‘SPIN® Selling’ - A Classic that is worth reading again and again

Looking for a book that will help you increase your conversion ratios? Then read SPIN selling. Here are the seven key points I took from this must read sales methodology.

1. Too many sales people are happy with meetings that result in another meeting. But wait a second, the real question must be asked – ‘has the meeting resulted in an advance in the sales cycle?’

You need to know the difference between what Rackham defines as an ‘advance’ and a ‘continuation’ - it will affect your closure rate.

2. In high value sales forget the welcoming attitude to objections, focus on objection prevention and the symptoms behind objections. Too many objections means you are feature and advantage selling and not selling benefits. If you are of the school of thought that objections are great you must read this book.

3. Professionally trained sales people are always looking to uncover and develop explicit needs, while also being conscious of implicit needs. However, the key factor, as the authors point out, is a compelling reason to act. That is the real challenge for the sales pro.

4. You better believe it, lots of selling happens when you are not in the room. That means your sponsor is left to sell on your behalf! But, just how willing, or able is he, or she, to push your solution. You can’t expect him her to remember the eight key features of your solution. However you need to ensure they are able to communicate the impact of your solution on their business. Think about it.

5. Learn how to ask; situation, problem, implication and needs pay-off questions. The skills to develop implication questions will impact your sales closure rate. So ask how important your solutions benefits will be to your prospects business. Ask what affect changing x,y,z will have on the business.

6. This book supports what I have believed for years - there is no great distinction between open ended and closed questions in high value sales. However the questions you ask must demonstrate you understand the prospects business.

Remember don’t spend too long ask situational questions, or gathering all kinds of facts on the Client’s business. Instead ask implication and needs questions (in SPIN® language) in order to get to what really matters in building awareness of the need for your solution.

7. Please, please gain commitment in your sales calls. Propose sensible and realistic commitments to advance the sale. But before you do, ensure you have addressed your prospects key concerns. You must check for concerns, summarize the value of your solution and be sure the value is specific to the prospect.

Conclusion

'Spin Selling' was first published in 1988, but its ideas and concepts are ageless.

There is a huge amount more you could take from this book. If you really want to develop your sales effectiveness you need to read (and if you have read it before, re-read) this book.

‘SPIN Selling', Neil Rackham, Mc Grath Hill, 1988.

‘Close Like The Pros’ - How 'Interactive Selling' Increases Success

Because you are short on time, we have pulled together a short summary of the main points of 'Close Like The Pros' - a must read for all B2B sales professionals.

Forget about Closing:

I generally don’t pick up, much less read books with ‘closing’ in the title, however this book - 'Close Like the Pros' is different. In fact it turns the ABC (always be closing) mantra on its head calling instead for a new approach called ‘interactive selling’. But that is just one of the reasons why it is a must r

ead for all sales professionals.

Recognise the Problem?

The book opens with a scenario familiar to us all.

1. You have met the buyer, made a good presentation and feel good about the prospects of a deal.

2. The buyer asks you to prepare proposal straight-away.

3. So, back at the office you labour to create a carefully worded document and dispatch it to the customer.

4. A few days later you call to see how your proposal was received, only to meet vague answers, such as ‘oh, we have

not got around to looking at it yet’, or ‘we will come back to you later’.

5. Worse still, you call repeatedly but cannot get the buyer at their desk.

You have done your selling. Now the buying is taking place and you are excluded. The result is what Steve Marks calls ‘sales limbo’.

Getting to the Root of the Problem:

What is the problem? The author suggest ‘You wer

e too focused on selling to ensure that the buyer was buying’. That means there was not enough interaction to enable you to really help the buyer decide what he/she needed, or to tell you earlier you were wasting your time.

Marks observes that ‘sales people get way out in front of their prospects, without checking the rear view mirror to see if the prospect is still following and how closely.’

Premature Elaboration:

One of the dangers of this is what he calls ‘premature elaboration’ where the salesperson is drawn into presenting a solution before he, or she has been afforded the opportunity to find out exactly what the customer needs.

Of course, Marks makes it clear that this not just the fault of the salesperson, with busy buyers often being reluctant to spend time explaining what is required.

The Committment of Time:

Marks points out that selling in the B2B realm requires lots of time and commitment on the part of the seller, but if that is not in some way matched by the buyer, the results are, at best, going to be uncertain.

Inevitably, selling is going to take a lot of the salesperson’s time - the question, according to Marks, is whether that time is going to be wasted, or not. That is are you g

oing to spend that time up front interacting with the buyer, or in chasing him for a decision afterwards?

Hold-off on that Proposal!

Of course, the latter is much less effective, with the author

pointing out the obvious - ‘the calls you make after handing over the proposal don’t have the same impact as those you make before’.

So, hold off on doing that proposal until you really have had a chance to build a rapport with the prospect, to understand their needs, to discuss solutions and so on. In this way you are in effect getting the customer to write his/her own proposal as you go along.

In Summary

In this book Steve Marx tells us what we all instinctively know, but can sometimes overlook – no complex or high value deal is closed in one, or two sales calls. More to the point he reminds us that ‘hands off selling’ does not work. More than ever time spent understanding the needs of the customer and jointly arriving at solutions is essential to sales success.

In an era of lengthening sales cycles and more complex buying decisions, ‘Close Like The Pros’ is an essential read.

‘Close Like The Pros’ Steve Mark, Career Press, 2007

The perils and rewards of an ‘anytime anywhere approach to business development’

The era of choosiness is over with companies casting their nets wider in terms of business development and trawling new and existing markets for whatever business is available. Businesses that once turned their nose up at particular kinds of work have had a fundamental change of heart and are prepared to take whatever is going. But for some this is working out better than others.

The ‘anytime anywhere’ approach to business development:

Lost revenues, lost customers and slowing sales have resulted in a less

discriminate approach to business development. The shotgun has replaced the rifle, as companies target what would previously have been considered smaller, lower margin and less glamorous projects, or customers. Indeed, just like a Hoover (that is the brand of vacuum cleaner) sales teams are looking to suck up whatever opportunities are available.

The traditional boundaries between markets and segments have been leaped by suppliers in search of whatever business might be available. In an ‘anytime anywhere approach to

business development’, they are knocking on new doors and entering new markets, or segments.

Is the age of the specialist over?

In the boom years companies were afforded the opportunity to focus on the business that was most

attractive to their business. In a buoyant market they were able to focus and specialize, cherry picking customers that best suited their business. For many these trends have been reversed with companies backtracking from specialist to generalist, boutique to supermarket and nice to mass market supplier.

In many cases the commercial

imperative is simply too great and casting the business development net

wider is not a matter of choice, but there clearly are downsides. The ‘anytime anywhere’ approach often requires that companies move out of their sales and delivery comfort zone. It may also mean diverting from a tried and trusted business formula to one that is risky and less unfamiliar. It may also require a move away from the company’s core competence, or those areas in which they had unique and specialized skills, processes, knowledge and tools. This can have long term consequences for the company in terms of competitive advantage, marketplace reputation and investor appeal.

The reality is that good times or bad, some

business is just not right for your company and its bottom line. Perh

aps it entails lower margins, excessive travel, more intensive support, too much learning, or too much risk. It may also have consequences in terms of longer sales cycles and higher sales costs, or an impact on conversion rates, staff motivation and so on.

Let us return to the hoover, or vacuum cleaner analogy. Plug it in and eventually the bag gets full, but if you are picking up the wrong stuff then perhaps the hose will get stuffed and the filter will become clogged. The same can happen with indiscriminate business development efforts.

For years the advice was focus, is that now ‘old hat’?

After years of advising companies to specialize, we are slow to let go of that advice even if the economic conditions might immediately suggest that diversification into new markets and segments is required. That is because

what we call the ‘anytime anywhere approach’ to business development with its stretch into new markets, segments, new products and services can present challenges. Let us take an example:

‘We will go anywhere anytime’ said the sales director of an early stage technology company clearly under pressure to meet sales numbers. At the time we were putting the finishing touches to a sales campaign aimed at major North American hardware

vendors and until that point I had felt quite enthusiastic about the plans. At the mention of ‘anytime anywhere’ I immediately felt uneasy, it smacked of desperation and that is an ingredient that I know often impedes clear thinking.

All of a sudden the sophistication and accuracy of the target list and the sales strategy was drawn into question. If the company’s proposition appealed to everyone everywhere then too many principles of high value selling were being compromised. As it turns out the campaign had limited success so the manager availability to travel anywhere anytime did not get called on too much.

You can be average at a lot of things, but only exceptional at a few:

You can be average at a lot of things, but only exceptional at a few, and if you are lucky world beating at one. The challenge is to find what that particular niche, or talent is and to focus on, nurture and develop it. For companies, as well as individuals that discovery can require quite

a bit of experimentation along the way.

Another client of ours arrived at

strategic cross roads in terms of its target customers and projects for the second time in two years. After an intensive phase of project delivery, the consultants were both exhausted and frustrated. They were faced with the reality that much of the work they had been winning was neither profitable, nor enjoyable. It was once-off in terms of revenue and rightly, or wrongly was perceived by clients to be of a lower value. Bottom line it was not the stuff of which our clients could grow a sustainable business.

This was not the first time the company had arrived at this realization in its 3 year history, having last year closed a subsidiary business upon which it had previously placed high hopes. Would the third redirection of its focus pay-off? The reality for the managers was that it represented one last calculated gamble.

On the positive side the consultants believed they had found their niche, having invested significantly in developing specialized skills and knowledge in a particular field that they considered to be on the rise. They were undaunted in their determination to specialize in an industry of generalists and had committed their time and money to developing specialized knowledge, processes and skills in this new area.

Now almost every strategy book I have ever read would suggest that our client’s ability to strategise was fundamentally flawed. To get it wrong once, is misfortunate, but twice surely that is careless? Well, perhaps it is not, as clearly the sweet spot eludes many companies and is as much stumbled upon as discovered.

To Hover, or Not To Hover - Some Final Considerations:

There is no question that a trained athlete can compete in a variety of different events, the 600 meters, triathlon and perhaps even in the pool. However, almost every athlete has his, or her sweet spot – an event that suits them best, offers the greatest chance of success and the greatest enjoyment. The more the athlete focuses on the sweet spot, the greater their relative advantage in will be. Similarly, while most musicians can play several instruments, each has a favorite and that is probably the one for which he/she is most skilled.

So as you shape your target list for next quarter’s sales campaign and perhaps in the process reshape your companies market strategy, proceed with care. Remember the danger of trying to be everything to everybody, or seeing the whole world as your market. Even if next quarter takes you away from your sweet spot, don’t loose sight of where and how your company’s long term success will be built.

Faraway hills are always greener and that is another reason for caution in respect of adjusting your focus in terms of business development. It can be tempting to move out to new markets, or segments when the going gets tough. However, there is a danger that if you make that you will make a decision to refocus before you have adjusted your sales process and indeed the overall sophistication of your sales approach, as well as your proposition, to reflect the changed conditions for your present target market.

Want To Become A World-Beating Blogger? Blogging Heroes Reveal Their Secrets.

If like me you are keen to maximize the potential of blogging to build your profile and attract new customers to you business, then you will be interested in the advice that the world’s leading bloggers have to offer.

Blogging Heroes written by Michael Banks, is a collection of interviews with 30 of the world’s most widely read bloggers. Each page is full of encouragement and advice, but because you are short on time I have summarized some of the key points below.

Why blog? The reasons the best bloggers suggest are to find your voice, develop your thoughts and build your expertise. Most blogging heroes started blogging not for money, but because they had something useful to say and a great desire to say it.

The main advice offered is to be authentic and different. You have to be enthusiastic so pick an area you are passionate it will come across through your wri

ting and is essential to engaging readers. Picking a topic that gets you excited is also essential if you are going to keep the initiative going.

If you are going to write a lot then you must read a lot. So set up some R.S.S. feeds to some carefully chosen blogs. Most blogging heroes read between 40 and 200s feeds per day. Follow other people’s blogs quoting them where you use any of their thoughts and putting comments on their posts. Writers are starved of comments so if you comment regularly and add value you can ask for a link to your blog in return.

How to get started? Well the advice is to jump straight in. That is the best way to find your style, to refine your message and so on. Start with a reasonably high volume of posts. Blogging does not have to be perfect, in fact if you strive for perfection you may never get it going properly. So, think of blogging as a work in progress.

Give yourself time to find your voice, and to perfect your style. While differences vary as regards how correct the language, grammar and spelling should be, the blogging heroes do agree on one thing – the need for quality in terms of the content, or information provided. However, it is much different to writing for a magazine, or book, a blog is more of a conversation with the reader.

Most heroes are less concerned with search engine optimisation than you might expect, pointing to good content is the number one key success factor in getting readers for your post. However, they highlight basics such as tags, headings, deeper linking within posts and readable post names as important.

Pretty much all of the bloggers suggest that great content beats search engine optimization and frown on gimmickry. In this way they suggest that blogging is the perfect meritocracy. The advice is to blog for readers, not to get readers. Then when you hit on the right topic your site will go viral.

Write consistently, some of the heros blogged for 40 mins per day, others write all day every day. However, ensuring fresh content every time the visitor visits is important – with most blogging platforms allowing posts to be written in groups and then time delayed for release.

Quality content is the best way to build readers. It sounds a little like ‘write it and they will come’ message, but no matter what way you look at it good content is key. So, don’t just write about what you want to sell, write about what you know and what is useful for other people to read. We are also advised to remember the importance of a good heading, sometimes it is often all that the readers will see before deciding to click on the feed.

Great posts plant a seed in the mind of the reader. Encourage people to comment – ask people to suggest topics – thank people for their comments and always reply. Several blogging heroes suggest that anonymous posts and comments is the source of the web, so make sure to use your identity. And a word of caution about welcoming comments, don’t take anything that might be said personally.

A blog is not just a blog, it is a community, a forum, a online shop front, etc. It does not have to look like a blog and is not just limited to opinion. A blog is a content vehicle, capable of handing your delivering your message faster and in a less formal manner to a wider audience.

The blogging heroes point to the importance of finding the right topic (sometimes this is a matter of experimentation) and of creating original work. The source of inspiration is the dozens of feeds that bloggers read from other blogs and webpages.

Finally don’t exclusively rely on text, always use images and don’t be afraid to experiment with audio and video, etc.

Click here to buy Blogging Heroes

How To Protect Your Customers From Your Hungry Competitors

After a decade of buoyant demand, organizations are facing a battle on two fronts – to protect and grow.  That is to protect existing customer revenues from being poached by competitors, while seeking out any new business that exists in the marketplace.  

Your Competitors Are Circling Your Customers:

Clearly the challenge of finding new customers in a declining market is greater, but so too are the temptations for existing customers to stray.  

Salespeople are increasingly wandering into new territories in search of whatever business is to be found.  In fact one buyer told us recently that he was now receiving up to  6 or 7 sales calls each day and the majority of these were from suppliers that had never previously contacted his company.

So it is no wonder that Sales Managers are complaining about new competitors circulating around their hard won customers, luring them with discounted prices.  For buyers facing mounting cost pressure, the temptation can be too great to resist.   

How to Protect Your Customers:

Here are 8 strategies that sales managers are employing to protect their customers from increased competition:

1. Stop managing key accounts, develop them instead.  

The reality is that your relationship with a customer cannot remain static, in spite of changes in personnel, budgets, competition, business priorities, and so on. That means each customer account is either moving forwards, of backwards.  

You have to keep moving those accounts that are important along - proactively nurturing and growing them.  Too often the term harvesting is used in respect of existing accounts, however the hunter mindset is required to maintain and grow existing business.   This requires a minset change - one that recognises that the sales job is not over when the order is won.  

This is the ideal time to renew and reinvigorate your account management (we much prefer the term account development) going back to basics to focus on internal and client side reviews, key account plans, relationship building, etc.  

2. Understand and reflect changing buying priorities.  

Your customer's business and its priorities are radically different to what they were 6, 10, or 12 months ago.  Their focus is likely to be more short term, that is pressing problem and a short term payback.  Customers also likely to be looking to adopt a leaner, more flexible and more innovative approach to all aspects of their business.  It is important that the way your company does business reflects these changes.

3. Help your customer through the downturn.  Almost universally customers are facing tighter budgets, pressure on costs and demands for increased efficiency.  As a supplier, how can your services and solutions aid the customer in these areas?  For example, with your system now installed on a customer site you are likely to have a much deeper understanding of the extent of user adoption, the impact on related business processes, underutilised system functionality, etc.  Use this information to show the customer how to squeeze further efficiencies and costs.  

4. Communicate the value.  Your customer is rightly asking ‘what have you done for me lately’, thus reminding what you are doing is key.  

Has the customer achieved the expected benefits of your services, or solutions?  Does the customer even know the answer to this question?  Well, herein lies great potential to strengthen and protect your relationship with your customer. 

It is vitally important to measure the impact of your solution on the customer's business.  The supplier that finds that a customer is only getting 80% of the anticipated benefits and knows how that figure can be improved has still got a lot of extra value to add.  

This is true of almost any supplier – there opportunities to add value that are often overlooked. These may include; showing the customer how to generate a different type of reporting from the system, providing advanced training to users, holding periodic project management meetings, sharing insights from other customers, or research regarding market, or technology trends, etc.  

5. Innovate continuously.  It is often said that familiarly breads contempt, or at least complacency, and that is something that you want to avoid with your customers.  Because your competitors are likely to be approaching your customers promising something different, so it is important that you also continuously innovate and differentiate in terms of what you are providing.  

6. Don't Settle for Just Being A Supplier

In respect of those customers that are strategically important to your business, you must work to deepen the relationship and move along the continuum from supplier to strategic partner.  Now if you are simply supplying low margin products, or services in a transaction-like manner, this is not relevant.  However, if your objective is to develop a long term profitable and secure relationship, then developing two way inter dependence and cooperation will be your goal.  That will require a greater levels of mutual communication, interaction, understanding and trust..

7. Make switching more difficult – that means seeking to make your customer more dependent on you, or to tie the customer to your solution by means of your terms, the propriety nature of the technology employed, the level of integration of your solution with the customer's other systems, or processes, or simply great service and strong relationships.

8.  Be proactive.  Plan ahead with your key accounts, for example pre-empt price renegotiations, changes in the customers strategy, or personnel, etc.  Too often suppliers are taken off guard by changes in a customer's business, or requirements.

Aviva Re-branding Shows Just How Out of Touch Financial Services Marketing Can Be

As a major global player in the insurance industry, Aviva is completing the last stages of its rebranding that will merge 40 different international trading names under one single brand.  

Certainly, the rational for a global brand makes sense, but the company’s star studded advertisements demonstrate that marketing in the financial services sectors is simply out of touch.

Aviva argues that its rebranding will distance the company from other financial institutions discredited by the financial crisis.  However, big budget advertisements and rebranding initiatives will not lift consumer confidence in the face of events at Northern Rock, Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS.

Confronted with a challenge, corporate marketing at AVIVA has reached for the old reliable - rebranding and high-gloss advertising.  The only problem is that they don’t work anymore.    Typical of the backlash one irate consumer pointed out ‘while taxpayer-funded government bail-outs are saving banks and insurance companies, Norwich Union is flooding the airwaves with their new big spend TV ads.  It is very wrong.’

Meanwhile, the company boasts that it has negotiated great bargains on its change of name advertising campaign (created by agency AMV BBDO) and media spend, including celebrity endorsements from big names such as Bruce Willis, Elle MacPhearson and Ringo Star.  Yet, the total cost put at £80 million did raise heckles at the company’s recent A.G.M.

Get ready for more fancy rebranding campaigns.  Marketing Week points out that other financial institutions are likely to change their name:

• Santander is set to rebrand Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley.
  
• Axa will axe Sun Life
  
• Cornhill Insurance will be absorbed into Allianz.
  
• The names of Direct Line, Churchill and Privilege may ultimate change to as they are sold off by RBS.
  

BT Project Failure - Deals Another Blow to IT Vendor Credibility

Another high profile IT project has scrapped, dealing a blow to the confidence of IT buyers nationwide and making life just a little bit more difficult for those of us who sell IT.

Here We Go Again:

Last month the Guardian reported that the UK’s largest non-military computer project – a £13 billion NHS (National Health Service) project has run aground.  Two of contractors Accenture and Fujitsu have quit, while BT has announced a multi-million write down on the project.  Incidentally, this is something BT has had to do against against 15 of its biggest 17 contracts, according to the paper.

It is depressing news for anybody buying IT solutions and another black mark against those selling it.  The BT NHS experience offers buyers another reason to be cautious and cynical, making them much less likely to believe what you, or I have to say.   So, if you are meeting prospects next week I hope they have not been reading the press.  

The Implications For The Salesperson:

The BT story is further evidence that the way IT is bought, sold and delivered, like so many IT projects themselves, is broken.  Fixing it is an opportunity and a challenge facing sales professionals in the industry.

The savvy salesperson must leverage news of yet another high profile IT project disaster.  He or she must deal head on with very real project risks around delivery and cost.  The salesperson's job description has changed from selling technology, or software, to help prospects regain confidence and ultimately to maximizing the chances of project success.

Salespeople are remembered for their successes (i.e. the deals they have closed), while buyers are remember for their failures (i.e. the project, or supplier that failed) .   Buyer can have purchased millions, but will be remembered for the purchase decision and projects that went south.  It is not surprising therefore that they are cautious.

Looking For A Positive Dimension:

On a slightly more positive note, it is clear that IT project disasters are a great leveller.  In fact one could argue that a sales person working from a smaller competitor of BT may well have an edge given the turmoil affecting BT at serveral levels at present.

Incidentially, here are some observations from the NHS project that may offer a hint of the type of solutions that are required:

• The bigger the project the bigger the risk

• Big vendors have big problems too

• Throwing money at problems is not a solution

• The denial of problems in the early stages enables them to grow

• Turning around a project in freefall is almost impossible

• Little wonder that IT buyers are increasingly cynical and skeptical.  

Sales People Need To See What They Are Selling in 3 D

Too many salespeople limit their success by adopting a myopic view of how their solutions will be employed by customers.  In particular they fail to consider all those ingredients – particularly people and process - that are required to ensure their customer's success.

The Custmer Sees in 3 Dimensions:

The customer has a problem, which as part of your sales process, you have helped to first define and then resolve.  However, despite what your marketing brochures and sales pitches say, you don’t have the total solution.  

The reality is that your system, solution, or software, no matter how good it is, will only go part of the way to meeting the customer’s total needs.  But that is not a problem, in fact seeing things this way can actually provide you with a real sales advantage.

Savvy buyers know that there are 3 dimensions to their needs – that is a people, process and product, or service dimension.  Unfortunately, however sales people tend to focus on just the one – that is their product, or service. Where the product or service being sold involves technology this is a particular problem.

Many Sales People Only See in One Dimension:

As salespeople we know our product inside-out, that includes; benefits, features and technology. 

That is what they have been trained to sell and are most comfortable with.  However, the focus of salespeople on systems and technology alone, is akin to the machines without damnable human operators view of the word.  The two other key success factors of people and process are often overlooked.  That means we sell our technology with scant regard to how it is going to be used and who is going to use it.

New Technology Is Only Part of the Solution:

Let us take a example:  Buyers in life and pensions organisations, for example, need modern back office systems in order to achieve benefits such as straight through processing and improved administrative efficiency.  However, the new technology is only part of the solution, with people and process playing a major role in the achievement of success.  

A new system without changed organizational processes will simply make bad processes more efficient.  Similarly, new systems that are not embraced by users will fail to deliver on the results promised.

How To See in 3 D:

Ironically, if salespeople began to view their system, product, or service, as only a part of the customer’s total needs, they could greatly improve their sales success.  

This approach however requires a greater investment of time and effort by the vendor to first understand fully the customer’s business, and then to support user adoption and process reengineering. 

Considering the People and Process of the Sale:

Selling in the context of people and process also requires a greater understanding of how your solutions are implemented by customers and used by users.  So, think of the people and the process that are required to ensure the success of the solutions you are selling.  Think of how assisting in these areas can differentiate your offering and add value for your customers.

Needs Analysis: Be careful when you point out your prospect's problems

As salespeople we have been trained to sniff out our customers’ problems, including ones that the customer may not have been fully aware of. It is our job to digg them up and to parade them around in front of our prospects in order to build a desire for their resolution and tension for change. However, be careful because it can easily backfire.

Happy days, the prospect has a probem:

The logic is clear if our product, or service is a solution, then we need to find a matching problem and the bigger the problem the greater the potential for a sale.

Little wonder then that we focus so much on the problem, with the following being typical of the 'problem focused' openings of so many sales pitches:

• ‘80% of IT projects are either behind schedule, over budget or about to be scrapped.’
• ‘Up to 20% of hardware and software on most networks is hidden, resulting in unwelcome surprises in terms of costs, licensing and risks.’
• ‘In the face of increasingly complex stock handing rules most warehouse systems are struggling to achieve 99.9% accuracy levels. ‘
  

Needs Analysis Can Help You Sell:

Here is traditionally how it worked: find the sore point, scratch it to make it hurt a little more and then when you present the prospect with your medicine he, or she will readily embrace you and your solution. Well, that is how it is supposed to work. The problem is that in the process of pointing people to their pains, sore points and inadequacies you could lose as many friends as you gain.

Managers often personally identify with their businesses, strategies and departments. So, when you criticise their strategy, their results, etc. you are criticising them. Nobody likes to have their weaknesses aired, or attention drawn to their failures. If you don’t exercise care in how you undercover the prospects needs, or problems (that is the needs analysis aspect of selling), then you run the risk of sabotaging the sale. You could be creating a wall of denial, defensiveness and resistance.

Needs Analysis Can Lose You Friends

Let us take the example of a software testing company whose sales pitch which started by stating that ‘80% of IT projects are in trouble’ (a statistic that was backed up by quoting a independent source). The danger is that this opening could be seen by many prospects as a thinly veiled insult.

While the message it strikes at the very heart of the problem, most IT Managers are likely to respond with a statement such as ‘are you suggesting that we, or I, cannot delivery successful IT projects?’ Only a minority – perhaps managers from other departments, are likely to react with a ‘yes you are absolutely right most of our projects are failing, we need your help.’

Put People Before Problems:

So, when you are focusing on the problem do not forget the people involved -those who are part of the problem as well as those that are affected by it. Taking our ‘80% of IT projects are behind schedule'' example, how can it be transformed so that it is less likely to encounter resistance?

Well, it could be reworded to ‘IT managers are often thwarted in their efforts to deliver key software projects on time and within budget…’ The difference is subtle, but significant saying that managers are being thwarted as opposed to failing. In this way it shifts the focus from the people to the problem and in particular to the processes and systems that are holding people back.

Exposing the Problem, While Protecting The People

The savvy salesperson knows that he must identify problems, while at the same time protecting people. He must, for example, get to the heart of problems in the warehouse without directly criticizing the warehouse manager. This is at the core of influencing people.

Tips On Using Problem Identification to Sell

So, how to uncover the needs and problems that will help you to sell your solution, while at the same time avoiding resistance on the part of the prospect? Well, here are 3 techniques to bear in mind:

1. Tell stories to help customers understand their own situation. This enables you to couch comments and observations that may be relevant to the prospect’s business in a neutral 3rd party way.
   
   
2. The savvy salesperson must also have a good sense of politics and timing. He must know the right time to speak out about problems and how loudly to do so. He must also earn the right to speak, by virtue of his/her demonstrated level of expertise, credibility and trust. He must not speak out until at least tacitly invited to do so.
   
   
3. Ask questions, rather than making statements. Use them to steer the customer along the path of greater awareness and to help them arrive at their own definition of the problem. Focus your questions not just on the problems, but on the implications and the possible solutions. Probe behind the facts to understand how people feel about the situation, as well as to understand their hopes and fears. They are essential to the manner in which you couche your solutions.
   
   
4. Listen and emphathise as a means of demonstrating commitment and building rapport. Encouraging the customer or prospect to open up about his or her problems and challenges is the supreme test of a salesperson's skill. The prospect has to feel that by opening up he, or she is not just simply providing the salesperson with amunition to be used in his/her salespitch.
   
   
5. Focus on the positive, as opposed to the negative and on opportunities as opposed to challenges. In the warehousing example we mentioned earlier, it would be focusing not on the effect of more complex handing rules on accuracy levels, but on how successfully mastering complex handling rules can deliver a cost advantage.
   
   
6. Compliment your customer. It is important to find out about the company’s successes, strengths, achievements, etc. and highlight these in your conversations and your proposals.
   
   
7. Choose your language carefully. What one person sees as 'benchmarking' another may consider 'finger pointing'. When salespeople and consultants use words such as ‘review’, ‘assessment’, ‘audit’, clients and prospects may crudely translate these terms int ‘you think you know it all’,, or at least ’you think you are better than us’.
   
   
8. Be careful when you are using analysts reports and statistics. They can be a blunt instrument, being used in most cases to infer a problem in the prospect's company, or industry and to deliver a negative message. They are no substitute for a full understanding of the customers business. In any respect, we find that buyers are increasingly weary and disbelieving of analyst data.
   
   
9. Put yourself in your customer's shoes. There is a wise Spanish proverb that says ‘It is much easier to talk about bulls, than it is to step into the ring.’ This is an important point for sales people to bear in mind. Don’t judge a person, or a situation, until and unless you are in that situation yourself. For those directly confronted with a problem there is a level and complexity that the outsider cannot immediately appreciate.

Salespeople Have Got Talent, Right? Well, imagine Simon Cowell was your customer!

One in five Britons is watching ‘Britain Has Got Talent’. The format is simple – ordinary people line up to do ordinary and sometimes extraordinary things in front of a panel of 3 judges, led by the straight talking Simon Cowell. Now you may wonder why this is relevant to a B2B sales blog.

Well, as I watched the other night, it struck me that there are similarities between Britain Has Got Talent and the buying situation. OK, there is no red buzzer on the table but your talent, as well as that of your company, is on show and it is the buyer who decides if you get to the next round.  

Lessons from Britain Has Got Talent:
So, let us mix entertainment and popular culture with selling. I talked to a few people to draw some lessons for selling from Britain Has Got Talent.

1. Preparation and preparation is everything. The judges will come down hard if it looks like you have not done the preparation that is required. Talent without practice and preparation won’t get a place in the finals.
   
   
2. Appeal to people’s emotions – be likeable, be personable. That may mean you have to pucker up more of a smile than usual, it may also mean that you need to put your ego in your back pocket. Your objective is to show people your humanity.
   
   
3. Enjoy it, put your heart into it. The harshest of the judges put a group through, not just because they were talented, but because in his words ‘they put their heart and soul into it’. The judges dropped another because he did not look like he enjoyed giving the performance, which in turn prevented the audience enjoying it. Intensity, commitment and enthusiasm on the part of the salesperson is also crucial.
   
   
4. Be authentic – be you. Every performance involves a little acting, but you cannot keep that act up all the time. For this reason it is important to be authentic, to be yourself. The audience and the judges alike warm to people who in spite of the lights and cameras still come across as ordinary decent people.
   
   
5. Be gracious, even in defeat. A performer only looks like a sore loser if he, or she cannot accept the advice of a judge. That does not mean they have to agree with it, but snapping back will undermine any support you did get and will not get your through to the next level. Welcome advice and even if it hurts say thank you, then you can make your own decision about whether you will personally accept it or not.
   
   
6. Be interesting – spice it up a little. Some contestants wowed the audience on the first night, but made the mistake of delivering more of the same for their next performance. The novelty had gone and so had the judges praise. In selling is important to delivery something new, different and better each time, otherwise the customer will eventually buzz you off. 
   
   
7. Don’t overpromise. It can be very useful to keep the element of surprise on your side. That may mean being careful not to overstate what you are going to deliver. One performer dressed to look like Marie Callas who promised beautiful music was quickly buzzed off the stage after starting to mime to an operatic recording. In selling it is important to always keep promises made. You must first manage the buyer’s expectations and then meet, or exceed them.
   
   
8. You cannot separate the performer from the performance – no matter what the act is, what props are involved you cannot separate the singer from the song, or the comedian from the joke. This is true in selling, the buyer has to buy you before he, or she buys your products.
   
   
9. The first 30 seconds is the most important. Judges are most likely to reach for the buzzer in the first thirty seconds of the performance. And so it is in sales - first impressions count. The buyer will decide if your pitch is of interest based on your suit and tie, your opening pitch and your first few slides. It is important to get off to a good start.
   
   
10. Supporters are everything – most great acts owe at least part of their success to those waiting in the wings. Similarly, even though the sales person may be centre stage, his, or her success depends on the support of team – including pre sales, technical and account management. 
    
    
11. Today’s stars are made in cyberspace – Competition forerunner Susan Doyle, the unassuming 47 Scottish woman, has demonstrated the power of online media – capitalizing on YouTube, Facebook and other sites to reach multiples of the TV audience.  Reaching buyers requires that you use these new media too.
    
    
12. Don’t get too emotional – hold back the fear, the anger and the tears. Delivering at the top of your game depends on the ability to manage your emotions and your nerves.