Jun/101
Balance, imbalance and the right things to (not) do
“…his purpose is to balance the equation. My purpose, is to unbalance it.”
- The Oracle to Neo (paraphrased), The Matrix Revolutions (part 3)
In his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, Stephen Covey tells a story about his daughter and balance. It comes after he discusses the need for balance in life. In a tip-of-the-hat to the kind of seemingly contradictory concepts that make Eastern philosophy paradoxically beautiful and baffling for many Westerners, he concludes his discussion of balance with a caveat about imbalance.
In the story, the younger Covey becomes pregnant and has her first child. In an effort to be true to the principles that she learned from her father, she struggles to maintain balance in her life. For those of you that have had children, you know that this can be an impossible goal. Very young children are by design highly demanding of the time and energy of their caregivers, and when the caregiver is also the parent, then the emotional connection and often sleepless nights of a new parent make these first months in the life of a new child simultaneously blissful and tortuous (hmm, another paradox).
So the young Covey comes to her father, disappointed in her lack of ability to find her balance, and seeking his advice for how to find it again. Here, Mr. Covey, who has no shortage of wisdom, shines with some of the wisest advice one could imagine.
He tells his daughter that balance is a good thing. When life is in balance, then all of the important elements of life are honored and managed well. But sometimes, life gives us special circumstances. Sometimes a project or opportunity comes up that requires full focus and attention for a sustained period of time. Full focus and attention are not incompatible with balance, in fact, quite the contrary. Ultimately, we should strive for full focus and attention in each immediate moment, and balance in the larger schema. However, in some circumstances, full focus and attention for a sustained period of time can be incompatible with balance, and sometimes rejecting balance at these times is exactly the right thing to do.
Having a new child is often not a time for balance. It is a time for sustained, single-minded focus. In this case, balance becomes subservient to immersion in a task so important and consuming that not being in balance is completely appropriate.
So what does all of this have to do with you (the reader), me (the writer) and the sales process (the usual subject of this blog)?
Well, I am not having a child now (neither is my wife;). However, in a session of focused reflection and deliberation facilitated by the confines of a transatlantic flight, I have decided that this summer is a good time for me to accept some imbalance.
I have three major projects on my plate this summer, including the development of my second book on management of the sales organization. Towards the goal of focusing on these key tasks, I have decided to cut out some regular items from my schedule for the next few months. One of them will be the weekly posting of this blog.
I will return to blogging in September. I’ll tell you more about the book then.
In the meantime, please continue to work on a process orientation towards the important things in your life, and at the same time, remember that becoming a slave to a process is not the same as being effective. Meditate on that, and have a great summer.
-David Masover
June 15, 2010
May/100
The shoemakers children could have had shoes, if only….
I wrote a blog post last week about dumb things that otherwise smart people do or say. The conclusion of the post was that there is always something to learn in order to improve, and it is foolish to think otherwise, or to avoid efforts for self-improvement because of this misconception.
To make the point, I invoked the spirit of Abraham Lincoln (sharpen your ax before trying to cut down the big tree) and Lance Armstrong (ride your strengths, train your weaknesses). I suggested that in your efforts to sharpen and train, there are plenty of books, blogs, podcasts, etc. to help you.
But what’s the problem?
Which ax should you sharpen? Which weakness should you train?
The advice is my last blog is good advice (if I may say so myself), but it presumes that a person knows what needs improvement. This is often not the case. What to do?
Let’s attack this like salespeople – PROFESSIONAL salespeople!
When I go to meet with a prospect, I don’t assume that I know what issues they might have. I don’t even assume that the prospect is aware of the issues they might have. I go into the meeting with the idea that IT IS MY JOB to help me and my prospect discover together what issues might exist that I might be able to help with.
In the vernacular of the sales process described in my book, Mastering Your Sales Process, I call this step “Needs Analysis”.
Have you heard of it? It is THE core element of a professional selling system. If we don’t know what our prospect needs to fix, how on earth can we offer a solution that has value to them?
Do you have some kind of a systematic needs analysis that you use with your prospects? (If not, shame on you!). How did you develop it? Could you develop a new needs analysis for a new kind of prospect if the opportunity to do so arose? What if you got a new job? What if your company started selling in a new market, or started selling a new kind of solution? You would have to develop a new needs analysis system in order to be successful. The ability to do so is an important part of being an effective salesperson in an ever changing world.
So what if the product was you?
See where we are going here?
If the goal is the improve, but the question is “improve what?”, then the answer is needs analysis. Do you know how to do one? If so, do a needs analysis on yourself as a salesperson, or a tennis player, or a spouse, or whatever area of your life that you want to improve. When you find your answer, go find books or podcasts or coaches that can help you.
If you can’t find the answer yourself, recruit the help of a friend, a co-worker, a manager, a life coach, or a spiritual adviser (for those of you in my adopted home state of California).
If after all of this you can’t come up with an answer, then allow me to suggest that your first skill to improve is the skill of developing and conducting a needs analysis on ANY kind of problem that comes along. It will make you a better salesperson, and will give you an important tool with which to improve all of the areas of your life that are worthy of an investment of energy towards the return of self improvement.
Then you can do the needs analysis on yourself, and go after all of the rest of the stuff!
May/101
The dumbest thing I ever heard a smart guy say
I have had the good fortune to have worked in a few different start ups. One of the things that I really like about this kind of work environment is the lack of silos. In larger organizations, most departments (sales, marketing, finance, operations, etc.) get partitioned to some extent from other departments. In early stage start ups, there is literally and figuratively no room for that.
It’s interesting for a “sales guy” like me to get to sit next to the caliber of accountant or engineer that is drawn to and accepted in a start up environment. Often, we can learn a lot from each other. Sometimes, we get to see how deep knowledge in one arena can mask pretty dumb ideas in others.
For example…..
I was working in a technology start up a few years ago. I had helped the company to raise seed capital, and I stayed on to help with some key negotiations. One of the other guys on the start up team was an engineer with a very impressive resume. So impressive, that about six months into the start up, he got an offer that he could not refuse from a Fortune 100 company. We were sad to see him go, but he was smart to take the job.
During the few weeks between the time that he accepted the job and left for it, he and I were in the office one day. He knew that I worked as a business consultant (among other things), so he asked me if I had ever heard of a specific kind of management process. I had not, and asked him what problem he was trying to solve by learning more about that specific process.
He told me that his experience in the past was managing engineers. This new job put him into a position to manage the managers of engineers, which he had never done before. We talked for a while about some of the challenges he might be facing, and I suggested a few books from my personal library that I would be happy to loan him.
His response was the impetus for this blog. He said:
“David, if I needed to read a book in order to do this job better, then I would not be the right person for this job.”
I was speechless. When I finally came to my senses, I told him that this was the dumbest thing I ever heard him say. As I have reflected back on this over the years, I realize that this attitude is, unfortunately, not unique.
How can it be that it seems natural for doctors and lawyers (among other professionals) to be required to have continuing education, but business managers don’t feel the same need? Now there are certainly a lot of people buying business books or magazines, listening to podcasts and audio books, reading blogs, etc., but in spite of the large numbers doing such things, it seems frighteningly easy to meet people who don’t even consider keeping themselves up to date and full of new ideas.
In sales, this is particularly foolish. I maintain that at a lot of levels, there is nothing new in sales. However, sales is an interpersonal skill, and there are always things to learn or to be reminded of that can help close more deals, close them faster, qualify them better, etc.
In sales, when you do something better, you often give yourself a raise (if you have a good compensation plan). In spite of this, most salespeople I meet, and most I have worked with, scoff at the idea of trying anything other than what they have always done.
Abraham Lincoln is famous for saying, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”. Stephen Covey use this same idea as his seventh habit of highly effective people. If you assume that you know everything there is to know about being effective in your work, well, you are just making a proverbial ass out of yourself.
Don’t be an ass. Don’t be reactive. Don’t come into work, chase your messages, tweets and voice mails and come up with the same results you always have. Rather, follow the advice of Lance Armstrong:
“Ride your strengths, train your weaknesses”.
Whatever you need to improve on, there is a book, a blog or something on the back end of a Google search to help you. Take the time to sharpen your saw, and go after that bigger tree.
If there is no-one there to hear it fall… well, we can save that for another post.
May/101
What my friend and I learned about (sales) process by doing the dishes.
Lessons in life can come from funny places. Sometimes, we don’t even realize the point of the lesson until years – even decades later.
I was doing the dishes last week, and I was reminded of just this – a lesson that a college roommate and I shared about process that we learned by doing the dishes, some 23 years ago! So here is that short story, the lesson we learned, and how it applies to your potential for success in sales.
When friends live together in college, doing the dishes can often become a source of tension (especially when they don’t get done). When it was my turn to do the dishes, I had a style that was different than that of my friend, so of course, he gave me a hard time about it.
His method was to fill the sink with all of the dirty dishes, pour in some soap and water, and fish around for dishes in the grungy water while struggling to find room between the top of the dish pile and the faucet to rinse each dish after washing it.
My method was to first rinse off all of the gunk, then put all of the dishes on the counter, and fill the sink with a small amount of clean, soapy water. I then gave each gunk-free dish a quick swoosh through the “bath”, and rinse it.
So my friend teased me about this multi-step process of mine until one day, he came up to me out of the blue, and said, “hey, I tried that rinse first method of yours, and it was a lot faster than my way”.
Wow. That kind of admission just doesn’t happen too often between 20-something college guys! Now this blog post isn’t really about the dishes, so let’s not get hung up on what might be the best way to do the dishes. It is about process and preparation, so let’s move things along in that direction!
Much like my college friend before his dish-process enlightenment, my co-workers used to often tease me about the time I took to map out a task list at the end of each day so that my work was organized for the next day. In spite of the teasing, I typically sold more than most of them, and went home earlier each day.
Hmmmmmmm.
Sense a patter here? Let’s try a few more:
- When I train and consult, I suggest that an introduction call script be prepared, printed and practiced before the first introduction call is made.
- When I consult around negotiations, I spend more time than my client expects fleshing out the position of OUR side: what we really want (interests); what we are willing to do without; and where we will walk away (BATNA).
- When I do the dishes, as you now know, I first get the gunk off of the plates before I break out the soap.
The point is the same in all of these cases
The point is that the execution of your work (an introduction call, a negotiation, the dishes) can be made more efficient and effective if you take the time to properly set up the work before you start doing it (working on a script; identifying the position of your own side; scrapping the gunk).
Lessons in life come from funny places. Many of the best lessons wind up being the kind of thing your grandmother would say – simple, effective, non-sexy, non-glamorous – but they work.
- The nutrition community cites expensive studies that suggest you should eat more vegetables.
- The health community commissions expensive studies and declares that a few drinks a day is not so bad, and might even be helpful (everything in moderation, says Grandma).
- Old expressions like “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” make us roll our eyes when we hear it from the older generation. But by golly, they just turn out to be true nonetheless.
So scrape your gunk: work out an effective selling system before you go out to sell, sell more effectively, and then go tell grandma that she was right all along.
May/100
Sales and Negotiation
Last week, I wrote about the difference between sales and marketing. The point of the article was to take these two ideas that often get mixed together, and draw a clear line where one activity stops and the other starts.
These kinds of definitions are important for the same reason that a sales process is important: If you want to be effective, then it is helpful to have a clear idea of where you are in any given situation, to know where you should be going and to know how to best get there. Taking the time to get your bearings and doing so within well defined frameworks will make these endeavors more efficient and effective.
One other set of words that often gets mixed together is sales and negotiation. Let’s take a look at these two activities, shed some light on the differences between them, and look at when and how to consider each one. Let’s start with some definitions:
Definition of Sales: I think of sales as an endeavor of persuasive communication, executed one-on-one or in a relatively small group
Sales Key Concept: Generally speaking, salespeople are successful when they successfully seek to understand the compelling reasons for which a prospect will take action toward buying the product or service offered by the salesperson
Definition of Negotiation: I think of negotiation as a conversation between two or more parties about the details of working together. It takes place after a general agreement about all of the sides wanting to work together. Negotiations can derail that idea, but this is where the details of working together are fleshed out and agreed to (or not)
Negotiation Key Factor: A negotiation is likely to be successful for a given party in the negotiation if the interests of their side are well understood and the walk-away point (BATNA) is both clearly defined and adhered to
In the sales process as defined in my book Mastering Your Sales Process, Negotiation is half of step 6 out of 7 (“Objections and Negotiations” is the single step before the last step of “Securing the Deal”). This placement in the process is critical to a proper understanding of what negotiation really is, and when it is appropriate. It is also indicative of where most people fail with negotiation.
If we look back at the definition of negotiation, there is an implication that negotiation happens when two parties have already decided to work together in general principle. The negotiation is about working out the details. Deals can certainly fall apart in negotiations, and the details are important, often hugely significant. What is important to remember is that the negotiations can’t start until a basic agreement to work together has been established.
Let’s look at an example of how NOT recognizing the proper place of a negotiation within the context of a sales process can derail the negotiation and the sales process itself. See if this sounds familiar:
You walk into the office of a prospect to initiate a complex sales discussion. You have never met this prospect before, or anyone from their company. As you sit down and begin your work of getting to know the prospect, their needs and their ability to buy, the client interrupts you and says:
“Listen, let’s just save some time here – how much does it cost.”
Now price is a certainly component of negotiation, but it is based on value. In this example, there has been no opportunity to establish value. Value is a function of needs. There has been no chance to establish needs. So what can you do?
If you offer a price at this time, you are attempting to negotiate before both sides have a chance to decide that there is an interest in working together, and you are likely to lose. To be successful in sales, negotiation skills are important. However, of equal or perhaps even greater importance is knowing when to negotiate, or even if you should negotiate.
You will improve your likelihood of success if you can help the customer understand that you offer different solutions for different problems, and each solution has a different pricing model. Based on this, what makes sense, then, is to understand the needs of the client (part of selling) before getting into negotiations about price (part of negotiation).
For a simple example, imagine waling into an auto repair shop and saying “my car won’t start, how much will it cost to fix it?”. The ONLY possible answer is some variation on the theme that the price can’t be determined until there is more information about the nature of the problem and the solution required to fix it.
It is much easier to get to your destination if you know where you are, know where the destination is, and know the steps to get there.
So to be successful in your sales negotiations, map your sales process, know where negotiation fits, and don’t go there too early. If you have not established value by uncovering needs, and you have not set your own limits about what makes sense for you as a walk-away point, then you’ll be hard pressed to get to a good solution, and to a successful conclusion of your negotiation.
May/103
Sales and Marketing: Where to draw the line and why it matters.
Last month, I was conducting a sales training focusing on the sales process as outlined in my book, Mastering Your Sales Process. Near the end of the training, one of the participants asked why I didn’t spend time talking about marketing driven sales models, and how their company can use marketing to get the client to pick up the phone and call them, already pre-disposed to the product they are selling?
From a macro perspective, the perspective of generating revenue for the business, it is not a bad question. The problem with the question is that it confuses the appropriate role of marketing, branding, PR and the like with sales. I see this issue come up a lot, so let me post on the differences here, and a way for our friend at the training to think about the result he wants to get in the context of what is happening at his company.
NOTE: These are my definitions, and they are simplified towards to goal differentiating between sales and marketing. If you feel that there is something that really needs to be added to these definitions in this context, please do leave a comment.
Definition of Marketing: I think of marketing as an endeavor in which single messages are broadcasted to a single, large group. There may be multiple single messages going to multiple groups, but the basic “unit of currency” is a focused message going out in bulk to a group. Interactive marketing and social media marketing make the complexity and execution more nuanced, but even there, if it is a message going to a group, it is marketing
Marketing Key Concept: Marketers are successful when they understand the aggregate hot buttons of a target audience, the best medium through which to reach each audience and the appropriate messaging strategy for both the audience and the medium
Definition of Sales: I think of sales as an endeavor of persuasive communication, executed one-on-one or in a relatively small group
Sales Key Concept: Generally speaking, salespeople are successful when they successfully seek to understand the compelling reasons for which a prospect will take action toward buying the product or service offered by the salesperson
So why does all of this matter, and where does this leave the guy from the training?
After he asked his question, I asked him to imagine the phone call he believes that marketing can help to materialize. We had just gone through the seven step sales process as laid out in my book (Leads, Prospecting, Qualifying, Needs Analysis, Proposal, Objections and Closing). I asked him to identify where we were in the process at the time this marketing generated phone call was received.
In this context, the answer was clear: as soon as the person called, we had a lead – someone we could talk to about buying our product. That was about it. Marketing, branding, PR and the like might have made the person more positively pre-disposed towards our product or service, but the prospect is still a lead, nothing more, regardless of their pre-disposition.
Prospecting, where we ask permission to discuss the needs of the client had not happened.
Qualifying, where we find out if the person we are talking to is both able to and likely to buy had not happened.
We had not done a needs analysis, or made a proposal, or answered objections, or closed the deal.
Now it is possible that if the company receiving the marketing generated inquiry was selling a book, a boxed software product, a toy, or some other physically well defined commodity, the caller might call in based on the marketing and said “hey, I read about your stuff – please send some to me”. In this case, there is no need to go through all of the steps.
But the training was not for a company that sold books, etc. Most people who read blogs like this are selling something that requires them to engage with their prospects in order to understand the needs, and the circumstances that might surround a sale before an offer can be made and certainly before a deal can be consummated. This is often called a complex sale, and sales has to do some stuff to convert initial interest – however it was generated – into a signed deal.
So in this case, marketing was able to generate a lead. Perhaps a qualified lead, perhaps an enthusiastic lead, perhaps a lead inclined to take action – but according to our definition of sales and marketing, just a lead. Once the lead is generated, then all of the “sales stuff” needs to happen to get the prospect through to a close. This work – the sales process – is typically NOT the job of marketing.
This may all seem a bit semantic, but it is important to know where you are in the process, who is who, who does what, and what a name on a piece of paper or on the other end of the phone really means. You may get a call one day from someone who is totally turned on by your product based on what they read in an advertisement, or a blog, or in a review, or from a friend. But they are a lead – and if you are selling a product with ANY level of complexity at all, you will need to do the sales work to carry them through to the end.
This is easier to do if you recognize this truth, along with the sales related limits of even the most effective marketing, in a sales environment that is even the least bit complex.
Apr/101
Book Review – “Mastery: The Keys To Success & Long Term Fulfillment”
Over this last week, I re-read a great little book called Mastery: The Keys To Success & Long Term Fulfillment by George Leonard. According to the author bio, Mr. Leonard is the author of several books on human possibility and social change including The Transformation, The Ultimate Athlete, and The Way of Aikido.
Mr. Leonard is a practitioner of Aikido, arguably one of the most difficult of the martial arts to master. His learnings as a student of Aikido led him to write this book on mastery, in which he translates the philosophical and practical drivers of his quest for mastery in this martial art, to a more universalized quest for mastery.
Other than enjoying the book, it seemed an appropriate topic for the sales process blog. Why? If I was asked to distill the book down to one salient point, it would be this:
It is neither possible nor useful to define mastery as a specific level of proficiency. It is more useful to consider the quest for mastery as, on a day-to-day basis, a journey of self improvement. As such, mastery should be thought of as a discipline; a practice; a mentality that inspires showing up every day and working towards an longer-term, larger, ultimately unreachable goal rather than towards some arbitrary recognition or some specific, high level of proficiency.
In several places in the book, Mr. Leonard refers to process; a methodology for following a proven path towards an ongoing level of improvement via engagement. In this way, Mastery: The Keys To Success & Long Term Fulfillment is a great book for anyone trying to improve at anything – from sales, to martial arts, to simply the enjoyment of life itself.
Traditional Zen philosophy is not for everyone. Mastery: The Keys To Success & Long Term Fulfillment has roots in Zen philosophy (among other things), but is presented as an accessible and practical reminder that showing up every day and doing your job IS mastery in the making. Furthermore, since the journey rather than the destination tends to be the real “juice of life”, learning to enjoy the juice, rather than an elusive and often myopically sought after goal, is a path towards both fulfillment and success.
Many martial artists quit once they get their black belts. Many salespeople quit pushing when they meet their revenue target. Many of us have been conditioned to strive for a prize, rather than to simply do the work — and to enjoy and prosper from our efforts. Rather, we often choose to live-or-die based on the outcome of some specific reward or recognition.
The word “mastery” sounds very lofty. Perhaps the idea of “The Journeymen” is a better metaphor for those of us in sales. Either way, showing up every day, surrendering to the execution of our process and working as a master, or a journeyman, is a sure path to long-term success, and inner peace. Looking for short cuts, and living-or-dying by the quarterly target leads elsewhere.
Mastery: The Keys To Success & Long Term Fulfillment was a good reminder of these points, and it is a short, enjoyable read. I hope that you enjoyed this review, and that it was useful for you in your quest for sales mastery.
Apr/103
The most important step in the sales process
Back in October I wrote a blog post called what is the most important step in the sales process . The answer I gave then is still true – the most important step in the sales process is the NEXT step, and a well-defined and executed sales process is useful by giving you a map to follow as you work through each sales opportunity, step-by-step; sequentially; in the right order.
Based on questions I see posted in LinkedIn Q&A, and in some of the feedback I am getting on my book, Mastering Your Sales Process, it seems that the message has not yet been fully received. So let me try another perspective here.
Let’s pretend that instead of the sales process, we are talking about the manufacturing process of, say, a car. Does the “which is the most important step” question make sense here? Well, it depends. Do you want the process to produce a car that is fully built, or are there some steps you can leave out?
Can you leave out the step where you bolt the engine into the car? Can you leave out the step where you paint the car, or put on the steering wheel? Not if your goal is to make a COMPLETE car. You’ve got to follow ALL of the steps to do that.
And what about my idea that the NEXT step is the most important – implying that you need to complete a specific step before taking the next?
Well, with the car, you probably want to finish building it before you paint it, right? You probably want to put the seats in before you finish the exterior. I’m not a car building expert, but you get the idea – right? There is a correct order to go through in this process, and completing some steps before moving on to others makes some of the early stuff easier than if you left it until later, and makes finishing easier too.
So which step in the sales process is the most important step and how can we justify that, relative to the importance of the other steps? Let’s look at them one-by-one:
LEADS: Leads are people from whom you can request a conversation about sales. If you don’t have any leads, you have no-one to talk to. Pretty hard to make a sale in this case. OK – so this is important!
PROSPECTING: Prospecting is when you ask a lead for a meeting, or a chance to talk about making a sale. If you don’t set up a sales conversation, it is pretty hard to have one. So this is important.
QUALIFYING: In spite of the fact that many (poor) salespeople skip this one, you need to qualify your prospect to avoid unpleasant surprises at the end, like finding out that they don’t have money, are not the decision maker, or don’t have any real problems that you can help them to solve. So this one is only important if you want to win the sale. Otherwise, feel free to skip it and spend a bunch of time on the other steps in the process before you eventually lose the deal because you failed to qualify – your choice!
NEEDS ANALYSIS: If you have a solution that is self-explanatory, and customers knock on your door and say “hey – I know all about your stuff, please sell me some” then you don’t need to do a needs analysis (and your company probably doesn’t need sales people either). Otherwise, you will need to find out how your product or service can help your prospect, so that you can present it to them in a way that it makes sense for them to buy it, relative to whatever need they need to solve or satisfy. So in most cases, this too is a pretty important, unskippable step.
PROPOSAL: It may be as simple as a price tag, but you need to let your prospect know what you are selling, and what it will cost. I have yet to meet someone who will buy something without knowing what it is and what it costs – so this is an important step too.
OBJECTIONS: You can skip the objections step if you like. If your client has an objection and you ignore it, they won’t buy from you. So go ahead and ignore it – unless you want to actually make the sale – in which case this too is important.
CLOSING: If this is simply the agreement to move forward, then moving forward isn’t complete without it. Here again, important.
So what can we cut out? What is most important? Clearly, these are just the wrong questions! In the analysis above, qualification, needs analysis and answering objections only seem important if we want to win the sale, but I do think that is the goal, don’t you? So they are all important. And that is the point.
The reality is that you need all of the steps in the sales process, and no one step has importance in and of itself. The process makes sense because all of the steps are needed, in sequence, properly executed in order to get the right result. None is important alone, because alone, none can get the job done.
Following the process gets the job done. If the desired goal is making a sale, then the sales process needs to be followed, Each step. Humbly working with all of the others in a coordinated sequence. Perhaps it makes you sad that there is no step that gets the glory of being most important, but that was never the goal. Making sales is the goal. So take the all of the steps, take them well, and get where it is that you want to go.
To a sale.
Apr/100
(Lack of) Motivation and the Sales Process
I have been pretty unmotivated lately. Some stuff came up in my personal life at just the time work got busy, and I started a new intensive Hungarian class. Perfect!
But this isn’t the first time that distractions from my personal life have crept into my professional life, and I am not the only one this happens to. It happens to all of us at one time or another:
- Your lover leaves you the night before a big meeting;
- Your kid gets really sick while your spouse is traveling, there is no babysitter, and you are trying to meet your goal for the end of the month or quarter;
- or something longer term comes up that just saps the energy and motivation from you.
Sometimes you can take the bull by the horns, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, stiffen your upper lip or apply one of those other spiffy expressions that imply that you can just suck it up and work through the problem.
Sometimes you can’t.
Sometimes, you get hit hard enough, that something has to give in order to compensate. But what?
Every day, everything you do is important, right? You are busy every day because you assign value to the things you do – if you could easily give something up, you probably would have already. So what are you going to do?
Hi – David Masover here – I’m the sales process guy – and guess what – a well defined and well executed sales process can help here too. Now before you roll your eyes, hear me out. I’m the admittedly unmotivated one here – so cut me some slack – will ya?
The opposite of a process-driven selling system is reactive, random effort. When your effort is random and reactive, it is hard to know what to adjust when an adjustment needs to be made.
Have you ever watched a lottery drawing in which numbered balls fly around in an air-blasted plastic sphere? If you don’t have a well defined sales process, then your tasks probably look like those numbered balls to you – a random scattering of individual items on a long to-do list (or in a big fish bowl – to each his own!).
On the other hand, if you are disciplined about your sales process, then these individual tasks fit into a larger framework. If this is the case for you, you are better able to make adjustments when you need to.
Perhaps you can eliminate one of multiple prospecting methods you use for a while, or accelerate a needs analysis process in the deals you have in the pipeline. Perhaps you can see that given the time of the month / quarter / year and your goal for that period, you can accurately calculate your progress and likelihood for success such that in one part of your process can be cut back for a few days or weeks until you get back on track.
When you organize your work in a disciplined way, you create the opportunity to see your work at the macro-level as well as at the micro level. This is not to say that your problems will go away because you have a well-defined and well-managed sales process. But having one will help with the management of your LIFE, into which your sales work needs to find a comfortable and successful place to fit.
A well defined and executed sales process is the cure to a lot of common sales problems. If there are some things in your life outside of sales that are impacting your effectiveness on the job, your sales process won’t fix those problems, but it will allow you to manage the professional part of your life more effectively than if you spend your days chasing numbered balls.
Or you could just go play the lottery – I am told you have the same chance of winning whether you buy a ticket or not!
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Hi, this is David. I hope you have liked the article and if you have any comments, please do contribute. If you would like to try the first 30% of my book “Mastering Your Sales Process” free, please click here to leave your e-mail address – I’ll send it to you right away.
Apr/100
Map your way to sales success
Have you heard the old joke about the husband and wife on a cross country driving trip? The wife says “honey, I think we’re lost”. The husband replies, “yeah, I’m sure we are, but we are making great time!”
Are you lost in your sales career? Are you coming into work everyday and reacting to what is put in front of you or are you following a map to reach your destination?
These kinds of generalizations used to drive me crazy, until I realized what kind of a map was needed. For me, in my sales career, and for the salespeople I work with, that map is a process map – a map of the sales process.
There are so many sexy things to talk about in sales. Sales process is not one of them. Following a map also sounds a lot less sexy than Rambo charging into the woods ready to defend himself and later to take revenge, but in the end, things didn’t turn out so well for Rambo!
Sales is a bit of a mystery to those who don’t sell, and to most who do. What exactly are you supposed to do to generate business? Are you insulted by this question – you’re a top earner, you have been in sales for years, etc.
OK – try this one: If you needed to double revenue in the next 90 days, where would you start? If you can’t answer this in 60 seconds, then you need a better handle on your sales process. You might not come up with the perfect answer, but you really should know EXACTLY where to start looking.
- Where are your leads coming from, and how can you increase the quality and quantity
- What are you doing to get meetings to talk about new business, from both new AND from existing clients
- Are you really qualifying in a disciplined way before you get into the meaty part of the sales cycle? What exactly are the qualifying criteria you need to see before moving forward?
- What do you need to know before you present a solution, and how do you and the client both know that your information gathering is both cone and done in a complete way?
If you can’t answer these questions in a concrete way, you can do better.
Why does this matter (and why should you care?)
- Because when you take charge of your sales process, you will be happier on the job because you have a clear direction, and you know the you are driving towards it with every move you make.
- Becasue when you take charge of your sales process you make more sales with less effort, because you don’t waste time on the back end of the process with unqualified prospects.
- Because you won’t chase every possible sale that is in your pipeline for lack of better opportunities – because you will fill your pipeline too full to go after them all, which you shouldn’t – just the qualified ones
- Because you will sell more effectively in less time, allowing you time to spend your commissions on a gym member ship you will use, spending time with friends and loved ones, and enjoying all of the fruits of your labor.
Can you imagine – being a top earner at work and having a life? Now if that isn’t motivating, then work twice as hard and retire 10 years sooner, or never, but twice as rich as you can imagine.
Increased efficiency and effectiveness don’t have much sex appeal at all. But neither does driving around in circles, lost without a map. The benefits of driving towards a goal with precision and discipline can be as sexy as you make them, but you’ll get there with a map.
Make one!
*********************
Hi, this is David. I hope you have liked the article and if you have any comments, please do contribute.
If you would like to try the first 30% of my book “Mastering Your Sales Process” free, please click here to leave your e-mail address – I’ll send it to you right away.
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