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If the Buyer Is in the Lead, Your Sales Process Has Fallen Behind 

One day a salesman approached me while I was working in my yard. He was selling house painting services and asked me if I was interested in getting my house painted. I said yes. Then he made a mistake that allowed me to take over and lead the conversation. He began to speak to me as if I were ready to sign on the dotted line. I led him on and he was surprised when he couldn’t close the deal. His error? He mistook my curiosity as motivation to buy what he was selling. This stumble on his part allowed me to gather information I wanted without any real intention of buying. 

Although this interaction happened in my front yard, this kind of scenario takes places in all sorts of sales situations as buyers take the lead. And when buyers lead, sellers lose.  

How can you teach your salespeople to recognize this kind of buyer? Share with them these three ways buyers manipulate the salesperson and then leave them disappointed when they can’t close the deal: 

  1. Dangling False Carrots. False carrots are statements like “I’m interested, I’m looking for information, I’m having a problem with,” etc. These declarations draw the seller in. The sales person thinks they have a hot lead, but in reality the buyer may only be looking for information. In my case, I’d thought about painting my house, but I wasn’t ready any time soon. I was just curious. I began asking questions just to get information from the seller. I asked questions like, how long does it take, what should I paint, who does the actual painting. I was asking all the questions and he was doing all the talking. Who was in control of the process? I was. 
  1. Asking for Prices First. When the buyer is in control, this question is asked early on. In my example, I was curious how much his great service was going to cost. This guy spent 90 minutes working up a quote. He was satisfying my curiosity. He asked no qualifying questions, and he was giving me information for free. Why wouldn’t I take it? When finished with the quote, he gave me a great presentation as to why I should use his company complete with testimonials from neighbors who’d used their service. It all sounded great and the price seemed fair and reasonable. However, I still wasn’t ready to buy.  
  1. Delaying Rejection. Because I wasn’t ready to commit, I ended the conversation with the dreaded “Let me think about it.” Even though I knew there was a slim chance that I was going to purchase, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. I thought he was a nice guy and I didn’t want to let him down. Besides, I got what I wanted: a quote. I had something to use as a benchmark for when I would be serious about painting my house, a dollar amount I could use to negotiate a better price with another painter. And he got nothing but a “I’d like to think it over” statement. He wasted a couple of hours chasing a sale that wasn’t going to happen. 

He followed up a few days later to be told “no.” I’m sure he was surprised because he didn’t realize his mistake.  

Did it have to go this way for him? Not at all. What could he have done differently? He could have managed his defined sales process with checkpoints. A sales process defines what you need to know from the buyer before sharing information or moving to the next step. Without a defined process, the buyer takes over and draws the seller in. The buyer is in the lead and the sales person can’t get that lead back.  

If you or your sales people have you ever been told, “I need to think it over,” that’s a sure sign your sales process needs some adjustment. 

You just wrapped up the first half of 2019. In the next week or so, you’ll have a full tally of how your sales teams did with top and bottom-line results. For many, the Summer comes in fast and furious as you recover from the mid-year push and assemble your teams to plan for the rest of the year. 

So, exhale for a moment and breathe deeply; now is the time to take a good, hard look at your opportunity pipeline for the balance of 2019. Are there enough qualified opportunities in development to enable you to exceed your revenue plans? Ignore the old adage that you need to have “three times” the revenue in your pipeline to hit your annual plan – it’s not only a bad guess for how to hit your number, but it’s also a dangerous precedent for sellers who aren’t sure what a healthy pipeline actually looks like. 

Here is what your sales leaders need to do NOW to make sure there is enough revenue working: 

  • Establish Qualified Opportunity Criteria: this should have been done by January 1, but if you haven’t done it yet, it’s not too late. Make sure each member of your team knows the criteria required to categorize an opportunity as qualified. (We have done this with our customers, and can send anonymous examples to you by request to john@drive-revenue.com
  • Coach Opportunity Development EARLY: don’t wait until the negotiation is coming to a head to parachute in and close the deal for the seller. Salespeople learn nothing from this, except perhaps how you close, which won’t help them when you aren’t there. Set a schedule with each of your reps to coach them on how to successfully navigate their open opportunities, and make sure a complete job is done in early stages. 
  • Practice Skill Conversations: from prospecting to qualification and all the way through negotiation, make sure your team members are fluent in all aspects of the conversations they will have with customers and prospects. Not all sellers need every skill improved; a good benchmark is to pick one skill per rep per month and ensure that it is really mastered. 

Once you have these basics in place, we can look at how to build the right opportunity mix for a healthy, balanced revenue pipeline. But without doing the work to establish opportunity criteria, coaching opportunity development and practicing skill conversations, you’re sure to have some gaps in your pipeline that will make it very difficult to achieve your annual plan. If you do the heavy lifting now, you will avoid the year-end fire drills that many organizations go through to hit their numbers in Q4. 

concessions-3We should be trying to create a win/win outcome  in every negotiation in order to insure a strong  and lasting business relationship. While concessions are an essential element in any  negotiation, they can be a threat to maintaining  your credibility.  The following suggestions will help you improve your results when concessions are necessary.

  • Make a list of value items.

Prior to the negotiation, identify and list the important items/issues for the other party but which have little value to you.  Likewise, make a list of items/services that you want in return (these may be both valuable or small concessions for the other party).   Use these items when concessions are brought up.  Be prepared!

  • Never respond immediately to a request for a concession.

Take your time.  A pause will add uncertainty to the other party, it will add value to the concession if you do make it and you will have more time to think about a comparable concession to request.   All of this raises your credibility.

  • Never make a concession without asking for one in return.

As  previously  mentioned,  making unilateral concessions is a big mistake.  It sends the wrong  message  and you lose an opportunity  to improve your position.  Always ask for something of equal or greater value in return.   If you are asked for a concession, you can simply respond, “The only way I could do that is if you could do something for me. I’d need you to ____________. How do you feel about that?”

  • Beware of “insignificant”  concessions.

Small, “insignificant” concessions can add if up if the other party constantly asks for more.  Always read their entire proposal before agreeing  to a “small” concession.  This gives you more power/credibility and provides chances to ask for more concessions from their side.  If this becomes an issue, call them on it:  “In addition to that, are there other items that you’re interested in?”  This forces the other party to reveal all of their wishes at once so that they don’tcontinue to peck away at you with more requests.

  • Try to design a system for making  concessions.

When necessary, such as negotiating with someone who wants to play hardball,  set the tone and the ground rules up front so there is no miscommunication.  An easy approach would be to say,  “You give me a concession, and I’ll give you one.”  This is an honored technique that’s been used cross-culturally  for thousands of years and can be used today with anyone in almost any negotiation.

  • Never say never.

By saying “no” or “we can’t do that,” you limit your own options.  Instead, consider saying to the other  party,  “Hmmm…that  may  be difficult for us.  Can  you  think  of  any  possible alternatives you may want to consider?” or, “It’s a possibility if you can do ________ for us.”  To use this approach effectively, you must know your list of value items well.

  • Don’t ask for unreasonable concessions.

You want to reach a final agreement by finding mutually agreeable items for both sides.  Therefore, don’t ask for concessions  you don’t believe you will  get.  Also, be prudent with any offer because the other party may accept it.

  • Know your business’ needs and bottom  line.

Never give something away or work for a concession if it doesn’t make sense for your business.

  • The “value” of  price.

Price is seldom the real issue.  The conviction that a person has that he is receiving overall value in the deal is usually the true issue.  Consequently, a good deal results from the belief that the person is receiving a good deal.

  • Make sure the other party walks away feeling like a winner.

If the other negotiator can go back to their company and say, “This is what I won for us from the deal,”  he will feel like he succeeded.    Successful negotiators with a win/win  philosophy can make this look easy.

A buying cycle begins with a motivation for change. In Neil Rackham’s description of the buying cycle, he uses the word “needs” to describe what is most important to the buyer early in the process.  We have renamed needs “primary business objectives” or PBOs to emphasize the buyer’s point of view at this stage.  

Just like Rackham’s needs, however, PBOs must be determined at the onset of the sales process.  

How do you determine the PBOs of a prospect when you meet them for the first time? If you’re lucky, they will simply tell you and you’ll be saved the hard part of digging for the key driver in the motivation to make a change. But salespeople shouldn’t count on luck.  

Or maybe you can safely make an assumption. If you have the title of an individual that you will be meeting with and that person is in a similar role as another customer you have in that same industry, will their PBOs be similar? Perhaps.   

Regardless of whether or not a prospect tells you the PBO at the outset, or you can make an assumption based on previous experience, it’s critical for salespeople to understand the importance of getting a PBO shared before launching into a presentation, asking a series of questions, or giving testimonials.  

This seems obvious, right? Yet, as simple as it seems, it is often overlooked–even by the most seasoned salesperson.  

As long as we stayed focused on learning this information, it’s usually easy to discover. Here are three ways to get the PBO shared by the key players:  

  • Ask questions. Ask questions to understand their business problems and pain. 
  • Offer a menu. Probe with a menu of business objectives that might be relatable. 
  • Tell a story. Tell a story about how you helped a similar customer, although you’ll have to make some assumptions to do this. This is also a way to share your insight into an area of the prospect’s business that they might not have thought about.  

Once you define the PBOs with a prospect, you’re well on your way to helping them identify a solution to address their problems: your solution! 

John got some altitude after a day of sales calls in the East Bay outside of San Francisco and Oakland. Click on the arrow above to hear more about ways to tighten up your revenue engine.

Flannery Sales Systems (FSS) was pleased to participate in IHRSA,  the largest fitness conference and trade show in the world on Thursday and Friday, March 14 and 15 in San Diego. John E. Flannery, President of FSS was on hand to speak with Sales and Marketing leaders about fine-tuning their efforts to drive revenue.

“We help all individuals in customer facing roles with the tactical execution of their GoTo Market strategy, which equates to one effective customer conversation at a time” says Flannery, who worked with one of the top fitness equipment manufacturer in the industry for four years. The inclusion of Sales, Marketing, Customer Service and Technical Expertise in the execution of sales process has proven invaluable in meeting and exceeding revenue objectives.

For an individual conversation with John, contact him at 858 518-7039 or john@drive-revenue.com

global sales

Flannery Sales Systems Is Global

 

In the past 14 years, we have trained 3,600 individuals in customer facing roles to include Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Inside Sales, Technical Specialists  and the Managers in all of these teams. Our coverage spans the globe, as we have implemented sales process programs, with a focus on skill development and Coaching, in 16 countries where attendees spoke 21 different languages (the map is a representative sample; actual delivery done in 45 cities). Our customers’ success has helped to drive revenue in Euros, Yuan, Pounds, Yen, Dollars and other currencies. To find out more about how your customer facing teams can excel, contact us for a free consultation at john@drive-revenue.com.

stick

 

You did your due diligence in providing a fantastic Sales Training event for your team, expecting them to turn it on and kick off record sales! Right?

Wrong….

A couple of months after the training, you find your reps are still talking about the “great training”, but the effects of the event have faded while you were trying to wrap up numbers.  They don’t remember what was covered; they feel unprepared to start using new tools they were given; they haven’t practiced since the training; and after-all, they survived last year without changing anything, so why should they rock the boat now?

Your training investment is just the first step in the Adult Cycle of Learning.  Your initial investment can lose momentum as everyone settles back into the way they’ve always done things.  You may find that you aren’t getting the behavioral changes required to increase the long-term performance results you were looking for because the learning didn’t stick.

Adult Learning Theory states that repetition and reinforcement are the next necessary steps which internalize learning to the point of behavioral change.  While a training event can cause a short-term bump in performance, long-term success depends on underscoring process and best practices with repetition.  Research shows that learning improves with repetition for two reasons:

  1. Our short-term memories are just that: short-term. We can forget something like a person’s name in less than a second.  Repetition moves things from our short-term memory into the longer-term memory, and hence is a key method for learning.  Just like when we learned our multiplication tables in school, we need to repeat things more than once for them to finally sink into our memories.
  1. Repetition leads to understanding. It gives time for the “penny to drop”.  What at first may feel uncomfortable, after repeated exposure becomes clear.  Understanding provides context and relevance, providing a reason for performing new tasks, or changing behaviors.

While repetition teaches a skill, reinforcement is defined as anything that strengthens or increases a behavior once a skill is learned.  Behaviorist B. F. Skinner observed that the rate at which a behavior was reinforced had a direct impact on the frequency and strength of the skill because reinforcement increases the likelihood that the behavior will continue to occur.

Methods of reinforcement of learned behavior can include the following:

  • Live in-person training – Just like any skill, one lesson won’t do it. Continued lessons and practice will build capabilities over time.
  • Online learning webinars – Programs on specific topics offer opportunities for retention and to deepen understanding of basic concepts.
  • Coaching –A person dedicated to supporting continued learning, performance and success of sales people, coaching around specific goals and expectations of actions, and then holding the team accountable has the best chance of inspiring change.

Sales Training is not enough.  The adult cycle of learning follows this progression:

Training > Repetition > Reinforcement > Real-world Application > Measurable Results > Repeat.

 So don’t sell yourself short by stopping after the initial training.  Provide repetition and reinforcement to enable your team to drive revenue results!

 

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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!