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Think about your own buying experiences. Have you ever really believed that you were paying the very lowest, cheapest, down in the dirt “total-cost” for what you were buying at the time? The truth is, you weren’t. It’s impossible. Your customers know this truth as well.

Let’s define “total-cost.” Total-cost = the direct cost of the item or service + any associated costs for procurement.

Why is it that we and our customers can never be assured of the best total-cost on anything? There are three primary reasons:

1. Prices are never static. One vendor might have a great price at the moment but 30 minutes later another vendor has a lower price. This has always been true, but the Internet has made pricing even more fluid.
2. If a particular vendor across the continent has great pricing, but transportation costs inflate the price by 50%, this vendor’s pricing doesn’t look so competitive anymore. This would include freight on products and travel expenses related to services.
3. The cost to research and find the best price can far outweigh any savings. Spending an entire day researching the best price for the purchase of one $2.57 widget wouldn’t be the smartest investment of an employee’s time.

What’s liberating about this is the realization that at some level our customers know that they are always paying something extra for included value. That value could be the availability of the product, location of vendor, simplicity of ordering, speed of shipment, reputation of vendor, quality of service, relationship with vendor, etc.

Smart buyers are looking for the best total-cost solution, not the best price.

Our customers know they’re never going to be able to nail down the best price on any product or service they need. Knowing this, it’s our job to show them the added value we bring in order to show them the best total-cost solution and make their buying decision easier.

If you’re not already a subscriber, <click here> to receive Sales Vitamins™ by email or <click here> to subscribe to the RSS feed. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

Those sales professionals that I’ve worked with through the years all know that I am constantly comparing the sales process to sex. The greeting, meeting, dating, engagement, marriage, kids and divorce thing is quite analogous to engaging a prospect and turning them into a customer.

One of the best applications of this girl meets boy analogy can be applied to closing a sale.

We all know that the close is the point where a decision maker agrees to buy. I get tired of sales trainers who obsessively focus on “the close” as if it represents the entire sales process. It’s important, to be sure, but it’s only part of the sales process and shouldn’t require an inordinate amount of effort on our part.

If we’ve properly completed all of the parts in the sales process, this concluding piece should be easy. In fact, it should be as easy as a first kiss.

Think about it. You meet someone and get to know them. There is chemistry. One thing leads to another and before you know it you’re face to face in a candlelit restaurant enjoying a glass of wine. The kiss just happens. No planning, no big strategies, it just naturally happens. It was part of the normal course of events that evening.

Closing a sale is exactly the same. If we’ve done our job, no arm twisting of the prospect or customer will be required. The close will naturally and comfortably fit into the normal course of things.

Many salespeople get anxious about the close. “Should I close them today? What kind of close should I use? Should I experiment with trial closes?” Doing this can really rob us of confidence and diminish the work we’ve done leading up to that point.

I used to have a customer that said to me, “Scott, I know you’re not here for a social visit because you’ve been working hard to earn our business. Where’s the order for me to sign?” We know we’ve done a good job handling the sale when the customer or prospect expects to be closed. Sometimes they even ask to be closed.

Should we ignore closing skills? Not entirely. But I want us to remember that the close is the final punctuation, and nothing more, to a well written sentence.

If you’re not already a subscriber, <click here> to receive Sales Vitamins™ by email or <click here> to subscribe to the RSS feed. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

I’m a big believer in sales training, but it often leaves out an important, yet not very sexy, fundamental.

If you’ve been in sales for awhile you’ve been exposed to the following training: closing strategies, steps in a sale, making good first impressions, etc. I call this kind of training “sales step training” because it focuses on very clear-cut steps in the sales process and preaches that some of the steps are much more important than others. Normally whatever sales step is being taught at the moment is deemed to be the most important step in the sales process.

While this model is convenient in the classroom, it really doesn’t translate that well to the real world of selling. I can just see the experienced sales professionals nodding their heads in agreement. Sales is not simple and nothing in the sales process is that concrete.

One of the sales steps that is radically overrated in my opinion is the close (more on this in the next post). The fact is, if you have managed everything properly in the sales process, then the close is just the last part of the process. I like to think of the sales process as links in a chain. Meeting the prospect is the first link in the chain and the last link in the chain is the close.

The chain analogy to the sales process is a good one because each link is the same size and is equally important. You break one link and the sales process falls apart, regardless of where it occurs. If we’ve done an outstanding job of managing the sales process but forget a simple thing like returning a couple of phone calls to the prospect, we stand a good change of losing the sale. Each link is very important.

Most salespeople love doing high profile presentations to prospects. We get back to the office after a successful performance feeling higher than a mountain. We run into our manager’s office and remind them of what a great salesperson we are. But getting the order is in the details. While our great presentation skills may have wowed the prospect initially, it’s our follow-through on all the routine elements that will ultimately get us the order. Break a link in a chain, no matter where it occurs, and the chain is broken.

Remember that prospects think you and your company are probably never going to be more conscientious than you are prior to closing an order. They are looking at each and every link in your chain for breaks. If you ignore what you think is a trivial detail in the sales process, you may have just handed the prospect a chain cutter.

If you’re not already a subscriber, <click here> to receive Sales Vitamins™ by email or <click here> to subscribe to the RSS feed. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

The following post is not intended as a political commentary about any candidate, but rather a sales analysis that uses a public figure as an example.

On January 7 while campaigning in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton was asked the following question by Marianne Young, “My question is very personal. How do you do it?” She was referring to the challenges that Hillary faces in campaigning for public office and managing her personal life. During her answer Hillary became emotional and began to cry.

Senator Clinton admits that this tear-up may have helped her win the New Hampshire election. Was it contrived or was it real emotion?

In January of 1993 her husband, Bill Clinton, became President of the United States and served until 2001. She undoubtedly had to deal with a lot of stress regarding her husband’s “extracurricular” activities before and during this period.

Since her husband has left office she has been very visible as a New York Senator and has been vigorously campaigning for the Presidency over the last year. In this entire time and through all of these events, is there any record of her crying or even showing any significant emotion in public before January 7 of this year?

On February 4 in New Haven, Connecticut Hillary welled up a second time while speaking to a small group of women at Yale. For at least 15 years Hillary has been in the global spotlight and we had never seen her cry, yet in a one month period she teared up twice in front of the cameras.

I feel confident in assuming that the crying was orchestrated. That kind of craftiness can get you in trouble with your customers and it may ultimately cause problems for Hillary. When we do things in sales that are not consistent with who we are, it ultimately turns our prospects and customers off. People resent being manipulated in any way.

What are some examples of ways we try to manipulate customers that almost always backfire?

1. Trying to exude a personality that is not our own, but one that we think the customer will prefer.
2. Pretending to deeply care about a customer’s personal life when we really don’t.
3. Acting like we are really having a bad month, when we’re not, in order to get a mercy order.

While Hillary won the New Hampshire primary she hasn’t done so well since. I can’t help but believe that one of the reasons is the lack of emotional authenticity that she has recently demonstrated.

Ironically - or maybe not - Marianne Young did not vote for Hillary in the primaries.

You’ve got to be real with your customers. Any time we are less than genuine or authentic our customers can tell and we lose credibility. Sales is a relationship game and the foundation of relationships is honesty.

If you’re not already a subscriber, <click here> to receive Sales Vitamins™ by email or <click here> to subscribe to the RSS feed. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

Have customers changed much in the last 15 years? The answer is a mega-yes. If you were selling prior to 1993 you have seen a big change in how customers buy. Suprisingly, many sales representatives sell the same way today as they did 15+ years ago.

What has changed?

1. Customers are much more knowledgeable about the products and services they are buying.
2. When it comes to sourcing products and services there are many more options.
3. Customers expect immediate, if not instant, delivery of products and services.

What’s so magical about 1993?

Customers started to change how they view their vendors shortly after 1993 because the common availability of the Internet created an entirely new, and better, information source for them. Since that time our customers have access to information about suppliers, products, services and pricing that would have been the stuff of our worst nightmares for those that remember selling prior to the Internet.

The Internet has totally changed how we sell because customers do have access to any and all information about our products, services, pricing, availability and competitors. The game has changed.

1. Because the Internet can make all vendors look the same to buyers, we must be careful to differentiate our company from our competitors.
2. People are social animals and like dealing with people. The Internet cannot replace you. We have to showcase our personal value (or personal capital) to our customers.
3. We must be better educated about our products and services. If we know little more than what is easily found on the Internet our customers will not be wowed.
4. With the easy availability of overnight shipping and super efficient e-commerce web sites for placing orders, our customers have become accustomed to very fast order processing. We have to compete against that standard in our direct sales efforts.
5. We can create a hybrid sales environment with our customers by encouraging them to use our company’s web site for ordering the smaller and simpler orders. [Of course, if your company doesn't pay you commission on these sales you'll probably have another view of this.]

Keep in mind that you can also use the Internet for selling. Never has it been easier to get information about prospects and competitors. Fight fire with fire.

Now, more than ever, we need to be sure to sell the value we bring the customer beyond just the products and services we sell. If we don’t, we’re nothing more than order processors and most e-commerce web sites do a pretty good job of that already.

If you’re not already a subscriber, <click here> to receive Sales Vitamins™ by email or <click here> to subscribe to the RSS feed. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

If you’re a sales representative you are skeptical of the leads your company provides to you. If you’re a sales manager, then at one time you were a sales representative and you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Is the world full of sales professionals that are just no good with leads? I don’t think so.

I have seen many sales managers bludgeon their sales team because they weren’t following up on the “good leads” that were provided to them. Studies have shown that 50% of leads are contacted just one time by the assigned sales representative, and then dropped.

Why is this?

1. The quality of the leads being provided to the sales force is bad. It is grossly naive for an employer to think they can just plug a SIC or NAICS code into one of the database services and hope to harvest a wealth of great leads. Come on. Nothing worthwhile is ever going to be that easy. This turns into nothing but a feel-good exercise for the employer and doesn’t help the salesperson a bit.

2. Sales management is fixated on the number of cold-calls and not the results. It’s as if the goal is to make prospecting phone calls and visits, not sales. Sales management thinks that if they throw a bushel of leads at the sales team it will help them increase the number of cold-calls which will then in turn lead to more sales. Talk about a long way around the barn.

3. The employer doesn’t really know where the best fishing places are so the leads are unfocused. Sales management has to know the types of leads that have the best potential in order to make the salesforce most efficient. The sales team needs to prospect where they stand the best chance of hooking up with the right kinds of potential customers.

4. Sales management doesn’t prospect with their sales force in order to show them how to best use leads. When sales managers participate in prospecting it has many benefits: it models the desired behavior, it lets sales management know what is working and what isn’t, it’s a great sales coaching device, it lets sales management evaluate the quality of leads being provided and does a lot for esprit de corps.

What is the fix?

1. Instead of going for quantity of sales leads, go for quality. Sales management can assign someone within the organization to scrub leads and also follow-up on those leads once they’re provided to the salesperson.

2. Provide sales coaching for the sales force on how to get their own leads. These kinds of leads are really the best in my opinion.

3. Ask salespeople on your team about the qualified leads they have in their funnel, not how many cold-calls they made yesterday. Focus on the end result, not the process.

4. Make sure that everyone knows your company’s ideal prospect and then target those companies.

5. Get sales management on the streets and on the phone prospecting with the sales force.

This is a common problem with many sales teams. It’s time to stop making prospecting just a mechanical exercise by throwing a bunch of leads to the salesforce. Start making your lead generation a serious exercise with an end game in mind - making new customers.

If you’re not already a subscriber, <click here> to receive Sales Vitamins™ by email or <click here> to subscribe to the RSS feed. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

We seem to place a lot of emphasis on sales numbers, but we sometimes ignore what’s going on behind those numbers.

There have been countless studies that demonstrate that it takes a salesperson about six contacts, on average, with a prospect before they start to buy. These studies were done with inside salespeople using the phone as the contact medium. Other studies have shown that it can take somewhat fewer face-to-face contacts before a decision maker buys, but the number is not significantly different.

Why do most decision makers not buy on the first through fifth contacts? Why does it take six contacts on average before prospects buy? Are they just trying to be difficult? Not really. Let’s think about what is going on in the prospect’s head each time they interact with you. What are they trying to discover?

1. Trust. They are gathering information from you so they can at least make an educated guess about the risks of doing business with you and your company. Prospects ask themselves, “Can I trust this company and this salesperson to do what they say they can do?”
2. Service. Each time you talk with a prospect you are giving him or her indications as to the level of service you might provide. Prospects know that your attentiveness will never be better than when you are trying to get their business.
3. Likeability. Potential buyers want to know if they would like doing business with you. This is especially important if you are in a business where repeat sales over a long period could be expected. Each interaction you have with them during these initial contacts will assist them in deciding whether they’d like to interact with you on an ongoing basis.

Many salespeople think of prospecting as just building “mindshare” with the prospect. If someone ran a red light and hit my car, they would definitely get a large amount of “mindshare.” “Mindshare” alone will not do the trick with prospects. We’ve got to provide them information and build a positive relationship if we hope to turn them into customers, not just make them aware of our existence.

I am asked this in one form or another on an almost daily basis, “Scott, isn’t sales just a numbers game? The more contacts we make the higher our sales numbers. Right?” Our real goal is not to make as many contacts as possible; that misses the point.

We must focus on satisfying the trust, service and likeability questions the prospect has about us and our company. If we focus on just making a maximum number of contacts to gain “mindshare,” we’ll be satisfying our need for activity versus the prospect’s need for information about us. Feeling good about the large number of contacts we are making will not inspire a single prospect to buy from us. Making the prospect feel good about doing business with us will inspire prospects to turn into customers.

Our primary goal is to connect with prospects in a way that will turn them into customers, not to just check off how many times we’ve dialed their number or left a brochure on their desk.

If you’re not already a subscriber, <click here> to receive Sales Vitamins™ by email or <click here> to subscribe to the RSS feed. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

Think like a prospect for a second and tell yourself how you would feel if you received the following cold call, “Hi, this is Bill and I am your account rep at XYZ Company. We’ve been in business for 22 years and have the largest selection of widgets in the western U.S. I was just calling on you today to see if I could talk with you about your widget use…”

Do you think prospects are tired of hearing that same initial cold call from every salesperson from every continent on earth? Think about the cold calls you’ve heard your sales peers make. They’re all the same, aren’t they? No wonder prospects get annoyed with salespeople.

Sales proposals are another example. Do you think prospects get tired of seeing the same bloated proposals with all of the same elements from every salesperson they see? [Tip: They go right to the price page anyway; if you have some really critical points you want to make, be sure to put them on the price page. More on this in a later post.]

The fact is that most salespeople have average results precisely because they do what every other salesperson is doing. We tend to all look the same because we are the same in our sales approach. When we start a new sales job what do we do? We look around and mirror what everyone else is doing at our new employer.

We feel safe doing what we see others do. We all know that sheep feel safest when they do what the rest of the herd is doing.

We pay a steep price in our sales results when we default to the that’s-how-everyone-does-it sales approach. Sales superstars do crazy and different things to increase their sales revenues and rise above the background noise of their competitors.

I love to hear low producing salespeople make fun of the sales techniques used by the superstars. Do you know why they make fun of these above average performers? Because they are doing something outside of the norm that makes the sub-performers uncomfortable. Instead of making fun of them, they should be learning from them.

Being different and trying new things can be scary and requires work. The work includes learning new sales skills, observing sales superstars, experimenting with new sales ideas and getting out of your sales comfort zone. Keep in mind, being different and trying new things means you’ll fail sometimes too. But the superstars and the soon-to-be-superstars get right back on their feet and keep learning and trying new things.

To close, I’d like to give you some questions to see if you are rising above the white noise of stale sales techniques. If you answer “yes” to two or more of these you might be on the right track.

Are you always in trouble with your sales manager for trying crazy ideas, yet your sales are stellar?
Are your fellow sales professionals always interested in the details of exactly how you landed that last big order?
Do you find that your sales manager has to frequently run interference for you each time you land a big order because you have so many special requests of marketing, product support, pre-sales support, etc.?
Does the VP of Sales or President of your company have to call various department heads from time to time with a message that is similar to, “I know Steve frequently has requests of your department that are unusual, but make sure you work with him as he is about to land another big order.”

How did you do?

Now go out and go crazy. Your prospects are waiting for something fresh.

If you’re not already a subscriber, <click here> to receive Sales Vitamins™ by email or <click here> to subscribe to the RSS feed. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

Running up against competitors is a green light, not a red light. Here’s why.

Several years ago I was working with a salesperson and we made a planned call on a prospect. The prospect told us that she was buying from competitor X and there probably wasn’t a reason to talk further. What did this salesperson do in the face of competition? He put his tail between his legs, meekly said “okay” and ducked out of the prospect’s office.

Why did this salesperson run for cover when he was up against the competition? He had no good answers, but I think I do. I have observed that this kind of reaction to competition is common.

Do you feel you or your company aren’t capable of taking on the competition? Do you feel uncomfortable in assertively making your case with a prospect in the face of competition? Very few prospects are going to roll out the red carpet for you if they perceive they are happy with their current supplier. You’ll have to fight for the business. We have to be confident in ourselves and our company. We also have to be able to assertively persuade prospects of our value if we realistically hope to steal business away from the competition.

When we find a prospect that is buying from a competitor we instantly move from home plate to first base. Why? If a company is buying from one of our direct competitors we are virtually assured that we have a qualified prospect on our hands. How convenient.

We’ve all heard this before, “But we don’t stand a chance against X at that prospect because we can’t match their prices.” Virtually every study that has ever been done on why decision makers buy from a particular vendor places price as the fifth or sixth most important criteria. People buy primarily because of quality, service and limited risk. Simply stated, if you can demonstrate to the prospect that you’re stronger in those areas, you’ll get the business.

When you know who your competition is (and therefore their strengths and weaknesses) you know exactly where and how to strike. Competitors lead you to qualified prospects. People buy on quality, service and limited risk, not just price. Now get that tail out from between your legs.

If you’re not already a subscriber, <click here> to receive Sales Vitamins™ by email or <click here> to subscribe to the RSS feed. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

Summary: Sales is a soft science. When four top sales trainers were recently surveyed about sales training issues there was suprisingly little overlap in their responses.

Why is there so little commonality in sales training?

Sales management hires sales trainers, hoping that they will increase the sales performance of their sales force. Simple enough. Over time, however, most sales managers realize that every sales trainer has their own unique materials and techniques. The sales manager is forced to decide:

a. None of these people know what they’re talking about.
b. One of them must know what they’re doing.
c. All of them know something, and blended together it’s somehow helping my sales force.

After observing countless sales trainers I believe that most sales trainers can bring value to an organization. But what are we to make of the broad range of content and training methods used by different sales trainers?

Selling Power Magazine recently surveyed four top sales trainers. Below I’ve summarized and paraphrased the questions and answers to two of the questions that were posed to them.

What is the biggest mistake most companies make regarding their sales force?

Howard Stevens: Companies focus too much on business development and not on customer service.
Jerry Acuff: Sales representatives not focusing on the customer’s needs.
Linda Richardson: Sales representatives that don’t customize their sales presentations according to the customer’s needs.
Joanne Black: Lack of preparation and planning on the part of sales representatives, especially when prospecting.

What sales training has the biggest impact on sales performance?

Howard Stevens: General business training in order for the sales representative to understand the context of his or her selling environment.
Jerry Acuff: How to build valuable business relationships.
Linda Richardson: Training sales management on sales coaching.
Joanne Black: Sales training alone will not work; start with your goals and fill in the blanks.

See what I mean? These respected trainers are all over the place. Are none of them right? Are all of them right? Is it a healthy blending of information?

The truth is that in sales training there are many variables that can affect which kind of sales training is best for an organization. Size of the sales force, industry, sales channels, etc. all impact the correct choice of sales trainers and methodologies. Sales management has to actively look for a trainer or training organization that understands their business and markets.

While every sales trainer is not a superstar, it is my opinion that most bring value to an organization. Deciding who is most appropriate for your training needs and moving away from the one-size-fits-all concept will get you better results for your training investment.

There’s almost certainly a sales trainer out there that is a good fit for your organization, but not all of them. Do your due diligence in finding one.

If you’re not already a subscriber, click here (salesvitamins.com) to subscribe and automatically receive Sales Vitamins™ as new posts become available. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer