Helping Your Customers Achieve Their Objectives: A How To Guide Part 2: What to Ask

what_to_askEarlier this week, we introduced you to the idea that thoroughly understanding your customers’ key business objectives and the challenges inhibiting their fulfillment is the most important element to the sales process, and that traditionally salespeople do a poor job in this phase. If you haven’t read the first part of this series, “Why It Matters,” you can check it out here.

So, the question becomes – how can we help sales reps be more successful? First and foremost, we can arm them with a series of questions designed to get their prospects talking about their challenges in their own words. People are most convinced by ideas they themselves originate, so getting your prospects to define their own objectives and challenges is critical to getting their buy in throughout the sales process.

The following are three types of questions designed to get your prospects talking about their challenges.

Open Questions.  Your prospect has discussed his primary business objective – now how to get him talking about why he’s not able to accomplish that objective. These questions are designed to do just that. They uncover the tip of the iceberg, and are the first step in the discovery process.

  • “What are the main concerns you’re having with respect to…..?”
  •  “Usually people come to us for help in one or more of the following areas (list 2-3 problems you solve for people); are any of these issues for you?”
  • “Tell me more…” or “Tell me why…”

When you ask questions like this, look for the prospect to make statements like:

  • “My sales are not where I want them to be.”
  • “We’re spending too much on…..”
  • “We’re not happy with…..”

Cause Questions.  Now that you have the problem defined, the next step is to look for the reasons for the challenge.  What’s causing the disparity?  Typically there are several causes.  Pay close attention as these are the issues you will ultimately try to resolve for the prospect. This information leads you to your presentation.

  • “What are the reasons this is going on?”
  • “Why do you suppose this is happening?”
  • “Do you know what’s causing these problems?”

It’s vital for you to understand – even better than the prospect – what’s causing their challenges.  You’ll hear things like:

  • “Our current supplier is having quality and delivery problems.”
  • We don’t have the right software and our people need training.”

Keep Them Talking. Learn to direct the conversation and keep your prospects talking.  When they are talking, they are giving you valuable information. When you’re monopolizing the conversation, you’re losing an opportunity to discover what will motivate them to take action.  Add these types of questions to your repertoire and you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the issues.

  • “Tell me more about that.”
  • “What else is there?”
  • ”Is there anything else?”
  • “Could you be a little more specific?”

With these three types of questions, your sales reps should be able to encourage prospects to fully define their key challenges, which is a critical first step in the qualifying process.

But, there is more. Next sales reps need to get prospects to quantify the impact these challenges have on their business. What is the cost of doing nothing? Here’s where they will be able to establish the value and ROI of your offering. To learn more about quantifying your prospects challenges, stay tuned next week for the third and final installment of our series.

Back to Part 1 | Go to Part 3

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Redefining the Elevator Pitch: Creating a Successful “Cold Call”

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An elevator pitch is a short summary designed to simply define your company or product. As the name implies, it should be short enough that it can be delivered during the span of an elevator ride.

Why the brevity? The truth is that when you are “cold calling” into a prospect, ten to fifteen seconds is all you have to make an initial connection and get permission to continue the conversation. In light of this, it is critical that you can quickly establish trust and pique interest.

Today’s prospects are receiving so many incoming sales calls, that they are particularly wary of being “sold”. The old way of delivering your company’s message is no longer good enough.

Let’s take a look at how elevator pitches have traditionally been made and how they should evolve to become more effective in today’s selling environment.

The Old Elevator Pitch

The call starts with, “I’m Bob with XYZ Printing. How are you today?” 

The “clever” segue into the sales pitch, assuming we still have the prospect on the line, goes something like this.  “We’re the premier printing company in the area.  We’ve been serving the local market for over 20 years and have the most advanced digital printing equipment in the area.  Our specialty is quick turnaround and competitive pricing.  I’d like to set an appointment to meet with you to show you how we can save you time and money on your next printing project. Would Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning be better for you?”

Does that sound familiar?  It probably does and there are many problems with this approach:

  • “How are you today?”  Every telemarketer in the world starts the call by asking about the prospect’s “well-being.”  While this is an honest attempt at politeness, prospects know you don’t really care, so it comes across as insincere and makes you sound like a telemarketer.
  • The “compelling” pitch by the printing salesperson sounds like the other printing company that called the prospect yesterday.  They said they were the best in town and could save him time and money too.  Whom should he believe?
  • “Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning?”  How many times have we heard that over used alternative choice close?  Nearly every salesperson uses it.
  • The salesperson wants an appointment but doesn’t want to take the time to find out if there’s any pain.  This is the typical product pusher’s strategy and the prospect knows it.
  • The easy blow off that the prospect can, and often does, use is to say, “Just send me some information about it.”  And you know how sincere that request is.

The New, Improved Elevator Pitch

Never fear, there is a better way. Take a look at this new, improved approach.

This call starts with, “I’m Bob Smith with XZY Printing.  Did I get you at a bad time?”

If you get permission to continue, you’d say, “Thanks for taking my call.  Can I take about 20 seconds to tell you why I called, then you can tell me if we need to talk further?”

When you get permission, you’d say, “I’ll be brief, right to the point.  We’re one of the leading commercial printing companies in the area.  Typically companies switch to us because they’re upset with long turnaround times, concerned about the inconsistent quality of the final product or frustrated that their printer can’t offer any creative ideas to improve the job.  Are any of these issues for you?”

Or, you may want to give a specific example of how you’ve helped a competitor with a specific pain, something like “we recently helped [competitor’s name] save $2,000 per month on printing fees and reduce their turnaround time to 48 hours. Is this something that would be helpful to your business?”

If the answer is affirmative, you’d then go on to explore the pain further.

If the answer is negative, you could conclude the call quickly by saying, “Sorry to have bothered you.  Have a good day.”  And make another call.  Remember, you’re trying to find that gold nugget quickly and not waste time with people who are not good prospects.

There are many benefits to this approach:

  • Asking if you got him at a bad time is respectful of the prospect’s time.  (The overwhelming majority of the people we train say this tactic has been very effective despite the initial concern about making it too easy for him to say that he is busy.)
  • The “pitch” focuses on possible problems your company can address, thus begins the qualifying process quickly.
  • It’s different.
  • You won’t have done anything to destroy rapport.
  • You won’t sound like every other salesperson that calls.

Your ability to differentiate yourself in your initial call with a prospect will dramatically improve your success at developing new business. Try our new and improved elevator pitch for yourself – we’d love to hear how it works for you.

 

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Perspective on the Challenger Sale and Your Sales Process

challenger

The Challenger Sale has been a huge trend in the sales training industry in recent years, and one that has garnered its share of conversation and controversy. Co-authors Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson proclaim their ideas to be “the biggest shock to sales wisdom in decades.” However, much of their work is far from new.

Their key insight is that in order to sell successfully, salespeople must teach their customers something new about their business, providing them with unique ideas that improve the bottom line. Unfortunately, this approach is not new. It originated with Xerox nearly 40 years ago, and was again explored in a recent Harvard Business Review article by the Chasm Group suggesting sales people should start buying cycles with leading edge information that can give them an industry advantage.

Putting aside the fact that the Challenger approach is not new, how sound is this concept of insight-led selling? One thing to consider is that only a small percentage of buyers are Early Adopters, as John Holland wrote in his October 2013 article on “Aligning with 80% of Your Market”. To take an aggressive position with the mainstream or laggard buyers, and/or tell them what the focus should be on in improving their business will alienate many of them quickly. These types of buyers want to be nurtured and led to a decision that minimizes the risk for themselves and their organization.

Even more potentially dangerous is their recommendation that salespeople should be “assertive, pushing back when necessary and taking control of the sale.” From our experience, this is very bad advice, as buyers become distrustful of anything that reeks of a “hard sale” (for more on this, see our previous post on giving customers the OK to say “N0”). We work with sales organizations to enable them to use the way that they sell as a key capability, and telling is not part of that persona.

How else are we different? We teach proven techniques to help salespeople establish trust and uncover key customer pain points. Rather than telling your prospects what they should be doing, we encourage our clients to use illustrative stories and/or directed questioning to help customers tell you where their pain lies and how you can help them.

In addition to teaching selling techniques, we work with companies to develop a buyer-centric, end-to-end sales process and management reinforcement plan to ensure lasting revenue generation.

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Drive Revenue with Social Selling

tom_martin

We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Tom Martin, former president of Miller Heiman and 20+ year veteran of the sales methodology and training industry. During our time together, we discussed many of the big ideas pervading the space today.

Below, please find an excerpt from our conversation on one of today’s biggest topics – social selling.


John: There are a lot of trends affecting B2B salespeople, and one with a huge buzz is social selling.  Can you walk us through what “social selling” means to you?

Tom: You’re right John, social selling has a big buzz about it, and does not seem to be going away.  In most industries, sellers need to adapt to how social selling is impacting their sales process because of how it is affecting their prospect’s buying process.  Sales managers also need to adapt their sales training and reinforcement activities to coach their sellers in this new competency area.

John: Tom, tell us what social selling means to you. How can salespeople utilize social networks to improve their overall results?

Tom: When I think about what social selling means, I look at three different dimensions – three ways sellers can utilize “social” in their selling.

The first is listening. As Stephen Covey wrote in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood”.

Adapting this to social selling, the advice to sellers is simple: use tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs to read what your prospects are reading and writing … and then after you understand what is important then, and only then, should you start “talking” in the social world.

Another key for listening is another quote from Covey, “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply”.

John: Interesting…that ties in nicely with Flannery Sales System’s methodology on how important it is to qualify prospects by listening and uncovering their pain before presenting solutions. You mentioned three dimensions. What are the other two?

Tom: The second is researching. While closely related to listening, I think the use of social tools for research is so critical for sellers it needs to be called out separately.  Typically this means using social to support their sales process, or opportunity and account management methodologies.

Researching also includes “searching & stalking” – and by that I mean searching out your friends (champions and coaches), and stalking your enemies (gathering competitive intel).

Finally, the third is telling. Only after you’ve understood your prospects by listening and researching should you start responding with your own social content.

John: This sounds very similar to how I would advise a seller to approach a sales call or meeting – seeking to listen and understand first and only then to solve the problems they have uncovered. Anything else we should know about social selling?

Tom: Some people start with social selling assuming it is the silver bullet they were looking for, and that all they need to do is post a few blogs and tweet once a week. These people inevitably end up disappointed.

I think about a concept I learned as an Advertising major – “impressions.”  It was said that it takes seven impressions for someone to fully ‘get’ who you are, what you do, and why they might need your services.

Adapting this to social selling means sellers need to consider integrating their social selling and traditional selling efforts to complement each other and achieve more impressions.  They can’t plan on a single tweet magically converting new prospects into opportunities.

One final Covey-ism for today, “Begin with the end in mind.”  To drive revenue and add qualified opportunities to the pipeline, your social sales message needs to be in sync with your overall sales message.

John: Any advice on integrating social selling into your sales process?

Tom: To create a lasting impact, you need to build social selling activities into your normal sales cadence – so set aside time each week to listen, research and tell across multiple platforms.  In business that typically means LinkedIn posts, blog entries, and Twitter, and possibly SlideShare and YouTube channels.

Stay tuned for more from my conversation with industry expert Tom Martin.

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Flannery Sales Systems Unveils our New Logo

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At Flannery Sales Systems, we help companies drive revenue through sales process definition, sales team training and management coaching and reinforcement.

We are proud to unveil a new logo which represents these three important parts of our business. Our customized three pronged approach is what makes us different from other sales training programs, and we believe you need all three in order to drive meaningful, repeatable revenue.

Check out our updated website to learn more about how our services can help your organization, or request a free, personalized consultation with our sales experts.

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Flannery Sales Systems in Washington, DC

Flannery Sales Systems traveled to the East Coast this month. In this video, John talks to us about his travels and what we have to look forward to in the upcoming FSS newsletter, namely an interview with sales thought leader Tom Martin as well as John’s perspective on the Challenger program.

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How to Help Your Sales Reps Unstick a Stalled Deal

scammperrWhat makes a great sales leader? Ask this question to a dozen sales executives and you may get a dozen different answers. Many great sales leaders rise up through an organization by being top performers themselves and leading by example. Others are known for recruiting top talent, providing excellent coaching and mentorship, or successfully aligning sales incentives with company goals.

All of these are important; however, one of the most vital traits of a sales leader is one that often goes unnoticed. That is their ability to tap into innovation or “out-of-the-box” thinking to help their reps unstick a stalled deal. Removing roadblocks for your team will help them achieve their monthly targets and, in turn, help your organization meet or exceed revenue goals.

But just how does a sales leader tap into that innovative thinking? One of the most effective ways we have found is through the use of a tool called SCAMMPERR. SCAMPPERR is an acronym for nine thinking techniques that help you come up with creative solutions to problems. We’ve seen it shortened to SCAMPERR or even SCAMPER, but in our minds, using the full set of techniques gives you the best opportunity for creative problem solving.

How to Use SCAMMPERR

When you and a sales rep are trying to remove roadblocks in important deals, use the cues below to force yourselves to think in an arbitrarily different way.

S Substitute: What could be substituted in the situation to make the solution work?

C Combine: How could ideas or elements be combined to provide a solution?

A Adapt: How could the solution be adapted to make it work?

M Magnify: How could ideas or elements be magnified to make the solution work?

M Modify: What could be modified within the solution to make it work?

P Put: What might be put to a different use to make the solution work?

E Eliminate: What could be eliminated from the situation to allow the idea to work?

R Rearrange: How could elements be rearranged to enable the solution to work?

R Reverse: How might the solution be turned around to make it work?

Putting SCAMMPERR into Action

So how might you use SCAMMPERR to work with your sales team to remove roadblocks in stalled deals? Let’s look at an example.

When I was leading a team selling daily deals to local businesses, one of my reps was trying to sign a contract with a large amusement park, but the deal was stalled. The business was unwilling to significantly discount their ticket prices as they felt it would be too costly and would tarnish their brand. This had the potential to be a huge deal for us, but as the objections seemed insurmountable, my rep and I sat down together to see if we could come up with an innovative way to get the deal through. We used SCAMMPERR to guide our brainstorm.

After going through all the cues, it was “C-combine” that eventually led us to our answer. What if we combined admission tickets to the park with a local hotel stay? Local hotels already offered the park discounted room rates, so if we could get the hotel to kick in a bit more of a discount along with some other perks such as a free meal and parking, we could come up with a very compelling package price. Because the discount was now being applied to several businesses and not to the amusement park alone, they were not as concerned about negative impact on their brand. We presented our solution to the business and they were delighted. The deal closed and produced more revenue than any other offer that year.

Do you have examples of sales leaders using innovation to help their teams unstick stalled deals? Do you foster out-of-the-box thinking in your sales organization, and if so, have you used a tool like SCAMMPERR to drive results? We’d love to hear from you!

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8 Tactics for Gaining Access to the Decision Maker

decision-makerOver half the problems encountered by salespeople are caused by their inability to gain access to the decision maker. Failure to be in front of the person with the ultimate authority to approve the purchase will, in every case, eliminate your ability to get a positive decision.  You will, however, get lots of stalls (“I need to run it by…”) and plenty of  “think it overs.”

Since one of your biggest challenges is to gain access to the decision maker, let’s take a moment to look at some proven tactics that will help you accomplish this difficult task and help you avoid spending your time with the wrong people.

  1. Assume it. Early in the sales call ask, “When am I meeting with the decision maker?” If you get some push back, you need to say, “I’m confused; why not?”
  2. Ask for it. Simply state, “I’ll need to meet with the decision maker.  Can you arrange the meeting?” (I’m confused; why not?)
  3. “Company policy.” “It’s company policy that we meet with the decision maker.”  (Maybe it isn’t, but maybe it should be.)
  4. Bargain for access. Some lower level folks who want to protect their “turf” or have an ego trip may deny you access until you’ve “proven” yourself. In cases like this it’s important to find out under what circumstances they would introduce you to the decision maker. When you’ve found that out simply state, “So if I understand this correctly, in return for proving to you that we can adequately address your challenges, you will introduce me to the decision maker. Right?”
  5. Justification.  “I need to understand the issues from everyone’s point of view. If I don’t understand what the decision maker’s issues are, my proposal may miss the mark. That’s probably not a good strategy for either of us, is it?”
  6. “Biggest concern.”  “My biggest concern is that I won’t be able to meet with the decision maker during this process and that might impact my ability to completely understand the company’s challenges and ultimately present a really good solution. Can we avoid that?”
  7. Peer to peer. “Our president (EVP) wants to come to the meeting and wants to meet your president.  Sorry, I have no control over this. Will you let the him know?” Obviously this tactic gets other people involved, but sometimes that’s important.
  8. Asking for help. People want to help other people. Use comments like, “I’ve got a problem and I need your help” or “I’m a little confused.” You’ll be surprised at how much mileage you get from this tactic.
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Why Flannery Sales Systems?

JohnFlannery3-12_152There are a lot of sales training courses out there – seminars, webinars, workshops, audio books, and more. So many, in fact, that it can become hard to tell one from another. And even harder to determine if any of them can really improve your sales performance in a meaningful way.

So, what makes Flannery Sales Systems different?

We’re not just another training program.

Training alone does not drive revenue. It’s the implementation of that training that yields results. Before we begin training your customer-facing team, we’ll work with your sales leaders to define or refine your sales process so there’s a clear understanding of how the team will reach its revenue goals. After training, we’ll help you implement a reinforcement plan that will solidify process adoption and equip management with critical coaching skills and tools for success.

We’re customized.

Everything we do is customized for your organization. We are not a one-size-fits-all methodology that you then need to adapt to your team and selling environment. Our training curriculum is developed specifically for your company. Your sales reps will leave our workshops with the process, tools and skills they need to drive meaningful revenue right away. In addition, we’ll work with your management team to define a reinforcement plan critical for ongoing process adoption and continued sales success.

We’re about results.

We care about results as much as you do. And because we do, we will help you measure your progress at each stage within your sales process. The end goal is to drive revenue, but what are the individual activities necessary to achieve that goal, and how do you track your improvement over time? We will ensure you have full visibility into your performance at each stage of the sales cycle and a clear understanding of how our services have positively impacted your bottom line.

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Six Things You Must Know Before Sending a Proposal

Business ProposalThere are six things you must know in order to let your prospect pass – in other words, before you reward your prospect with a proposal. Your ability to conduct a professional and complete qualification of your prospect during the meetings leading up to this point in the sales cycle will provide you with the answers. Here are the checkpoints.

 

1.  You understand the prospect’s problem thoroughly and are able to provide, at a minimum, a satisfactory solution.

If you don’t understand the problem completely, how can you be sure you can suggest a solution that would be enthusiastically endorsed?

2.  The prospect has to do something – it is NOT an option to keep things the same.

If keeping things the same is an option for the prospect, they might very well select that option.  Problems tend to fall into the “fix it” or “forget it” categories. Unless there’s a compelling reason to change, most find it easier just to do nothing. No pain, no change.  Find the compelling reason why they’d want to go through the hassle of changing suppliers or implementing something new. If they can’t present a compelling case for change, they probably won’t change.

3.  You have access to the decision maker and will make your presentation to him/her. 

A good rule of thumb is never to make a presentation to someone who can’t say “yes.”  It’s that simple.

4.  The prospect needs to implement a solution in a time frame that makes sense for you from a business standpoint.

Time kills deals. What’s the point if your prospect doesn’t want to do anything for 18 months? Too much can happen to in the interim to send the deal sideways.

5.  You understand the prospect’s selection criteria, and have a reasonable chance of meeting those criteria successfully. 

What are the top three things they’ll evaluate when selecting a business partner, and why are those things important?  This will give you a good handle on just how good your chances are.  If this is a price driven deal, for example, and you can’t or won’t compete on price alone, why try to compete at all?  It’s a very competitive world out there and your competitors are trying just as hard to win the business as you are.  You’ve got to know their strengths and weaknesses, how they’re likely to react in certain situations, how hard they’ll fight for the opportunity that you’re trying to win.

6.  The prospect is considering only a small number of suppliers and is not putting the deal out to every company in the area. 

Generally, “RFPs” are not the most optimal type of business to win, since price plays such a major role in the selection process and the opportunity to communicate openly with the prospect is often quite limited. Prospects whose attitude is “the more, the merrier” are more interested in price than a relationship. Finally, increasing the number of options for the prospect decreases your chances of winning.

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