many Companies to consider expensive or extensive Sales Training and Coaching Makeovers.

Do a SALES AUDIT first, before you throw good money after bad!

“Our research [ The MAC Group, no connection to BMAC ] shows that in most firms,
more than half of all Customer accounts are NOT profitable.
Moreover, between 30%-and 40% are only marginally profitable.
It is only a mere 10%-15% of a Company’s Customer-Sales relationships
that generate the bulk of the profits”.

A Sales Audit MEASURES your sales force,
its individual and their total capability.

It measures your ABILITY to SELL your Product,
to your Market, against YOUR Competition.

 
A meaningful Sales Audit is a PORTFOLIO of appropriate
Sales MEASURES, for your particular Product-Market.

 

 

The Sales Audit is the baseline score (100) against which future Sales Performance, both Positive or Negative, can be measured and compared.

 

THIS IS NOT A QUESTIONAIRE OR PERSONALTY TESTS.

 

Sales Audits and Sales Assessments

The purpose of the Sales Assessment is to measure Key Performance Indicators and calculate the likelihood of Sales Performance Success. The process producing a Sales Assessment should involve a Sales Audit by an Independent Sales Assessment Professional; its purpose is to provide a measurement rather than to express an opinion about “quality” of Sales Performance.

Sales Audits should always be an Independent Evaluation, which will include some degree of quantitative and qualitative analysis, whereas an
Sales Assessment implies a consultative approach.

The Sales Audit includes both LEADING and LAGGING indicators as well as an overall Performance Benchmark.

 

 

A Sales Audit is an ESSENTIAL part of:

• Due Diligence, Pre-Acquisition, Merger or Joint Venture
• Pre-Training Project Management
• Pre-Investment (or Re-investment)
  the Sales CAPABILITY is a key indicator of likely future success.

Contact brian.maciver@gmail.com for details it’s a LOT cheaper than a mistake!

The Secret to Selling

 

A great sales Guru discovered the Secret to Selling.

It is comprehensive; it is elegant in its simplicity.

Those who learn the secret will have untold success and fulfil their dreams.

Using the secret will bring great wealth, which may then be demonstrated in Property,
possessions of great quality and a five-star life style for themselves and for their families.

They will be respected and valued by their Employers,
admired by their colleagues and loved by their Customers.

The great sales Guru who found and taught the Secret of Selling
retires and disappears to live in secluded luxury.

The Salespeople who learned the secret begin to fail.

They search libraries for new books, watch new videos and attend conferences for the secret.
They consult with Consultants,
they are trained by Trainers and
they seek coaching with Coaches.

They search for the Secret of Selling in Psychology,
they then resort Pseudo-Psychology and Folk Psychology. 

They ask neuroscience if they have found the Secret of Selling
and they are told of a Biological basis to decisions.

Computers are bought to enter, share and manage Data, to Control Relationship Management,
to give Sales Force Automation systems and process to the speculations of ignorance.

As their Revenue numbers drop and their success turns to failure,
their search becomes frantic.
Any street prophet, lunatic or charlatan is paid for advice and, even worse, they are listened to.

Salespeople pretend to their Employers that they still have the secret,
but they are losing the respect and value they once had.
Their Colleagues stop admiring them; instead they begin to resent their high salaries.

Customers no longer love them; in fact, Customers avoid them preferring to buy on-line.

Their five-star Lifestyle is no longer possible and their families resent the change.

And then, the sales Guru returns.

They ask again for the secret of selling.

He smiles then replies,

“The secret of selling is in the skills that you have,

the knowledge that you need, the work that you do,

the strategy that you use and the attitude that you hold.”

“After I left, you forgot this,
you listened to false teachers
and you looked for lazy answers.”

• The secret of Selling is in Evidence Based Selling Skills, not in short cuts or proverbs.
  
• The secret of Selling is in Appropriate Knowledge of Product/Market, not in bluff.
  
• The secret of Selling is in Revenue Generating Activity, not in busy work.
  
• The secret of Selling is in a Good Strategy for Your Customers and Your Competition,
  not in an imaginary Selling Process married to an imagined Buying Process.
  
• The secret of Selling is in a Healthy Attitude to work,
  to your Employers, to your Colleagues and to your Customers;
  not in easy answers, tips, tricks, ploys and dodges.

Putting the Challenger Sale to Work (SIX)

 

Making a Challenger Sales Presentation or NOT?

I love Flip Charts the fresh white surface, the smell of the permanent marker Pens! If you have been to one of my “Early Closing” days, then you know the room fills with Flip-chart pages 20 or more blue tacked to walls, windows and doors. Flip charts filled with 3M post its which are sorted, listed grouped as we identify HOW we will win the sale, and WHAT we have to do to win it!

I do not like “Whiteboards” so much, you cannot bring them with you,
and you are not allowed to take them away after you finish!

The content is temporary, like their Dry Marker Pens (more Dry than Marker) with almost no smell.
The main use I put whiteboards to is as a Projection Screen for presentations, and they are not very good at that either.
They always have a glaring, reflective “hot-spot” which prevents the viewer from seeing the best bit!

It has been with some interest that I have watched the FAD of “Sales White-boarding” grow.
Like all FADS, numerous people claim its invention. Moreover, even more “licenced”
or “accredited” to run a “White Board Sales School” Training Courses.

There is a wide range of Claims for “white boarding”, the basic claim is it’s “better” than PowerPoint.
Additional claims are its memorable, creative, flexible and persuasive.

The CLAIMED out comes of white boarding are SHORTER Selling Cycles, BETTER Sales Margins and
more acceptable to C level Buyers. Most Firms would want these.

What is the reality?    Have a look at this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_CAZkris4Q

Are their Claims met?    Is it ´operator error´ or is it the concept?

Let us compare this to a simple PowerPoint Presentation on a similar subject.

http://www2.bt.com/static/i/media/pdf/secure_internet_teleworker_presentation.pdf

There is a “script”, which the presenters are trained to “tailor” to their audience.
If it is no better, it is certainly no worse.

 

Let us look at some static images

   then this one      

 

Which is a C-level graphic, which is a play ground doodle?

 

These are two BLOG graphics from one of my favourite bloggers, a really smart guy…….

     or   

 

 

 

Many smart people are being mesmerised by this approach,

especially in MARKETING, but MOST Sales people CANNOT use it effectively,

only a very few who do use it, use it even fairly well.

 

What you did………

         what you tried to do…….  

 

My conclusion: if you have an arty degree,

especially in the graphic arts this tool may help you.

If you do NOT have any talent in lettering or drawing,
if you always lose at Pictionary,
then remember the Saying

“A fool with a tool is still a fool!” (Thanks Tamara)

 

What does all this have to do with Challenger Selling?

I have watched a series of great opportunities being blown due to inappropriate amateurish,
even childish efforts to whiteboard.  And, at the same time as the CMO is sending
more and more people of for “Training” in the ART.

Buy a copy of “The Challenger Sale” for your Salespeople instead, it’s cheaper,
the outcomes are SHORTER Selling Cycles, BETTER Sales Margins and
more “Challenging Selling” is a lot more acceptable to C level Buyers, than DOODLES.

If your PowerPoint Skills are poor, then get trained.

If your PowerPoint Presentations are boring or extra-long then buy the book “Beyond Bullet points”,
and realise the power of Great Storytelling, together with great graphics
in a really SALES PROFESSIONAL way.

 

In Challenger Selling,
you do a lot of hard work to earn your Presentation Opportunities,
DO NOT BLOW IT,
Tailor and Control it instead.

Putting the Challenger Sale to Work (Five)

 

A USP is NOT
a Challenger Insight

 

The CEB research clearly shows that Challenger Insights work.

However, few Salespeople are actually using them!

 

Let´s review briefly, what USP´s are:

“The Unique Selling Proposition (a.k.a. Unique Selling Point, or USP) is a marketing concept
that was first proposed as a theory to understand a pattern among successful advertising campaigns
of the early 1940s. It states that such campaigns made unique propositions to the customer and
that this convinced them to switch brands.

Wikipedia

Marketing produces USP´s by the gazillion:

Faster, bigger, smaller, easier, cheaper, and on and on!

HOWEVER, do they work?

  USP:

The Gas ‘free’ car

 

 

We have known for years, in Sales, that USP´s DO NOT SELL.

Rackham’s Research published as SPIN Selling devotes a chapter to it (Ch.9)

“The Myth and Magic” of the Initial Benefit Statement
and the USP in “Opening the Sale” is just another rod on Sale’s back!

“It’s the fastest on the Market!” offers the novice Salesperson.

“We do NOT need more SPEED, we need more reliability,
and faster usually means LESS RELIABILITY!” Retorts the cynical Customer.

This really is stepping off on the wrong foot,
from push “benefit” to Customer Objection in less than 10 seconds!

“We do not want your USP of speed;
we believe that might damage the reliability that we really need.”

The brochures promote SPEED, the adverts promote SPEED,
and the Call-centre is calling trying to book appointments for salespeople to talk about SPEED.
It is another failed Marketing Campaign, but Sales is going to get the blame.

“They didn't sell the USP: SPEED!” laments the CMO.

 

Opening the Sale refresher
http://brianmaciver.blogspot.com.es/2012/02/three-great-selling-skills-that-really.html

 

How do we construct these Challenger Insights?

From the MARKET, not MARKETING!

Get together with some customers, product specialists and ….

OK some marketing people
(but have an equal number of Salespeople present).

DO NOT let Marketing seize the White Board
or write-up the minutes of the meeting.

Have a Customer Engagement;

see their world through their eyes.

Ask Customers to design your next product,
or to modify your existing products.

Find out where “Speed”, size, or cost etc. is on their priority list.

From the meeting develop and test a variety of “insights”,
this is the beginning of Challenger Insights. (And the end of the USP! fiasco)

 

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Putting the Challenger Sale to Work (Four)– INSIGHTS

 

Challenger Selling is when a Salesperson uses a Business Insight to Challenge a Customer which enables a process of discovering and developing Vales with the Customer. The Value Proposition, made by a Challenger Salesperson, is constructed from the Customer Identified Value and the Salesperson’s Capability to deploy and deliver these Values to the Customers organisation.

It is not easy.

In fact, some of my Clients are finding it difficult to even get started.
Here is a solution which BMAC Consultants have successfully deployed to Big Software. Their basic difficulty was: “What is the “insight” we deliver which leads our existing Customers to re-deploy Enterprise Software into The Cloud?”

Well I am not going to tell you their insights;
they are confidential.

 

 

But, I will tell you how BMAC Consultants solved their problem!

We introduced “The Five O’clock Club.”

“The Five O’clock Club” is a meeting place for Sales, Marketing and Product on a weekly basis.
They meet usually on Wednesdays or Thursdays at Five o’clock. The core group are ‘volunteers’, one salesperson, one marketing person and one product person. To get ‘volunteers’ you need to invite people along to the first few meetings.

BMAC does this with beer and snacks!

 

 

 

You pose the problem “What insights can we offer our Customers which will support a selling cycle taking them from Enterprise software to Cloud based software?”
Then use a variety of brainstorming techniques with the talent in the room.
BMAC facilitate these, but you could use the ideas from “a whack on the side of the head!”

OK, by now ‘the question’ has transformed into a range of completely different “questions”,
about us, our competition, our customers, their competition, our capabilities,
our ability to deploy and deliver value that Customers WANT.

 

 

That is when BMAC turnover the whole process to the Core Five O’clock Group,
by now you have volunteers and their substitutes!
They can invite guests (including Customers)
and now they pay for their own beer!

 

Officially the meeting ends at six o o’clock,
but you will find that sometimes they run longer, don’t disturb them.
Look at their output, let them bulletproof their own ideas,
don’t be an “idea crusher.”

The groups which really zing are based on:

Account Manager, Marketing Executive and Product Support Specialist.

If Sales Managers, Marketing Managers and Product Managers want to “generate insights”,
they do NOT have to wait for Thursday at five O’clock that is their DAY job,
they can do it any time they want.

However, DO NOT STOP The Five O’clock Club.

This is a low cost, Customer (and Segment) based insights machine. You will find that more than enough Insights are being generated AND time wasting “internally generated insights” are discarded before they are communicated to disinterested Customers.

If you would like more details on a Five O’clock Club e-mail brian.maciver@gmail.com

 

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