Evolution of a Salesperson [INFOGRAPHIC]

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In problem-solving terms, the rule is when you are confused about the next course of action you always start with, “How did we get here?” As we look at sales forces all over the world, we see problems like:

  • Closing percentages are low
  • Difficulty finding and getting in touch with buyers
  • Every part of the sales process gets commoditized
  • The sales process lasts way too long.

So, the first question we had was: How did we get here? The infographic below gives you some insight into how we see the world of professional selling today and helps you rethink your role as a salesperson.

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How To Become An Expert In Your Industry

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What separates the expert seller from everyone else? Can you really position yourself as an expert in your niche? And what benefits will you derive from that? In this episode, Bryan Neale reviews the many types of sales people so that you can see where you fit. Then he gives some ideas on how you can immediately become an expert in your world.

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How Do You Demonstrate Value Before You Deliver It?

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It’s the duh statement of the century: “My clients love me, and they have experience with getting great value from me. My problem is: How do I get people who haven’t worked with me to believe in my value?”

Duh

Isn’t that the essence of what salesmanship is? How do you demonstrate the value of your solution in advance of delivering it? And if you can do that, won’t you improve your closing percentage and increase your customer acquisition rate?

So How Do You Demonstrate Your Value?

I was in a training session last week with a company that sells a distributed product—in other words, they sell the exact same product other people sell.

They get into these price wars where they really can’t differentiate what their solution is from everybody else’s, because it’s exactly the same. My question to the salesperson was, “What does the customer give up when they decide not to do business with you?” And he couldn’t come up with anything.

Well there you have the problem. If you don’t believe in your heart that they sacrifice anything NOT to do business with you, then their best option may be to not do business with you. Don’t go whining about how you can’t get the deal or how your margins are pressured because you can’t hold the price premium. You’ve not worked on the right end of the problem.

At your next sales meeting, cut the talk about pipeline and start talking about “What do customers give up when they decide not to do business with you?” (and you might be you, not the company).

The Role Your Self-Image Plays in Your Results

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It’s a topic that no one wants to broach, but it is “the topic” when it comes to sales results and that is: What is the image you have of yourself? The most common way this comes out is: What is your image of the role you have in the buyer-seller process.

One of my clients is a middle-aged man who’s been in his position for twenty years and is arguably the most knowledgeable person in the US when it comes to one specific niche. Yet, as we went through the exercise of finding your value, he could not come to the conclusion that he, personally, brought any extra value to the table, beyond his product/service.

It was preposterous yet at the same time common. Sometimes our humility gets the best of us, and we discount the value we bring to the process in favor of the value our product brings to the process.

In this case, the question I asked him was, “What would you do to help the customer maximize the use of the product they bought post sale?” He came up with a list of five things that he would do over the course of a year that would virtually guarantee that the customer maximize the investment in the product.  In essence, the product itself was not the issue in this sale. It was how to get the product to work right after it was installed. (And I don’t mean that it was a flawed product. I mean, that like a lot of technology products, most people underuse the potential.)

After he came up with that list, his eyes got brighter and he stood up straighter and discovered that he is the thing that his customer cannot get anywhere else on the planet, and when they decide not to do business with him, they give up his expertise and his ability to make that small investment into a large return.

Recommendation

I urge you to think about the value you bring personally to the table through your experiences, your insight, your perspective, your collective knowledge of others in your organization that have expertise. You’ll be shocked at how valuable you really are. And if your self-image will allow you, you’ll be able to talk about that in a nice, conversational, elegant, non-cocky way.

Customer Value Propositions…

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You’ve heard me say before that I hate the term ‘value propositions.’ I just got back from therapy with my advisor where I found out why I despise the term….and on my desk is the latest Harvard Business Review. You guessed it–a long article on Customer Value Propositions.

You can find it here, although it will cost you a few dollars. It’s probably worth it. HBR March.

Overall, the article makes the case that every company needs constant work on its value proposition to customers.

I concur.

Not nearly enough time is spent on this exercise. I see it being an annual topic of a strategic retreat, where several hours should be focused on ‘what our proposition is’ and ‘how has it improved/changed?’ Just think, if you get this right, most selling becomes a piece of cake.

I also like the claim that most value propositions are full of marketing fluff. As I say to clients, if your value claims are nothing but that–claims–and are not customer-centric, focused on the customer’s pain or potential, then they will be discounted by your customer.

Often it’s more about how they are expressed than it is what they are in the first place.

Where I differ from the article is that they maintain that all of the company value is tied up in the delivery (of products/services and such).

I think your value has to start with the sales process itself.

If the sales process you’re taking your clients through is not valuable, in and of itself, then why should a customer feel like you’ll bring value after they pay you?

Your sales process, in a B2B environment, should expose shortcomings and problems in how your prospect is doing business now. This happens through the diagnostic you do–through the questions you ask–through who you call on at your prospect company.

If your sales process is more intentional and buttoned up, then you (and your customer) will discover those pains better than your competition does. And when you do that, you’ll have the competitive advantage.

Rigorous Honesty

I also think they should have paid more attention to the process you go through to determine your value’s advantage (above competition). They say it’s hard work, and they’re right. But what does that mean?

One must have the orientation of “pain” when they go through the value definition process. One way to do that is to ask two questions: What does my prospect “give up” when they don’t buy at all (when they continue the status quo? ) And, “what do they give up when they decide not to buy from me?” And when you’re answering those questions, rigorous honesty must be the mantra.

If you have a bunch of “yes men” in that meeting, you’ll never get to anything meaningful. One of our clients even had three customers in their ‘value definition’ meetings to help keep them honest. They learned a lot from them–on what was valuable–and what was marketing smoke.

In our flagship product, Selling From Strength, I devote an entire section to ‘fleshing out your value’ so that you are left with words that describe it. A handy tool when you are in a meeting and your prospect says, “so, John, why are you different?”

Is the China Import Problem Really a Sales Problem?

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[This subject is covered in depth on our podcast at http://billcaskey.podshowcreator.com/podcasts.aspx?feedid=106 It’s about 15 minutes but it applies to you who compete against ANY low price competitor – not just offshore.]

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My friends tell me I take selling way too seriously. And that I break every problem down to a sales or communication issue. Well Bill, in Reagan’s words, “There you go again…”

I used to call on WalMart and other major retailers in a previous job, so I know how powerful their order-writing pens are. When they say to their suppliers, “JUMP” the response is usually, “YES SIR, HOW HIGH WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO JUMP?”

I can see it now…
…I can imagine a US toy company going in to sell WalMart their Christmas 2006 line of toys. After the presentation, the buyer says, “John, I like your offer. But I can get these from China for 30% less. You have to drop your price.” To which John concludes that it’s all about price (it never is, even at WalMart) and gets pulled down into the commodity conversation. He eventually can’t sell his products at a premium – so he loses the business.

But as we see now, all toys are not created equally. They are not a commodity.

The problem occurred when the US toy guy couldn’t differentiate between his toys and the cheaper, lead-painted Chinese toys. My question is: Was it a selling problem?

You see, the consumer (even WalMart) does NOT just look at price. The sales organizations who don’t know how to sell any other way (except for low price) will NEVER admit that. Consequently, the admonition of “everyone buys on price” is a convenient way to prevent them from having to work on their message – or themselves. It’s a lot less effort to ‘sell cheap.’

Cheap Labor – Same Issue
I admit that cheap labor is quite enticing to businesses and customers. If I’m in the market for landscaping and I get three bids, chances are the one that uses the lowest-cost labor will probably be low bid. But is that what I’m buying? Just price?

Hell, if the American consumer bought on price and price alone, they wouldn’t buy anything. Because doing nothing is ALWAYS CHEAPER than doing anything.

When will American companies understand that they offer value – that their value is tied up in things broader than price – that how they sell/market/communicate to the customer is as important – if not more so – than their price?

I’ll tell you exactly when – when they get out of their own way and start focusing on the customers – and how they can bring value to the customers – instead of how can we sell a bunch of toys? (In the world of retail there are many more important things than price – like retail profit margins, marketing campaigns for the item, store sell-through, in-store displays, etc.)

If you’re in a head-to-head combat with a low priced provider – and you get chewed up often on price – then look much deeper into your value. Get a third party assessment of the value of your solution.

Here’s What To Do
Spend time away from the office with your people – and some customers. Record every word of what they say. Have it transcribed. Study it more. And soon, you will come up with the 3-5 things that separate you from everyone else. And it won’t be price. Ask them this question: “What do you believe you give up when you decide not to do business with us?”

If they say, “Nothing” then start worrying because you are nothing but a commodity. 

Because if you don’t believe your value is worth 10% – 20% – 30% – 100% more than your competition (and you should) then you won’t be able to sell that value to the customer.

And they’ll buy offshore. And babies might be poisoned.

Your Knowledge. Your Value.

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I was reading an excellent book by Tim Sanders called, Love is the Killer App. In it he talks about the value that you bring people, personally and professionally.

For so long we’ve been talking about “communicating value.” I still believe that in professional sales it is the “difference maker” between the elite sellers and the amateurs.

In “Love,” Sanders says that knowledge is value. This ties in perfectly with our belief that to be a high achieving sales professional you have to be a “go-to resource” for your prospect community. You can’t just be a hand looking for an order all the time (even though monthly and quarterly quotas dictate that behavior).

Knowledge Acquisition
So what is your plan for “knowledge acquisition?” And just why do you need to be an expert in order to have a position of authority with prospects and customers? The answer? Google.

Recently I wrote a piece called “The Googlization of Your Business,” which implies that if you‘re not looking at Google and how Google searches, then you’re missing business opportunities.

You see, Google is the ultimate selector of authority. You don’t get a top ranking in Google just by throwing up a web page. You get it by being referred by other websites and by being an “authority figure.”

If I’m looking for a commercial realtor in Miami and I Google “commercial realtor,” Google helps me filter out all of the non-authority sites/people and get to the people who are recognized as good resources. (It doesn’t mean that great realtors don’t show up on page 110.)

And because our society is becoming Googlized (a verb describing the automatic filtering out of non-essential choices) then you should look for the same thing to happen in the sales process.

You As Contributor of Knowledge
So the bottom line question is: Are you a valuable contributor of knowledge to the customer due to your authority stature and are you constantly working on your acquisition of knowledge to help keep you there? If not, shame on you, because your customers are expecting no less from you if they’re to reward you with relationships.

“But Bill, how do I do that if I think of myself as merely a sales person?” Well if you think of yourself that way, you won’t do it, because you don’t feel it’s your role to be an authority figure. The only role you see is to satisfy managements demand for “making quota.”

We’ll take up the “how” in a post some time soon.

Your Value Is All You Have

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(As sent out in our October New Rules Newsletter)

Your Value Is All You Have–How Competent Are You At Expressing It?

I was looking through some old training handouts …  and came across one called “How To Express Your Value.”

Although I don’t have space here to review the entire module, there was one part that I thought you’d like to hear about. It had to do with how you get hold of your true value to your clients. It seems that every sales organization has a tough time communicating their value. One exercise we do when we begin working with a company is to have each person “write out” their expression of the value they bring to clients.

We usually have as many different expressions as we have ‘people in the room.’ That’s no good. So, this exercise is designed to help you know ‘where to go to get clear about your value.’

PROSPECT TRENDS. What are the trends that your prospect faces in the running of their business (department)? Trends cause pain. And you fix pain. So it pays to know trends. These trends could be macro/industry trends or trends within their company.

PROSPECT PAINS. What kinds of pains/problems do you help people solve? Do you have a list of those? No? Shame on you. How can you be a problem solver if you don’t even have a menu of the kind of problems you fix? Start that list today.

PROSPECT POSSIBILITIES. Selling is emotional. What’s more emotional than dreams? How can you help–through your service/product–create future possibilities for your prospect? Don’t laugh so quickly. If you sell a solution, then you solve problems. And if you solve problems, you advance your client to a new future. Shouldn’t you know what that might be?

STORIES. Most sales teams overlook case studies and stories. You have a wealth of those stories inside your company. But they don’t get accessed. Make a point in the next week to talk to 10 people in your company about a project that went well, or a customer that became overjoyed at your solution. That becomes a story you can tell as you talk about your value. 

PICTOGRAPHS. Those who are in our training get tired of this story, but I’ll tell it anyway (in case you forgot). I read a book once called The McKinsey Way (about McKinsey Consulting). In it, they revealed that when you first get to McKinsey, you are responsible for creating a graph/ picture/ drawing every day on something you worked on. You might say that’s absurd, but they understood something you should understand. That we are all VISUAL people. And pictures do represent thousands of words.  So if you can reduce your stories, examples and value to pictures, you’ll be helping your prospect “GET” your value at a deeper level.

Hope that’s not too much for today.

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Other Resources:

Advanced Selling Podcast: Thanks to your referrals, we’re up to over 7800 world-wide podcast subscribers.

Caskey Blog: We post when we see fit (and have time). Usually the topics come from training we have just done.

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Regards
Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale

The Master Value Equation

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Forget whether or not you know your product–or know your customer. The question is “do you know your value?” And most, I find, do not.

The other day, I was training a group of stockbrokers who call on high end investors (+$1,000,000 in assets). Even though they all were earning high sums of money, none of them could accurately express the value they brought to their clients.

Here is the board picture I drew that illustrates the point.

Img_1144_2

The UV stands for do you “understand” your value? The CV means, how competent are you at “communicating value?” The PV means, if you do those things well, you’ll get paid for it.

When I say “understand” I mean do you know what problems your value solves? Or what opportunity your value helps the customer exploit. Thought you’d like to see the picture.