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One of the worst habits to get into is becoming a Task Salesperson. A Task Salesperson loses sight of their sales goals and sales skills. They primarily focus on the mechanics of sales. This can happen to us without even knowing it.

I used to observe two polar-opposite sales representatives. One of them was incredibly well organized, a hurricane of activity and was under budget every month. It looked like he had everything under control but in reality needed a lot of sales help. The other one sat in a garbage dump cubicle reading her favorite sales blog, always seemed relaxed and blew out her sales budget every month. What was going on here? One of them was most likely focusing on the mechanics and tasks of sales while the other was focusing on the true goal of sales…developing relationships with customers.

“Be careful not to be a slave of what doesn’t matter in sales.”

Giving sales tasks too much priority will keep us busy but normally doesn’t make us a sales leader.

Task Salespersons have these habits:

-Respond to every proposal and lead that is sent their direction
-Spend three days on a proposal that could be done in four hours
-Contact 100 prospects each day regardless of the quality of the leads
-Spend a minimum of two hours preparing for each customer appointment
-Spend 90% of their time on administrative functions
-Their sales manager loves the quality and penmanship of their required sales reports
-Never seeks sales tips from his or her peers and refuses all sales help

Goal Oriented Salespersons have these habits:

-Ensure they have a relationship with a company before investing time in them
-Are always prospecting but primarily to referrals and other qualified leads
-Do only mandatory administrative duties that aren’t directly related to sales
-Are always getting screamed at by their sales manager for past due sales reports
-Relationships are first, administrative perfection is number two
-Are consistently hitting and exceeding their sales objectives
-Welcome any and all sales advice and are open to any sales tip given to them

Remember, no sales representative is ever paid more or promoted simply for their administrative abilities. Be careful not to be a slave of what doesn’t matter in sales. What matters is customer relationships.

Related links: Your Personality is What the Customers Wants to See, Free Sales Tips: Don’t lose sight of this when selling, The Attributes of an Unsuccessful Salesperson

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I walk into a prospect’s office with a new salesperson named Zack (not his real name).

We have the obligatory first-meeting conversation with the prospect.

Out of the blue the prospect holds up a part and says, “How much do you guys get for this?” Will Zack remember the sales advice I’ve given him about these situations? Zack immediately dives for his catalog and finds the price. “$375.00 each.” The prospect looks unimpressed and says, “Too high. I can get those all day long for much less. Thanks for coming by.” [Sound of door closing behind us]

When we get out to Zack’s car I ask him what he thought of the call. Zack is a smart guy and he knew where he blew it. We reviewed the following basic sales tips when a price question is unexpectedly thrown in our face.

Fundamental sales skills tell us to never quote a price when you’re not prepared. Never quote under duress. Hold off quoting until you get more information and can educate the customer on your added value.

When you get blind sided with a price request and you throw out a price, you’ve eliminated the chance to sell your added value. Remember, you justify your pricing by telling the customer all the additional things you and your company can do for them besides shipping them a product. An ISA study found that 74% of buyers would buy at a higher cost if they better understood the added value a vendor brings.

Always be sure to ask how many the customer needs and when they need them as part of your information gathering. If you have them in stock and they need them quickly you gain some pricing control. If they say they don’t need any at this time, then you know they’re just price checking and you should ignore the request (see Customer Price Sensitivity).

What are the two most important things to remember when you’re hit unexpectedly with a price request and forget how to sell? Information and time are critical. Find out some basics about their needs, educate them on your added value and tell them you’ll get back to them with a price.

To receive this blog by email <click here> to receive by RSS <click here>. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

I saw a sign at a salesperson’s desk once that read, “Dear Customer, you may select any two of the following when purchasing from me: service, quality, price.” The words on that sign are true and they provide real sales help. They tell us that customers always have to pay for value. There is no free lunch.

Think about the selling environments that are possible using this bit of wisdom. We all sell in one of three scenarios noted below, depending on our market and our selling situation at the moment.

1. We can provide great service and high quality products, but we can’t do it at discount prices.
2. We can provide great service and discounted prices, but we aren’t going to be able to provide high quality products.
3. We can provide high quality products at discounted prices, but our level of service will be low.

This is a simplistic model, but it demonstrates that it’s impossible for a company to be profitable if it provides its customers with high quality products and high levels of service at discounted prices. Professional sales help and support come at a cost. Companies that have tried to do all three at once go out of business.

As seasoned sales pros we know that we have to sell the value we bring to our customers in order to justify the pricing. When customers understand the value they are buying they understand the price too. They know they can’t get sales help and assistance for free.

Sometimes we find ourselves in selling situations where we are selling a cheaper product or a lower level of service. It is important in those environments to educate the customer about the compromises they are making in order to receive lower pricing. It’s all about setting realistic expectations about value and price in the customer’s mind.

To receive this blog by email <click here> to receive by RSS <click here>. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

Do you know someone that is perfect? They never seem to make mistakes. They look perfect. They act perfect. Many sales trainers dispensing sales tips will tell you never to show a weakness to a customer. I disagree.

No one really likes perfect people because we know it’s impossible to be perfect. I know I’m certainly not. We like hanging around people that are real with all of their good points and their bad ones too.

Our customers feel the same way about the companies where we work. They know there is no such thing as a perfect vendor. They know the company they work for isn’t perfect and they know the company we represent isn’t either. The more we try to convince them of how flawless and perfect our company is, the more they aren’t buying our gospel.

So what are the sales tips then?

We must be willing to give away something to our customers. I can best explain this with an example.

Customer: “Debbie, I need 20 of your assembly line robots and I need you to install them at all my locations.”

Salesperson (Debbie): “I know we can do a good job of taking care of your robotic needs and I’m looking forward to this project. When it comes to product availability and service there is no one better than us and everyone knows that. We could install those robots for you but that is not a strength of ours. I can arrange for another company that is excellent at these installations. I’ll take care of all the details. I want this equipment installed with no problems because I want to keep you as long term customer.”

Debbie was brilliant. She “gave up” one thing by stating that her company wasn’t strong at installations, but she gained the trust and respect of her customer in the process. She kept the part of the business that makes Debbie and her company the most money. She demonstrated to the customer that she was looking after their best interests. She was partnering with them in the truest sense of the word.

Put yourself in this customer’s shoes the next time they need to buy something from Debbie. Would you be inclined to believe Debbie’s recommendations? Absolutely.

Debbie gave away an ounce of business and earned a pound of credibility and a pound of future business.

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When I was a salesperson I had a handful of best accounts where I felt like one of their employees. They loved me so much they bought everything from me, said they always would and considered me one of the family.

I specifically remember one of my favorite and best customers. I didn’t need a security badge to walk through their building. They trusted me so much they literally let me determine what their product needs were and write up the order myself. They just signed the order without looking at it and gave me a PO. They loved me. I needed no sales help.

Unfortunately, I soon learned that things aren’t always as we’d like them to be.

One day they told me, “Everyone here loves you and your service but competitor XYZ has been visiting with us over the last few months. They offer the same products and can provide us the custom packaging and labeling we need. We’re going to start using them from now on. If we need something special we’ll call you. This doesn’t mean we’re not friends anymore Scott. Come by and see us often. Have a great day.”

This good customer of mine was highly visible to all of my competitors; of course they were calling on them. How had I not seen that? The reason I got this great account in the first place was through my own prospecting. I had to steal it from another salesperson. My sales manager had even provided additional sales help to close the first deal. I thought since I was so entrenched at the account that my competitors wouldn’t call on them, nor would this loving customer even consider talking to my competitors.

If my competitors called on and took an account away from me where I felt so secure, then it made sense that they were calling on all of my customers. They all were vulnerable. Wake up call.

I learned the following from that experience:

1. My competitors are calling on all of my accounts and getting through to the decision makers.
2. I must always be adding new value to my existing customers, especially my best ones.
3. I can’t solely rely on personal relationships to keep me in an account.
4. I need to always keep prospecting; no account is guaranteed forever.
5. I have to accept that I am going to have some customer turnover, even from my best accounts.
6. I should never be too proud to accept sales help even on accounts where I’m completely confident.

By continually adding value to my customers and focusing on prospecting I not only replaced that lost customer but added enough so that my sales grew even bigger. My new philosophy was, “Enjoy the revenue you’re getting from the customer today, but plan to lose them at any time.” Customer turnover is a fact of life in sales.

Please tell your business associates about Scott R. Sheaffer’s Sales Tips Blog with sales advice for sales representatives and sales management. To receive by email <click here> to receive by RSS feed <click here>. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

We all know that there are people who say they are decision makers and there are those who really are decision makers. There is a psychological trick we play on ourselves that can keep us from identifying real decision makers. I learned about it from a Three Stooges episode. Did you ever think you’d get sales advice from the Three Stooges?

In this episode all three stooges dress up as physicians and find themselves in a hospital surrounded by legitimate doctors. The real doctors start to notice that these three new doctors are very odd. Not only do they act strangely, but they don’t seem to understand even basic medicine. The licensed doctors at the hospital are perplexed and don’t know what to think. After a short period of time the authentic doctors come to the conclusion that these three new doctors are probably extremely brilliant. They reason that these new doctors are so smart, knowledgeable and experienced that mere hospital staff doctors are not able to comprehend their brilliance. This helps to explain their peculiar behavior since everyone knows that brilliant people are eccentric.

The legitimate hospital doctors had fallen victim to what I call the Empowered Imposter Syndrome. In an attempt to make sense of authority figures who don’t seem to have any real authority or ability, we frequently explain their inconsistent behavior with irrational explanations that we fabricate. We need things to fit comfortably into our world as we know it, and want it.

We do the same thing in sales. You might be dealing with a customer who is no more a decision maker than your cat. You so desperately want that person to be a decision maker in order for the sales process to feel like it is moving forward that you create absurd assumptions about that person’s buying authority.

Example: You’re dealing with someone who doesn’t have any authority to create a purchase order. The company you are trying to sell to requires purchase orders for all orders. You have developed a great relationship with this person but he never buys because he doesn’t have the authority to give you a purchase order. You delude yourself by thinking, “He probably has an assistant that inputs his PO’s into their automated system that creates purchase orders.” The reality is that he has no assistant and they don’t have an automated PO system.

The salesperson in this example had created a decision maker version of an Empowered Imposter. One of the best ways to know if we’ve created an Empowered Imposter decision maker is to take our sales manager along with us to visit the customer. The sales manager won’t be operating under the same misconceptions and will spot the Empowered Imposter in a second. Yes, you can get good sales advice from the Three Stooges and your sales manager.

The sales tips that the Three Stooges provide in this episode are: beware of Empowered Imposters that we assume are decision makers and be honest with yourself about what you observe in your prospects and customers.

Please tell your business associates about Scott R. Sheaffer’s Sales Tips and Sales Advice Blog. To subscribe: <click here> to receive by email or <click here> for the RSS feed. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

[I will be interviewing Gary Halliwell, CEO of NetProspex.com, on my next post. Watch for it.]

What is changing about our customers’ buying habits that we need to be aware of?

1. Vendor Consolidation. Companies are reducing the number of vendors they use by as much as 90%. I’m seeing this across all industries. Fewer suppliers means the customer has more power and control over the suppliers that make the cut. However, there is a positive flip side to this from the vendor’s point of view. This necessitates a much stronger partnership between customer and supplier and that’s always a good thing.

2. Metrics. Customers are no longer just interested in acquiring products and services. They are tracking all kinds of numbers about their vendors: service scores, total ROI, product defect rates, shipping errors, strategic cost management, etc. If you and your company are as good as you say you are, then here is your chance to show them in black and white. Good results on their metrics will provide you loads of ammunition to justify your higher prices.

3. References. Your customers are using the Internet and all of its social networking tools to find out about you and your company. Do they want to partner with you (or continue to partner with you) as part of their vendor consolidation? Sophisticated buyers know they don’t need to ask you for references anymore; they can find much more objective ones by “word of mouse.”

4. Global Outsourcing. Not much explanation needed here. If you’re a service provider it has never been more important for you to show your added value.

5. e-Commerce. Customers are getting very comfortable with buying over the web. I’m not just talking about nickel and dime purchases either; they are buying large volumes of high dollar items over the web. Relax, this will not replace you; use this to your advantage. For my take on this, please visit Attention sales representatives, the Internet is not replacing you.

Notice that all five of these trends are heavily influenced by the salesperson. The sales professional is, and always will be, the key to the customer relationship.

There are other trends, but these represent the top five. We must be careful to recognize these changes and adapt our sales approach to them, both from an individual salesperson’s perspective and from the sales organization’s perspective. Those that can most effectively adapt to these trends will create a competitive advantage.

Please tell your business associates about Sales Vitamins™. To subscribe: <click here> to receive Sales Vitamins™ by email or <click here> for the RSS feed. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

[Note: Watch for upcoming posts where I'll be interviewing some CEO's of companies that are changing the tools we use as sales professionals.]

If you’re selling a product that is virtually, if not exactly, the same as all of your competitors, then you are selling a commodity. Many salespeople mistakenly resort to discounting as their only selling strategy in order to get business when selling commodities.

You don’t always have to resort to this. There is a way to deal effectively with commodity selling that I’ll share below.

When selling a commodity you are also selling your personal capital too.

What is personal capital? It’s the attitude, knowledge and skills that you bring, as a sales professional, to the customer that are independent of the products you sell.

What are some examples? There are a million of them: product knowledge, knowledge of how the customer needs to be invoiced/shipped/packaged, good people skills with the employees at the customer, ability to run customer meetings with productive outcomes, anticipation of customer needs before they are expressed, etc.

Here’s the best part about all of this. Customers are willing to pay you more for the same product they can buy from your competitors because of the personal capital that you bring to the table. This is exactly why order takers make such poor commodity salespeople.

“This sounds great Scott, but my customers don’t even appreciate that I do these things for them. All they talk about is price.”

The problem is that you haven’t communicated to them the extra value that you bring. Customer surveys have consistently shown that most customers don’t know the added value that you provide to them. Furthermore, these same surveys also show that if they were aware of the added value they wouldn’t be as price sensitive.

So, how do we communicate this extra value?

Every six months show them a formal report that tells them what they are buying from you and include a section labeled “Additional Services.” List all the added value services you provide (such as the examples listed above) in the Additional Services section and put a big N/C next to each item. You can deliver this report to them at a scheduled meeting that you advertise as your semi-annual customer satisfaction/update meeting. This information will open their eyes to all of the added value that you bring that goes unnoticed. You’ll probably get some good feedback too.

If you’re selling a commodity, be sure to sell yourself first and your product second.

Please tell your business associates about Sales Vitamins™. To subscribe: <click here> to receive Sales Vitamins™ by email or <click here> for the RSS feed. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

Every customer you have was once a prospect. Either you, or someone in your organization, had to initially get a decision maker’s attention. The following are some things I have learned about doing it simply and effectively.

What I’m talking about here is what is commonly called an Elevator Speech because it represents how much time you have to show the prospect your value when you first meet. An elevator ride is usually no longer than 30 seconds, which should be the maximum length of your Elevator Speech.

I first met many, if not most, of my best customers in the most unexpected places (car dealerships, weddings, drivers license office, etc.) where having a good Elevator Speech in my hip pocket paid off. It can also be used effectively in routine prospecting.

Decision makers have two things you want: attention and time. You’ve got about 30 seconds to get their attention. Here are the basics to start crafting the two different types of Elevator Speeches that you’ll need (you’ll use one of the two depending on the situation).

1. Someone asks you what you do for a living.

a. Introduce yourself if you haven’t already.
b. State one or two key standout value propositions that you and your company provide to your industry. Please do not sound like you are reading from the Yellow Pages. Boring! I do not believe these value propositions necessarily have to be unique in your industry; they just need to be compelling.
c. Tell them the bare bones basics about your company and its products/services.
d. Ask for their Elevator Speech, which will help qualify them and provide you with their contact information (not to mention that it shows you have some interest in them, which never hurts).

2. You initiate the conversation. Basically this just represents some important changes to the sequence.

a. Introduce yourself.
b. Ask for their Elevator Speech. You can optionally skip the next two steps if they are absolutely not a prospect for you.
c. State one or two key standout value propositions.
d. Tell them about your company.

This is one skill that requires a lot of practice. My wife used to make fun of me for practicing my Elevator Speech prior to going to a prospect rich event until she saw the positive results. I eventually even got her to play the role of the prospect when I was practicing.

Please tell your business associates about Sales Vitamins™. To subscribe: <click here> to receive Sales Vitamins™ by email or <click here> for the RSS feed. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

In the 1973 movie, Magnum Force, Harry Callahan (played by Clint Eastwood) says his now famous line, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

No matter how inflated our ego is or how much we suffer from low self esteem, we all have two things in common: a key selling strength that must be optimized and a key sales weakness we must navigate around. It’s how we are put together by the big man upstairs. No one is exempt.

Highly successful athletes, politicians and actors are examples of people that showcase their greatest strength and do their best to conceal their greatest weakness. The key to all of this is that they know these things about themselves.

Since sales success is so critically dependent on a number of skill sets, doesn’t it make sense that we should be aware of our greatest strength and use it to our advantage? At the same time wouldn’t it be helpful for us to be cognizant of where we are not strong?

Tiger Woods is generally considered to be one of the best golfers that has ever lived. He acknowledges that his short-irons are a weakness for him, but he also knows that he can hit a driver like no other. Guess what his game strategy is? He uses his driver (his strength) in a way to avoid as many short-iron shots (his weakness) as possible.

We might be tempted to ask, should we work on our weakest sales skill in order to make it stronger? Yes, but I have a few rules for this:

1. We must work on our weak area only after we are sure that our strongest area is razor sharp. Our strongest area is our money maker.
2. When in front of a customer we must be sure to leverage our strength to the maximum; this is not a time to be experimenting with improving our weakness.
3. We can and should use a coach (e.g., sales trainer, sales manager) to help us with our weak area.
4. We can’t always avoid exposing our weak area, so we should ensure that we have at least an adequate and acceptable strategy for handling it.

Sales professionals can be either weak or strong in the following areas: prospecting, account management, presentations, customer meetings, product knowledge, account planning, time management, record keeping, etc. This is a concept where sales management can play a valuable role in helping their individual team members fortify their strength and manage their weakness.

Now go to work on making your sales strength even stronger and your weakness manageable.

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