Inside Our Head

If you sell to businesses, somewhere during the sales process your prospects may send out a Request for Proposal or ask you to make a formal sales presentation.

Here's an important tip: if the RFP is the first you've heard about the opportunity, it means you're entering the game late (whether or not there are other competitors) and the odds of winning are low.

The way I handle the situation is to call up the customer and say, "Thank you for sending the RFP. I need an hour of your time to ask some questions and fully understand your needs." If the customer says no, I know there is little chance I can make a sale. If they are unwilling to give me one hour of their time, why should I spend 20 hours responding to an RFP?

If you are a sales manager, your sales training must include this important tip.

If you don't know your customer's buying criteria, or if you find yourself guessing, consider it a signal that you haven't placed enough emphasis on uncovering customer needs. You will have added significant value to your customer's buying process if they come away with a better understanding of their buying criteria and with a greater awareness of important issues they had not previously considered.

If you want to achieve greater sales success, you have to participate in the creation of a unique sales solution that meets your customer's needs. When the solution you design for your prospect includes certain buying criteria that you are uniquely qualified to address, you have set the ground rules in your favor. But, in order to achieve this result, you must, again, resist the temptation to pitch your solution too soon. Instead, design a customer-focused solution that locks out your competition.

During a first meeting with a customer, it’s unlikely they will tell you everything going on in their decision process. For all you know, the first need they mention may be something identified by one of your competitors in a meeting the day before! By failing to probe for the second need, you may be allowing your competitor to define your customer’s mental picture of a solution. Not good. Even if your customer hasn’t talked with your competitors, probing for a second need is a good way to get him or her to increase their desire for change and allow you to make the sale!

My sales career began 30 years ago selling office equipment for Lanier, something like the "Marine Corps" of business-to-business sales. I'd take the elevator to the top floor of an office building and cold call my way down to the lobby. I was taught to walk into an office and ask to see the General Manager for "just 10 minutes." With good technique and 20 cold calls per day, I could see three prospects. Then in the afternoon I'd call the 17 prospects I didn't get in to see that morning, seeking a pre-set appointment. After a few years on the street I moved up to major accounts, where our "system sale" to hospitals could run $500k and up, a complex sale to multiple levels of decision makers. I then became a sales manager, and eventually a General Manager where I hired, performed sales training, and coached over 200 salespeople.

One day in April of 1989 I was out working in the field with one of my salespeople. I stopped into a bookstore in La Jolla, CA looking for a book that might offer me new ideas for improving the quality of my next sales meeting. That's when I saw it: Why People Buy by John O'Shaughnessy, Professor of Business at the Columbia University School of Business. Professor O'Shaughnessy and his research assistants interviewed both businesses and consumers about their buying decisions. The researchers found that when buyers feel uncertain about which product or service to buy (and who doesn't?) they will seek to resolve their uncertainty with a rational and predictable buying process. For me, it was a blinding flash of the obvious! My entire sales career had been spent thinking about sales techniques and not buying behavior.

Three months later, I resigned from Lanier and hung out my shingle as a sales trainer. Operating in start-up mode out of a spare bedroom in a small suburb of San Diego, I knew I had found the right calling. Six years later, in 1996, my first book, Getting Into Your Customer's Head, was published.

Since 1989 my company, and our valued and talented distributor partners in the U.S. and Canada have implemented the Getting Into Your Customer's Head sales approach in many successful corporate sales organizations from dozens of major multi-national corporations and hundreds of small and medium-sized firms. Our clients have come from many different sectors: software, document management, transportation, business services, career/staffing services, financial services, professional services, wireless, telecom, healthcare, heavy equipment, media … you name it.

Years ago I was selling an office equipment solution to the CEO of a 100-person company. I was selling to him the way I had been taught: I established comfortable conversation while building trust, asked questions to diagnose his needs, then presented my solution as an answer to his needs. Everything, seemingly, appeared to be going along as planned. Suddenly he leaned forward and asked, "Aren’t you going to close me now?"

Why is it that customers know more about selling techniques than most salespeople know about buying behavior? That’s not right. An understanding of buying is where selling should start. We need to redefine "selling" to mean helping people buy. As a sales manager, this should be an important part of your sales training.

People who recently bought from you after scouting the competition are a rich source of information. It's worth talking to them to see what they can tell you about how your product or service compares to the rest of the market. Ask them if they would explain why they chose you, what strengths they perceived. If you know them well, ask if they will send you copies of your competitor's proposals.

Often times, professional salespeople overlook the importance of current clients. These past clients are more likely to buy from you in the future... ask them for more sales! Your sales training initiatives must include sales training for current clients. This is a great method for building the great sales team you want and need.

Negotiating power plays a major role in every type of sales negotiation, whether it's a labor negotiation, political negotiation, or a buy-sell negotiation. Both the buyer and the seller have power in a negotiation. Power is each side's perception of its strength or weakness in comparison to the other. This perception of power affects the ability of each party to achieve its own goals. The more negotiating power you have in comparison to that of your buyer, the fewer concessions you'll have to make.

In this time of economic struggle, creating a unified sales force with a common sales language and single sales message becomes imperative if your company is to achieve its goals.

When you bring together different sales cultures and levels of sophistication within a newly-merged organization the result is often reduced sales, erosion of trust with customers and ineffective sales coaching of the sales process.

Your sales force is your frontline of contact with your customer. They carry your corporate message, your philosophy, and deliver the value you offer. They are the implementers of your marketing strategy. It doesn't matter who you are, if your sales team is giving conflicting signals, rather than a consistent message, you erode your name and what you stand for.

Without a common selling language, companies may find they are fielding "bands of selling nomads," salespeople that complicate, rather than simplify clients' lives.

This is particularly true if your company has national accounts with multiple client locations, and multiple salespeople calling on that account. Varying communication styles, standards, and levels of expertise can cause clients to go elsewhere if another firm is more coherent and efficient in its sales approach.

Words of Wisdom from Lou Holtz

You must understand they every person you will meet for the rest of your life will ask three questions. Every customer, every spouse and child is going to ask these three questions. It is absolutely imperative that you be able to answer "yes" to each of these three questions.

1. Can I trust you?

Without trust you cannot have any relationship. People must be able to trust you. The only way to establish trust is to follow rule number 1, which is simply: Do Right. Do what’s right and avoid what is wrong. If people trust you, they will respect you, and if they respect you they will buy from you.

2. Do you want to be good?

You demonstrate your desire to be good by the preparations you make, and the standards you live by. Today, everybody talks about their rights and privileges. Twenty-five years ago people talked about their responsibilities and their obligations. As part of a sales organization you have obligations and responsibilities, and every decision you make is going to affect everybody else in the entire organization. When you go in for a sales call it is absolutely imperative that you be totally prepared, that you know everything there is to know about that customer and about your products. No matter what you do, do it to the best of your ability, not because somebody’s looking, or because somebody’s going to praise you, but because that’s just the way you live. Rule number 2 is: Be committed to excellence.

3. Do you care about me?

Do you care about your spouse, your children, your customers? Your company is going to want to know: Do you care about us? Show people you care at every opportunity. Constantly ask yourself, "How can I show these people that I genuinely care?" Not because you’re gonna sell 'em something, but because you genuinely believe in them as people. There is a strong tendency in this world to think that you are the only one who has a problem. I’m gonna tell you something and I don’t want you to ever forget it. Every person you meet has a burden. Every person needs encouragement. Show 'em you care and you will have wonderful relationships. Rule 3: Genuinely care about people.

If you will live by these three rules, I guarantee you will enjoy tremendous success.

WINNING EVERYDAY: The Game Plan for Success
by Lou Holtz

What you are capable of doing is determined by your talent. What you do is determined by your motivation. But how productive you are and how close you come to realizing your true potential will always be determined by the attitude you have. We can’t control what is going to happen to us but I think it’s imperative that we decide how we are going to react to it. We all get knocked down. We all face adversity. The winner is the one who gets up fast and gets going again.

The true professional salesperson is the one who takes pride in the profession and understands one purpose: satisfy the needs of the customer. The professional sales person is there to help the customer achieve more happiness and more productivity.