John is back in the new year with his first “On the Road Again” video of 2015. Here he is, literally on the road in his hometown of San Diego, CA, talking to us about what we have to look forward to in this month’s Flannery Sales Systems newsletter. Features include an interview with Brian Tracy, one of the world’s leading experts on personal and organizational performance and results, as well as an article on the growing importance of Sales Operations as sellers increase their reliance on technology to interact with today’s more sophisticated buyers.
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John and team traveled to the snowy East Coast last week to lead a workshop in Ithaca, NY. In this video, John previews our upcoming newsletter featuring a video from Gerhard Gschwandtner, founder and publisher of Selling Power magazine and long-time FSS partner and colleague. Flannery Sales Systems will be heading to Australia in January (Sydney and Melbourne) and Spain (Barcelona) in February. If you’d like to join us for a session, or meet John for a coffee if your city is listed on our calendar, reach out to john@drive-revenue.com.
If you’ve been following our blog or have attended one of our sales workshops, no doubt you’ve heard us talk about how a Features & Benefits approach to selling is no longer viable in today’s complex, relationship-based world. But have we taken a step back to explain why?
If not, here are some of our top reasons:
- Features and benefits are used prematurely to create interest, rather than properly qualifying the prospect.
- Features and benefits are used to differentiate a product from its competition, but everybody’s benefits (and often the features) sound the same (“we can save you time and money, and we’ll stand behind the purchase 100%”). When competitors look the same, buying decisions are made on price.
- Features and benefits engage the prospect intellectually, and most buying decisions are made emotionally. Research shows that most people don’t remember the features or benefits after a week or so, and if they felt any enthusiasm at all, it too had disappeared after a week.
- Features and benefits are the seller’s bag of tricks (“we’ve got this, we’ve got that”), and may not be relevant to the prospect’s buying reasons. People buy for their reasons, not yours.
- Once you’ve “dumped” your features and benefits, the only thing left to do is close and handle objections and, all too often, discount your price. From there, it’s all pressure, and you can’t go back and qualify further.
So as 2014 comes to a close, remember to work with your sales reps to avoid the temptation to dive into product features & benefits too quickly. Much more important is their ability to establish trust, ask intelligent questions, and thoroughly qualify each opportunity.
Watch Gerhard Gschwandtner, founder and publisher of Selling Power magazine and long-time partner and colleague of Flannery Sales Systems, discuss the importance of having a sales process to achieving company goals.
John Flannery has been invited to lead a workshop as part of European Language Industry Association’s (ELIA) Expert Training event in Barcelona, Spain.
This learning opportunity includes a series of in-depth workshops designed for all professionals who believe in personal and business growth. The event will focus on business-critical topics such as sales, creativity and conflict management.
John’s workshop is entitled “How to Win Business from New and Existing Customers”, and in it, he will work with attendees to help them differentiate themselves through the conversations they have during the sales process.
For more about the ELIA expert training, take a look at their event page. We hope to see you in Barcelona!
Flannery Sales Systems recently traveled to Richmond, Virginia. In this video, John discusses what you have to look forward to in our upcoming blog posts and newsletter, including guest posts from sales leaders like Brian Dietmeyer and a straightforward look at how FSS can help you sell more.
It would be great if I could sell to you. But I imagine that you will only buy from me if I can help you to sell more.
In order to do that, there are a few things I need to figure out before you’re ready to buy from me.
1. Who do you sell your stuff to? By this I mean what type of company.
2. What job titles do they usually have in the types of companies they work in?
3. What challenges do those customers have when they don’t have the things that your stuff helps them to do?
4. If nothing changes regarding the challenges that those customers face, what is the financial impact?
5. Do those prospects know enough or care enough about those challenges to make a change?
If they do, proceed to #6. If they don’t, you may need to tell them a story about someone who you worked with that didn’t realize the challenges they faced and how your stuff helped to fix it. See if they care. If they do, proceed to #6. If they don’t, move them into your call back file for later and move on to the next prospect.
6. Once those challenges are shared, and there is a reasonable amount of impetus to make a change, describe how your stuff can help them to address and fix the challenges.
See if you can help the customer to quantify the value that they could recognize with an improvement. If you can you have a qualified opportunity. If not, you may have to tell another story about how you helped someone to address the challenges and what the value was for them. If they agree, you may proceed. If not, put them in the same call back sequence as #5.
That’s it – six things I need to understand before I can effectively sell to you. And, guess what, they’re the same six things you need to understand before you can effectively sell to your prospects and customers.
People have been studying the science of learning for thousands of years – dating all the way back to the time of Plato and Socrates in Ancient Greece. Educators seek to improve the way they teach students, parents look for ways to improve the way their children learn, and organizations strive to improve the development they offer to their personnel.
At Flannery Sales Systems, we are also staying on top of the latest in learning development, as we seek to make a lasting impact for our clients. The science of learning is constantly evolving, and we continue to adapt our curriculum to leverage the latest in learning advancements.
Here are some learning practices that we employ daily in our work with our clients:
- Self-discovery. People are most convinced by ideas that they themselves conceive; so don’t resort to a lecture style classroom if you can help it. Provide small group labs and workshops where students can be an active part of the learning process.
- The experience matters. People learn best when they are in an engaging environment with a trusted instructor. They must be kept interested and entertained. Stories work well. Humor doesn’t hurt either.
- Tailor, tailor, and tailor. Before you instruct a group, take some time to understand your audience. What is their age, gender, and education level? Where are they from? What are their interests?
- Edu-tainment. Edu what? Edu-tainment is the idea of mixing education with entertainment for more effective learning. This is an increasing trend with the millennials, who have been raised to believe that learning should be fun.
- Reinforce. Statistics vary on the number of times an idea needs to be presented before it can be ingrained. But what remains consistent is the theory that repetition matters. And in today’s always-on, hyper-connected world, the amount of times you need to present an idea for it to have an impact is only getting bigger.
- Practice. Practice makes perfect. Well, maybe not perfect, but certainly better. Practice is key to successful learning, as people need the opportunity to “try on” what they have learned in order to fully master it.
- Promote a “growth mindset”. This has been a hotly researched topic lately, led by Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck with the publication of her 2006 book entitled “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Having a growth mindset means that you believe that it is hard work more than innate ability that drives advancement. Students that come in with a growth mindset tend to progress farther as they actively strive to learn and improve.
- Technology. It goes without saying that advancements in technology have revolutionized the way we learn. Technology can be used to reinforce a classroom-style learning environment, or provide “distance learning” allowing people to learn anywhere, anytime from the convenience of their laptop, iPad or any connected device.
What advancements in learning will we see in the coming years? While we don’t know for certain, we can be sure that they will include ideas new and old, and leverage technology and edu-tainment to reinvent the way people develop and grow.
This is a question I often ask Sales Managers.
Many of them respond that they do on the grounds of fairness. They try to distribute their time evenly between all team members and provide similar opportunities for coaching and development.
While I appreciate the intent, I disagree with the practice. At the end of the day, being a great sales manager doesn’t lie in giving your reps a similar dose of the same medicine, but rather in tailoring your prescription to each individual, which will likely result in a disproportionate amount of your time and energy spent with some reps and not with others.
Here’s what I recommend:
First, divide your team into thirds in order of performance – top 10%, middle 60% and bottom 30%. Many managers find this exercise difficult, as they’re reluctant to label certain reps as bottom performers. But it’s a critical first step in optimizing your coaching time.
Next, allocate your time with each rep according to his or her grouping.
Contrary to popular opinion, the bulk of your time should not be spent with the top performers (because they’re the most valuable), nor should it be spent with the bottom performers (because they have the most room for improvement). It should actually be spent with the middle 60%. The middle performers are the group that has the most to gain from focused skills coaching, and statistically speaking it’s with this group that you will see the biggest performance lift.
Of course you should still allocate time for your top performers. But your time with this group should be spent focused on retention rather than skills coaching – are they happy in their current position? Is there anything you can do to make their jobs better? Where do they see themselves 3 years from now?
Very little time should be spent with bottom performers. These team members can be an extreme “time suck” with very little payoff, and allocating the bulk of your time to coach the bottom tier very seldom translates into sales results.
So, is this a fair management strategy? Maybe not. But it is effective. It allows you to align your time and talents with the sales reps that stand to make the biggest gains, thus improving your ability to impact overall team performance and revenue generation. And at the end of the day, isn’t that what you were hired to do?
Part II
Earlier this week, we discussed the importance of helping your team avoid discounting, especially during Q4 when sales reps are eager to close business and buyers are ready to play hardball.
The first skill we discussed is teaching your reps to prove value. If you missed that post, take a look here.
The second key skill is negotiation.
You’ll often hear sellers say, “he’s just a good negotiator,” as if it’s something people are born with and you either have it or you don’t. Nothing could be further from the truth. All sales reps can be trained to be great negotiators. Here’s what they must know:
Have a negotiation plan – you must be prepared for a negotiation – you can’t just “wing it”. Before walking into any closing meeting, sellers should assume that the buyer is going ask for price concessions and have a plan in place to respond.
Know your floor – calculate the lowest price you’ll go in order to preserve margin and revenue opportunities for you and your company.
Push back – remind your buyer about the agreed-upon value of your product and/or service and ask if anything has changed, or if they’re prepared to deal with the cost of not moving forward.
Offer other concessions – be ready to offer your customer other concessions that aren’t related to price, things like extended warranty, training, a dedicated service rep, etc. These offer your customers value without eroding your margins. But…if you do offer something, be sure to ask for something in return. What can your customer give you? Think about things like exclusives, referrals, testimonials, etc.
Be prepared to walk away – there are times when a buyer will not move forward without unreasonable discount requests, and good sellers must be prepared to walk. This can be especially hard in Q4, but it is essential to upholding the value of your offering. Tell your buyer, “I’m not going to be able to offer you the discount you’re requesting. But, what I would like to do is take some time to think about our conversation today and get back together next week.” Sometimes knowing that they’ve pushed you as low as you’ll go is all a buyer needs to move forward.
Practice – as with all skill development, practice is key to mastery. Role-play negotiations with your reps to get them prepared for big meetings. Have them practice pushing back and offering non-price concessions in exchange for something of value to your organization. The more they practice, the more successful they’ll be when they go to close business.
In summary, Q4 is upon us. It’s time to focus your team on proving value and smart negotiating in order to help them avoid discounting and maximize revenue achievement.