Beyond Selling
About the Author:
Daniel Batten
Founder at Beyond The Ceiling
Former hi-tech CEO, leading pitching coach, author of the book “How to change the world with one pitch” and pioneer of a number of result-based methods that measurably impact sales performance.
Helping companies increase their sales across New Zealand continues to be a source of great satisfaction.
HERE ARE SOME THINGS I’VE LEARNT:
The bottom line is that most companies have an intention problem. If you don’t address this, nothing else you do will work. Can you tell the difference in a retail store, for example, between two people who ask “can I help you?” - where one genuinely intends to help you, while the other intends this only as an opening line to get a sale?
Well, your intention is just as transparent to people. The language of “hunting” suggests someone needs to lose in the transaction. The culture of most sales organisations is all about “I need to increase my sales” or “We need to crank the handle and get more out of our sales team every month.”
If an organisation’s intention is to extract more money from customers, what they end up doing will be an energy-drain for the whole company. If this applies to you, you’ll also fail in your intention because your customers will smell it. So what, practically, do you do instead?
HERE’S A WAY OF REALLY GOING BEYOND SELLING – IN A WAY THAT MAKES SENSE COMMERCIALLY
1. Change the relationship model from “I try to persuade, you decide”
(sales person as supplicant) to “I create insight, we decide” (sales person as authority). If your doctor badgered you into choosing certain medicines to meet a quota, they’d quickly arouse suspicion and be exposed. Because we trust that our doctor’s intention is genuinely to help us first, we are more likely to take the advice they recommend. In other words, they sell (services and medicine) because they are not trying to sell medicine, they are simply doing what’s best for us.
2. Re-introduce the authentic, individual voice to the sales process.
Sales people, at some point of being with a company, often stop being themselves, or at least they stop being totally themselves. Rather than speaking in a natural way that is authentic and comfortable, they adopt scripted ways of communicating. For example, a new sales person may try to fake confidence and become overzealous, rather than simply building trust by saying “I’m new at this so I might not get things quite right, but let's chat and see where things go. Is that okay?” Once you fix the authority and authenticity issues, sales results always go up.
3. The next lowest hanging fruit is the referral process.
We know from tracking client results that it’s easy to gain an average of one referral per client. In other words: perpetual business based on one change to the sales process alone. Focusing on this next makes sense because it gets such a quick win.
4. After referrals, the mid-hanging fruit is what we call “exit point handling”.
There are specific parts of the sales process that routinely cause prospects and customers to exit because trust isn’t engendered, confidence isn’t demonstrated, or capability isn’t portrayed. These cracks are usually along the same stress-points. So it’s generally a matter of simply identifying and fixing the common weak points, rather than investing in new bottom-up, end-to-end sales training from scratch.
5. Appreciate and recognise that your customer may well have done some homework before seeing you.
With the ease of accessing information online, customers are likely to evaluate options, check reviews and gain a reasonable understanding up front. Research shows that 57% of a prospect’s buying decision is made before you hear from them. Traditional consultative selling has an issue, as it fails to acknowledge that most (57%) of the customer buying process is ahead of your sales process. No wonder prospects feel bored, bemused, frustrated, or end up saying, “Cut to the chase, just tell me the price.” What’s needed instead is a way to acknowledge and celebrate what the would-be customer has done themselves. Then quickly check for position difference and focus on achieving correct understanding with laser clarity.
6. Stop selling as a counsellor, and start selling as a coach.
The market is looking for value. As the Sales Executive Council found, consultative selling leaves prospects feeling “they really understand me.” However, someone who can challenge a customer’s ideas will leave them thinking, “I never thought about it like that before.” This is a much more valuable result. We call it the “sell like a coach, not a counsellor” model. Today’s generation are preferring coaching over counselling. Why? A counsellor, like a consultative sales person, addresses past pain and leaves you feeling understood. But the coach talks about future potential, and leaves you with new ideas you can action. Coaches typically command two to five times the fee of a counsellor too. In this step, we swap out low-value consult-and-inform conversations, and swap in challenge-and-inspire conversations.
7. Get tactical before you go behavioural.
In the short term, a few simple lead-generation tactics can make much more impact than a long behavioural change programme for your sales team (especially if the behavioural change programme does not address intention). This is the right time to execute those tactics.
8. Implement a programme to change and develop behaviour over time.
Training providers like to get results through big training rollouts, but behavioural change needs a programme focus more than a training focus. To embed lasting change in the way sales people think and to change what they do and how they do it, it’s better to share out content incrementally rather than in big chunks. Part of the focus should be peer-to-peer learning, developing reusable key messages, brainstorming strategies already used by top people in the team, input from top sales professionals in the form of real stories. A programme needs to involve not only training, but regular group follow-up coaching.
9. Train to support and reinforce behaviour change.
When it is time for training – train to hear “Their behaviours have changed”, not “They loved the training”. For this to happen, training needs to cover less width (less content) but in greater depth (more embedding). Typically training covers say 20 different sales concepts, of which the average sales person will remember five and perhaps implement one effectively. It’s better to deliver training with more breathing space and more embedding time. If you’re a sales training company, don’t cave in to the customer who wants to cram more “content” in. It’s not in their interests and you are disserving them by acquiescing. Aim for a “cover 5 items, remember 5, implement 5” approach – with maximum opportunity for individualising, practicing and embedding learning.
10. Address mindset properly:
Most sales programmes address the mindset at some stage. However, it tends to be at the level of knowing what “peak performance” is and motivating the team to behave more like peak performers. This works for up to 10% of people, which is a lot better than nothing, and can sometimes be enough to shift a culture internally. However, what’s even more effective is providing a positive and encouraging workplace with tools and rewards to help your sales team maintain and improve their own enthusiasm and energy levels. People who are highly motivated and positive are not only fun to be with, but they also accomplish far more than teams that are struggling with morale.
Founder,
Beyond The Ceiling
021 243 5077
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