Selling some of it is intuition

I had an early morning coffee with one of the most successful technology sales people in Europe this morning. This guy has closed both high value and low value deals all around the world. Every time I meet him he leaves me with nuggets of wisdom that are worth considering. Here are six I jotted down this morning:

Complex sales will require multiple channels of communications with the prospect. Inevitably when the deal sizes get interesting channel dynamics & personalities will emerge. You need to think like the partner if you are going to get one of the big boys to joint bid with you. The value you bring needs to be clear to them and to the customer. If having your organization involved in the joint bid doesn’t strengthen a partners position considerably, they just won’t have you on their bid team.

The sales guys that are doing deals right now have the ability to present the business case for a major sale with a CEO in the morning and then get on the phone and progress a smaller €100,000 deal in the afternoon, gone are the days your sales number will be achieved by just focusing on the big deals. Selling requires some street fighting (in the nicest possible way of course) ·

Lots of small deals are lost by forcing a yes no decision (T Junction) too early. You need to avoid taking the prospect to a T Junction too quickly, nurture the relationship and seek out the compelling event. Your solution needs to be must have, not a nice to have. Lots of sales people forget this.

When selling to the public sector abroad, obey the price envelopes that are set down, failure to do so will result in you not being shortlisted

Sales forecasting and planning should not just be about a scientific model, you need to, look back to previous quarters, look out at the market and then apply some intuition otherwise the target that are set are unlikely to get buy in from your sales team

Selling is very much team based, it requires sales professionals, pre-sales support, technical support, finance and customer support, it’s not about one or two top people anymore.

Hope these nuggets from the field of professional selling are of use.

John O’ Gorman – sales effectiveness, sales activity

Belief and conviction in your solution/service offering will affect your close rate

If you are responsible for selling, it really helps if you have total belief in the value your solution delivers. An obvious enough statement one might think. Well not so obvious, I can tell you from listening to vendors and service provider talk about their solutions lately. Consider three questions
1. Do you have conviction when you talk about the value of your solution
2. Do you sound like you understand what it takes to deliver the solution/service you are offering
3. Do you sound like you understand how as a buyer I am feeling about the change required to implement your solution or take on your service offering

If you answer yes to all three great, if you can’t, you need to sit down and review the actual value delivered to clients in previous engagements. In my honest opinion, conviction and belief gets built with experience and real world / practical understanding of how others have gained value from your offerings no where else. And please remember, it’s not the value marketing tell you about that will help build conviction and belief into how you communicate your overall value, it’s the value customers talk about that counts, this implies extending relationships beyond the point of order.

Food for thought
John – Accelerating Sales Growth, sales planning, sales effectiveness, sales process, sales coaching

What do people want marketing collateral or is it sales collateral?

Now more than ever you need sales collateral not blah de blah marketing collateral. The people who read your collateral are well versed in blah, blah, value proposition this, value proposition that material. They don’t have time to read stuff that was not developed by people who understand them.

Buyers want to read material that is thought provoking and that helps them, obviously!!!

When developing your next set of sales collateral (which by the way should not cost an arm and a leg) make sure each piece developed talks to the buyer and supports their buying process. It should be developed with them in mind not your CEO’s ego.

As you know at a minimum your sales collateral should be:

• Segment specific
• Solutions focused as opposed to product focuses
• Topical
• Tailored to the decision unit & CEO-proofed
• Designed with new media delivery in mind (pdfs, forums, wikis not just expensive printed material )

If you are reading this piece and saying to yourself yes that is all common sense John, so what. Then here is what you need to think about. Your sales material must be considered in line with:

• Your sales objectives
• The stage it is used in the sales cycle
• How the collateral adds value to the selling & buying process

Sales collateral that gets results:

1. Gives a compelling reason to buy (by the way that doesn’t mean a generic value propositions)
2. Shows business impact & have some quantifiable benefits / business case
3. Have 3rd party validation
4. Offer insight and perspective

This all means the people who write sales material must understand how people buy, obviously!!!

That’s it, I am off.

John www.acceleratesalesgrowth.com, sales management, sales planning, sales coaching, sales and marketing consulting

activity and listening the black art of sales

In my travles over the past week I have met with 10 senior managers all looking to sell more. They want sales now. Nothing new there.

It strcuk me over the course of these meetings that sales managers and buisness owners need to get back to basics; focus on what it is they have or do that makes a difference to their clients lives and increase their level of customer/prospect facing actvity.

As my old marketing professor used say, “face the customer, listen to what they are saying and then uncover the personal win your prospect will get from buying your product/service/solution”.

Selling is still the toughest profession in the world. But it is not a black art. It can be made much easier and less stressful if you listen, ask the right questions and stay in contact regularly.

John from The ASG Group: www.theasggroup.com