The Philosophy of Sales Pricing

It was with some amusement that I read in CSO (Chief Sales Officer)

http://www.csoinsights.com/Topics/Sales-Strategy

that:

· 80% of sales opportunities are LOST to lower prices by the competition,

but ONLY

· 20% of sales opportunities are WON by lower pricing than the competition.

This, as a statistic, does not make sense.
To make sense they would have to be similar.

Instead, they are a Pareto:
80% of the time, I lose on price, and 20% of the time I win on price.

How would we rank this salesperson? 
Wins 1 deal in 5, and wins that deal on price?

Unless they have 500% pipeline to target coverage, they never make target.
As a Company, we cannot be growing market share,
in a vibrant market but losing four out of five deals.

We cannot work with focus,
because we do not know which deals we will win or lose
until the pricing quotation is made at the end of the sales process!

The report includes these statistics too,
Poor Sales Process execution is a factor in 20% of losses, and
Sales Execution is a factor in 35% of wins.

Product ‘superiority’ accounts for 75% of wins,
yet is only a factor in 25% of losses.

These combined would suggest that if you have

the cheapest and the best product you succeed

in sales, with the process of selling only playing
a secondary factor!

Finally, a statistic that makes sense:

• 44% of deals are won by the best Customer Relationship and

• 55% of deals are lost by a poorer Customer Relationship

Conclusions

• You do NOT need salespeople and sales process
  to sell your superior product at the lowest price.

• you DO need skilful Salespeople to sell
  your similar product at a similar price,
  because Buyer Relationship counts!

• You need a Sales Process which WORKS and
  you need skilled Salespeople
  to sell your product in a market where
  you are perceived disadvantaged by product or price!

“WE NEVER LOSE ON PRICE” doesn’t mean you are the cheapest,

it means you have a perspective on the secondary importance of Price

BMAC Consultants specialise in developing skilled sales people
with a powerful sales process that builds strong Buyer Relationships.

.

What makes a 2016 Top Salesperson?

An old colleague and friend Chris Windley asked and then answered this question on his blog
http://bit.ly/fGyO1z
Here is my take.

 

Activity, Skill and Knowledge the three ‘sisters’ remain at the core of Sales Performance.
Even after 25 years of research, they remain constant, unshakable.
Simply by measuring activity, skill and knowledge at BMAC Consultants then,
we can Predict, with accuracy, future Sales Performance. 
However, 25 years of research have shown that
what we mean by Activity, Skill and Knowledge have changed dramatically.

 

Activity

Sales ‘Activity’ in 206MUST include web2.0 tools, if you let Sales Force Automation run your day,
week, or month you will be a SALES FAILURE not a sales success. 

Sales people and Sales Managers must learn how to drive technology,

NOT be driven by technology. 

Revenue Generating ACTIVITY today is NOT about
Cold calls, or First appointments or Thank You notes.
Managing a Sales Team last year, we measured Activity “Net Cash Generation”,
which had no correlation to cold calls, first appointments or Thank you notes!

Today, activity is about lead Generation, lead nurture by Marketing NOT Sales!  Sales are about Opportunity Management.

see my blog http://brianmaciver.blogspot.com/2010/06/sales-energy.html

 

Skills

Skills, well Closing is out, big time. 
There is no correlation between Closing ‘Ability or Skill’ and Sales Success.

If you are great at “Handling” Objections,
then I bet you spend most of your time on the golf course in Sand Bunkers,
I prefer to putt on the Green instead!

The ways in which we meet, present and propose to Buyers have all changed beyond recognition.
Face-to-face, conference calls and Tele-presence meetings, PowerPoint without bullet points,
managed ‘try before you buy’ demonstrations are part of are part of Selling today.

If you only sell ‘Solutions’ to people with ‘Problems’, then you can still SPIN®.
However, you will miss the biggest part of the Market, those Buyers who do not have problems
but who are looking for ‘OPPORTUNITIES’, and that’s a completely different Sales Skill set!

Successful Selling is still about Interactive Competence,
except that with smarter, better-informed Buyers than ever,
then Sales people need a broader, deeper range of behaviours than ever.

In 2013 Salespeople must be able to influence
their Buyer’s thinking, their emotions and their actions.

“Psycho” selling is gone, replaced by Neuroscience research into WHY and HOW people buy.
‘Stimulation’ and ‘Choice’ which can be tested by biometrics give us greater insight into BOTH Buyers
and Successful Sales Behaviours than ever before.
Insight Selling, based on the research of The Challenger Sale, is having an impact on Top –end Selling.
http://brianmaciver.blogspot.com.es/2012/05/putting-challenger-sale-to-work-four.html
Value CONSTRUCTION is an essential Part of B2B selling.
http://brianmaciver.blogspot.com.es/2012/04/putting-challenger-selling-to-worktwo.html

 

Knowledge

Sales Knowledge in 2013 is based on ‘self directed learning’.

With web 2.0 it is inexcusable for a Professional Salesperson to be ignorant of their own products, their Competitor’s products and their Customer’s business.

Ninety minutes on the net, Google, Blogs, Facebook and Twitter should give the basics.

Product Training is sadly becoming out-dated.
Now we need to Train on how to Learn quickly!

 

Activity, Skill and Knowledge, the Sisters,

have two cousins Attitude and Strategy.

 

Attitude

You CANNOT succeed on Attitude alone (watch ‘The Apprentice’ for proof),
yet you will not succeed without the ‘right’ Sales Attitude either!
http://brianmaciver.blogspot.com.es/2012/11/managing-sales-attitude-for-success.html

Strategy

I have seen more sales lost through poor, or NO strategy, than any other cause.

The only way you beat IBM, Microsoft, Accenture, or HP,
is by having a better Account and Opportunity Strategy than they do.
http://brianmaciver.blogspot.com.es/2010/08/sales-strategic-success.html

 

The Balanced Scorecard, the Sales Dashboard, still has five dials:

Activity, Skill, Knowledge, Attitude and Strategy;

and these dials still describe selling;

it is what we mean, measure and develop that has changed in 2016.

Is Sales Enablement really ‘Disabling’ Sales?

I have expressed concern over the use of Sales Force Automation (SFA), which are de-skilling salespeople. Today, I want to express deep concern over a Non-Sales ‘conspiracy’ to disable salespeople by making Salespeople use “sales enablement”.

The practice of Sales Enablement developed by Non-salespeople is simple:

Selling is an activity, like walking.

Selling like walking requires no skill, have a route planned then go.

Sales Enablement is “routes” prepared previously by Non-Salespeople to make Salespeople sell more often and sell more effectively.

BMAC Consultants have just finished an audit of “Sales Enablement” for a blue chip, Hi Tech Company. My initial analysis was straightforward. Sales results before the adoption of Sales Enablement, compared to Sales results after the adoption of Sales Enablement. Since the claimed benefit of Sales Enablement was to sell more and to sell faster. Clear Order intake and Revenue improvement were the expected results.

The actual result was a performance dip, about -12 % on average.

Sales sold 12% less after being ‘enabled’.

I asked for a third group, the control group, which had not adopted Enablement.
There was not one I was told, Enablement is compulsory. It is our new way of working!
I conducted semi-structured interviews with more than 40 sales staff, salespeople and sales management. I found a group of people who had ignored Sales Enablement. They were, in the main, Top Performers, with a few average performers. Their Sales figures had improved slightly or remained the same. I interviewed at length several Top Performers who had experienced performance dip after adopting sales enablement. “Difficult to use”, “not fit for purpose”, and “cumbersome” were the criticisms, while “good in specific situations”, “saved me time” and “it really helped me” were the compliments.

1. Content Creation

a. Customer Intelligence: this was often story board based, based on previous “wins”
The Sales consensus was it didn’t work
b. Product Content: Sales complained about a lack of Product Training, instead they were being giving mini aide memoirs and Product stories.  The Sales consensus was Buyers now knew as much or more about products than Sales knew.
c. Vertical Marketing Content: There was universal appreciation of this. There was particular praise for events which had Customers talk about Key issues and Market Sector drivers in Customer Engagement Workshops
d. Solution Content: There was universal criticism of this. Out of Date materials, irrelevant materials, Issues with Customer Confidentiality (unapproved Case studies) and simply not working or useless content.

Buyers had also stated these were not fit for purpose especially as
RTT (Response to Tender) or RFI (Request for Information) responses.

2. Content Management: is poor or very poor; everyone, yet no one, was responsible, it had become a potpourri. Initially Top Marketing Management had been responsible, but the ownership had dropped to Marketing Operations Executives. The current content owners, were inexperienced, had had little or no Customer contact and were being used for their PC skills (Data Base Management) Storage not ‘Content’ creation, development or distribution.

3. Content Governance: this was the most worrying area. Senior Management had made substantial investment in Sales Enablement; they expected to see two things; usage of the new systems and sales results. Sales managers were enforcing usage with ‘Enablement Police’ ensuring compliance. The use of materials was being checked during sales calls, the use of Knowledge Data bases were being reported automatically by the system with details on access frequency by individual salespeople, by groups and as a whole. IT is driving sales!
Sales ‘Propositions’ were being checked for content and “Standardization” against ‘winning’ models. The whole area of governance was being abused. Some salespeople were going to extreme s in appearing to use the system, while in fact defeating the checks and measures. Other salespeople were in complete compliance, but were seeing their sales results dropping; this dissonance was causing a great deal of stress.

4. Content Delivery: This was an area of innovation. Many Corporate Presentations had been remodelled into Video, Storyboards, White boarding, Podcasts and state of the art Interactive Websites etc. Attempts are being made to use social media, Facebook, Blogs and Twitter and there was a willingness to explore all of this on the part of salespeople. Sales major complaint was lack of Training and no Coaching on these innovations. Buyers had also complained about some of these innovations when inappropriately used, and had rated poor content delivery as a major factor in Lost Business Reviews.

Conclusions

If you really want to ENABLE your salespeople, then listen to them.

• Customer Engagement workshops with Sales, Marketing, and IT in conversation together with Customers is the most productive source of Sales Enablement Material. What Content do Customers value? How do Buyers want in delivered, where and when do Buyers want it.
• Sales Enablement appears to work best when it is specific, build an Ideal Customer Profile then work through a Competitive strategy.
• If you value Selling Time, a repeated criticism by Buyers of Salespeople is that they do not have time! Consider reintroducing some of the Sales Administration Support that was ‘Cost Cut’ in order to pay for Sales Enablement.
• The cheapest way of increasing selling time and gaining sales results is Sales Admin. If you are short of expense, then fire the Senior Marketing Manager who introduced, then abandoned, Sales Enablement.

BMAC Consultants audit Sales Enablement and make recommendations putting enablement to work. We also have a unique Customer Engagement Workshop process that puts the Buyer’s Voice right to your ear!
Contact brian.maciver@googlemail.com

It’s NOT the economy, stupid!

This week (4/11/2010) will again prove the most important political factor
in the American Elections is the ECONOMY.

“It’s the economy, stupid!”

This was the phrase used by Bill Clinton against Bush senior in the 1992 Presidential Election. Bush senior had enjoyed Foreign Relations success, but had allowed a recession at home. So, Clinton the underdog won the election.

In Sales today the “Economy” is the biggest excuse for poor performance.

Yet, in reality, some Firms and some Salespeople are doing great.

It’s the ACTIVITY, stupid

How are you doing?  Are you still explaining sales performance in terms of the “economic situation” or are you hitting the numbers?



Research by BMAC Consultant’s, this year (2010 MMX),
has shown that most salespeople spend less than 100 hours per YEAR selling.

Salespeople work 1600 hours per year
but only spend about 6.25% actually selling.

Salespeople are spending 2 hours per week selling.


This means you are reaching less than 20% of your True Addressable Market.

YOU can achieve Competitive Advantage by increasing the face-to-face selling time of you salespeople.



Real Selling Time is the number of face-to-face hours salespeople spend with Prospects listening to their Needs, Wants, Problems and Opportunities. And, the amount of face-to-face time your sales people spend talking to Prospects about how your Products and Services, when applied to the Prospect’s needs, bring those Prospects REAL VALUE.

“It’s the ACTIVITY, stupid”

Selling Time is your biggest Constraint,
NOT the Economy.

If you would like to discuss Optimal Selling Time, contact Brian MacIver on brian.maciver@googlemail.com

or to receive a free copy of Measuring Real Selling Time Tool Kit

Sales Professionalism

 

The TV Reality show The Apprentice consistently shows Selling in a bad light.

We see “Fools rushing in,” claiming that they are able to ‘sell’, to ‘pitch’ and to ‘close’.
They shame themselves and they shame the Sales Profession.
What we see is below deck discounting; push selling, talking people to death, disrespect and rudeness.

What disturbs me most is any kind of ‘result’, is proclaimed success. Alan Sugar was never famed for quality or service, cheap yes, but even he is damaging his Brand by association with this incompetence.

Professional Selling, is about Product and Marketplace knowledge, it is about superior interactive skills not “professionality”, which is about acting. Professional selling is ethical, repeatable and useful.

Firms rely upon their dependable ability to sell, without selling there is no Company. I firmly believe that Professional Selling means selling what you can deliver, that which the customer needs (and wants).
We are giving a generation of young people a role model that will repel the able and attract the stupid.
It is not learned in the back of a Taxi, nor a Soho Sex shop.

Professional Selling, as a career is both highly paid and personally satisfying. 

It takes a great deal of study and practice to become a Practitioner and even more to be a Master of the Art.

The FIVE biggest mistakes in Sales Recruitment

 

 

1. “In my image”    

This is for the Sales Manager who is looking for themselves, but 10 years younger. They believe in “cloning”, they want to use the same management process, which “worked for me”. This is such a limitation. The market and the product, as well as the sales channel has changed so much, maybe YOU would not make it anymore. When they succeed in their recruitment aims, you end up with a mediocre sales department, and a huge recruitment bill.  Diversity Sells!

2. “I never hire a.....”   

this is prejudice run wild they exclude on the grounds of nationality, gender, race, shape and size, shoe colour, CV spelling and grammar, age, golf club membership, old school attended, university attended or not attended or previous employers. They give credence to the Groucho Marks’ line
“I would never work for a Company that would employ me!”

Keep an open mind, use evidence not prejudice.

3. “Best of a bad bunch” 

Having read a couple of CV’s, and seen two candidates in interview a job offer is made “to fill the spot quickly”. These managers do not believe in anything but luck, and mostly they are unlucky, especially in recruitment. Their ‘new hire’ never seem to work out; they were only the “best of a bad bunch”.

Recruitment is an on-going process; continually try to attract the best people.

4. “Jump to Conclusions”

With five more candidates still to see, you decide this is the one.
Let us make a job offer before somebody else does.
Somebody else will make a job offer! So, see the other five candidates,
make a short list, make the job offer and press for a speedy reply.

Alternatively, you eliminate a candidate for a simple error early in the process.
A poor covering letter, spelling error in the CV, late for the first interview, green tie and blue shirt, we all make ‘mistooks’, don’t we?

Do not rush to judgement gather all the evidence first, then weigh it and decide.

5. “Not accepting less than ‘perfect’”

You have extended the recruitment cycle, hundreds of CV’s, tens of interviews and yet you have made no offers. Wasting ‘good enough’ candidates, wasting your own time and having an empty sales territory. Review your process Job and Person specifications.

Loosen the criteria, get second opinions, change your sources of candidates and get a move on!

Final words, why does selection fail?

 

Selection fails either because YOU did not get the information
(Interview - Assessment Error)

 

or it fails because YOU did not use the information you had.
(Error of Judgement)

21st Century Selling

 

You pay your Sales people to work between 1,600 and 2,000 hours per year.

ONLY 100 hours, out of those 2,000 hours, generate their sales results.

Most of the hours that you pay for,
somewhere between 1,500 and 1,900 hours are counter-productive or wasted.

Yet many Sales Managers and Salespeople work long hours (mistaken as effort).
“He/She is here from 07:30 until 20:00. That is Attendance, not productivity.”

Skilled Sales Managers can manage nine skilled salespeople, easily!

Skilled salespeople can generate up to 500 productive sales hours per year.

Do your Cost/Benefit analysis take cost out and put revenue in.

• 50% of your Sales Mangers are not required.
• Your sales force can be at least 100% more productive. 

Today in 2010 (MMX), there is Sales Training available, part of Sales Talent Management, which can double your current Sales results. You can adopt a Sales Talent Management Process, which will give a 400% improvement to Sales Revenue results.

Think about this story.

 

“For over 300 years non-working Spacecraft have been found  all over the world, located, taken apart and examined minutely, but we still did not know how they worked. Just 8 years ago, we were able to examine the first working spaceship, it is much clearer now how they work. Spaceships are highly complex, there are many secrets yet to be uncovered, but on-going research with working spacecraft will give us all the answers.”

The above is Science Fiction.

Below is NOT science fiction, but Science Fact.

For 300 years, we have been examining dead human brains in ‘autopsy’, no longer working models. We have had a rudimentary knowledge of the brain, at best. The ‘function’ of parts of the brain was ‘identified’ by damage and losses of motor or cognitive skills. Behavioural Psychologists, Neurologists and Psychiatrists have all been trying to apply knowledge gained from non-working brains back on to living, functioning brains.
We still did not know how the Brain worked!

For the last 8 years, we have had instruments such as the fMRI scanner capable of viewing the internal workings of the LIVING brain.

Of our current knowledge of the functioning brain,
98% has been discovered over the last 8 years!

The impact of medications and drugs previously measured by behavioural modification can now be measured by ‘real time’ brain activity.

Our understanding of

thought (Cognitive)
emotion (Affective) and
action or behaviour (Conative) have all been radically changed.

The interaction and interdependence of thought, feeling and action have long been pure speculation,
are now becoming pure science, not science fiction.

In the area of Emotion, I want to recognise praise my former colleague and friend Colin Shaw of Beyond Philosophy for his ground-breaking work and evangelism of “Customer Experience”. Colin and his team have dedicated themselves to understanding the emotional contents of “Client experience” and how to build lasting Customer Satisfaction. http://www.beyondphilosophy.co.uk/

What does this mean to sales?

Sales Skills based on Sales ‘Training’ developed before 2000,
are as obsolete as electric shock therapy, and about as useful as lobotomy.

21^st Century Selling Skills,

based on the 21^st Century Neurosciences are available now.

21^st Century Selling Skills work ‘real time’, they are based upon the detailed examination of
the Buyer’s Brain not upon cliché and the anecdotes of Seller’s Brains

BMAC Consultants are proud to have been in the vanguard of this exciting and fundamental change to Sales Skills and Selling.
We have reviewed our pre-2000 research (12 years worth), in the light of current Neuro-scientific research.
This has caused a complete review of all our training courses, workshops and systematic processes.
Literally, nothing is the same.

Our review has led to a 2-year long re-write and validation of:

• Selling Skills,
• Negotiation Skills,
• Proposal Writing Skills, and
• Presentation Skills.

We have completely rebuilt or reformed our products including Psychometrics and Personality Type Indicators.
We have:

• Altered our consultancy format,
  for recruitment and selection of both sales executives and sales managers.
• Changed our process for developing average sales people into top performers, and
• Improved our process and procedure for the termination of poor performers,
  as well as the retention of top performers.

• A complete Sales Talent Management System

  based on the latest research, not speculation.

We are seeing spectacular results, in Revenue growth and Cost management for our Clients.

Your competitive advantage comes from our differentiation.

To discover more about Real Revenue results then contact brian.maciver@googlemail.com

Sincere apologies to any reader who thought that Stargate Universe
really is set on the ancient spaceship Destiny, that really is science fiction, at least for now.......