Feb/100
The right sales mindset and success in social media – part 2 of a 3 part series
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This is the second part of a three part series about the right sales mind set for social media success. In the last blog post, part one of this series, I wrote about the importance of being a subject matter expert. This week, I will cover how to position that expertise to help a prospective customer decide to allow you to influence their buying decision.
Imagine this: some salespeople actually think that it is their job to sell something to somebody. Now I won’t say that this is entirely wrong, but it is the same as saying that a hockey players job is to score goals. Let me explain what I mean here:
It is true that salespeople (and those who have a vested interest in them) like it when sales are made, just like hockey players and fans like it when (their team) scores a goal – but focusing on the goal alone is not how you get there – in sales or hockey. Lets start with hockey.
On average, generally speaking, there are about 6 goals per game scored in an NHL hockey game. These goals age generated by 12 players (6 per side including goalie) during 60 minutes of play. Without getting into a lot of sports statistics, it is pretty clear that a lot is going on during those 60 minutes that is not goal scoring. So if the job of the hockey player is to score goals, most of them are not doing their job – hence the problem with defining the goal as the job – true for salespeople as well.
A more useful way for salespeople to think about their job is reflected in the second part of the definition offered in part one of this blog, originally from my book Mastering Your Sales Process:
“I am an expert in my field. My job is to help qualified prospects make good decisions about solving problems using my product or service.”
This second sentence in the definition goes a very long way in filling in the gaps between goals, as it were. It is what the salesperson should be doing to get to the goal. It encompasses all of the steps in the sales process in between prospecting and closing. It covers qualification, needs analysis, proposal and objections – the meaty part of the sales process!
This perspective – that the salespersons job is to help the customer make a good decision is not only very validating for the salesperson, but in fact it is what the customer really wants from us. Because we spend more time with our product or service than the client does, we should know more about it than they do. If we are doing our job well, we are helping the prospect to flesh out problems they need to solve and to come up with the right solutions.
If we do this with the expertise we defined in the first post on this topic, then the client feels really good about buying from us, and we reach our goal.
So what does all of this have to do with social media? Pretty much everything!
Social media experts and users go on at great length about the “fact” that in social media, hard sales tactics are not welcome. OK, maybe that’s true, but it is also clear that people use information that they find on the web and on social media sites to help them make decisions about lots of things, including what to buy and who to buy it from.
The sales definition of “an expert here to help” bridges the gap between what users want and expect from social media and what salespeople hope to get done there: starting the process of making a sale that is closable. The way to do that is by living both parts of the sales mindset we have discussed, and learning to embody that in your social media endeavors.
If you are trying to sell using social media, then the thing you are trying to earn as a result of your efforts as the “expert here to help” is trust. Trust is arguably the currency of commerce in social media marketing. We’ll talk more about that in the final post in this series next week.
Feb/103
The right sales mindset and success in social media – part 1 of a 3 part series
PART ONE
In my blog post on January 13, I asked the questions “Does Social Media Marketing Work”. My answer was that it works best when it is driven by great content.
But what is “great content” in the context of sales? In other words, if your goal is to use social media to sell more of your product or service, what kind of content qualifies as “great”, especially towards reaching that goal?
I’ll attempt to answer that questions over the next three blog posts – why three? Well, the answer breaks up neatly into three pieces, and the answer is too long for a single blog post – even by my “anything under 1000 character is OK” standards! So here is part one: Why demonstrating that you are an expert matters.
In my book, Mastering Your Sales Process, I spent a few pages talking about the “right sales mindset” and why it is important. That right mindset is as follows:
“I am an expert in my field. My job is to help qualified prospects make good decisions about solving problems using my product or service.”
Before we start to take this apart, let’s get back to the question at hand – why is this the right mindset for sales success in social media?
Anyone who is using social media that might wind up buying from you as a result of doing so, is probably collaborating with others and evaluating multiple sources of information before making a decision. As such, you COULD position yourself in a corporate communications style of one-way, marketing speak (look at our great products, they do these cool things, etc.). This is the mode of communications that you see in commercials, corporate web sites, etc. However, it is not the right approach for social media.
In social media, it is best to not sell, but rather to help customers buy (arguably true outside of social media as well!). Consumers have become accustomed to hearing companies talk about how great their products are, and in the right context, that is accepted (although it may or may not be believed at face value). Social media is a different kind of communications venue in that allows two-way communication, and fosters more of a “discussion” format as opposed to a “presentation”. In a presentation, saying that you are great is usually not contested, if it is even possible (yelling at a TV commercial doesn’t count). In the midst of a conversation, it is not considered polite (or effective) to talk about how terrific you and your stuff might be.
So what does happen in a conversation that helps engender trust? In a conversation, a person who is an expert on the topic at hand will demonstrate their expertise by the content of their part of the conversation. If the topic is cardiovascular surgery, and you are talking with a cardiovascular surgeon, it will become clear during the course of the conversation that the surgeon has some idea what they are talking about, even if (especially if?) they don’t tell you how great they are at it. Rather, they demonstrate their expertise by addressing the subject knowledgeably. They demonstrate this to you by the way they engage in the two-way dialogue you are having.
If you want to have credibility about a subject in a dialogue, you must demonstrate, not announce your expertise in a subject matter. Once you have done so, you have made an important step towards having the ability to influence your dialogue partner. If they believe that you know what you are talking about regarding a subject that matters to them, and they are inclined to take action, they just might listen to an expert like you.
Step one in generating great content in the context of sales via social media is to embody the first part of our sales mind set: to demonstrate that you are indeed a subject matter expert regarding the subject at hand.
Step two – the subject of next weeks blog – will focus on how to position your expertise to help the prospective customer decide to allow you to influence their buying decision.
Feb/108
Do you have the right personality for sales?
WARNING: This post is a bit of a rant – if you are feeling a bit squeamish at this moment, you may want to read this post later!
I participate in the Question and Answer forum and in sales groups on LinkedIn with great regularity and enthusiasm. One question theme that comes up again and again is about sales and personality. So what is the right way to think about the idea that someone does or does not have a good personality for sales, and how might personality related factors impact their effectiveness as a sales person?
The answer to the second question is a little bit trickier, so let’s start there. Most people who believe that personality factors influence sales effectiveness seem to equate personality related factors with the ability to communicate well with prospects. As such, those who have the “right” kind of personality or the right personality factors are better able to connect (or bond) and communicate with their prospects. Personality based sales assessments, and the idea of the “natural born salesperson” cater to this (here it comes) MYTH!
So what is the reality here? Most communication experts will tell you that in most cases, the key component that causes communication to fail is on the listening side of the equation. Problems occur when people either don’t stop talking long enough to listen; interrupt the other person; or don’t jump in, but follow their own line of thinking internally as the other person continues to talk.
Active, effective listening is a SKILL that can be taught. If communication is most often derailed on the listening side of the equation, and listening can be taught (as opposed to being a personality trait that one either has or doesn’t have), then it just can’t be said that personality is the most important factor in business related, effective communication.
Sure it helps when the salesperson and the buyer can “connect” on some personal level, but to take that a step further and postulate that this ability to make a personal connection is among the key drivers of sales success – as many seem to believe – is a step too far! The idea that this kind of connection is an essential factor in sales or business communication is folklore. It is certainly nice, but not as critical as an unexamined speculation might lead you to believe.
This is not to say that people with extreme personality issues can be effective communicators, but as soon as you move away from the extremes, personality becomes a marginal factor in business communications. Period!
So what about the first part – that there are specific personalities that are good for sales and others that are bad for sales? At first glance, this also seems to make sense. Many people have a stereotypical image of salespeople in their mind, and it is not a long leap of logic to go from stereotype to personality type. In reality, anyone who has worked with more than a few successful salespeople over the course of their career has seen that a wide variety of people with very different personalities can succeed in sales, and those who seem to fit the stereotypical sales persona sometimes fail and sometimes succeed. It is hard to meet someone with a lot of experience with salespeople who makes a strong case for personality as a key driver of sales success, because they have seen that personality can vary against the metrics of success.
So does personality matter? Here is how to think about it. If you understand the bell shaped curve, then you can believe that many arguments that make sense on either end of the curve tend to fall apart in the middle.
This is the case with the myth of the sales personality. If personality could somehow be plotted on a bell shaped curve (I have no idea how you could actually do that, but imagine with me for a minute), then those people at the edges might have difficulty selling because of the extreme nature of their personalities.
However, for those in the “fat / tall” part of the bell-shaped curve, there are many other factors upon which their sales success depends, and the success they find in sales will vary based on these other factors. Sales success won’t necessarily correlate to the findings on our imaginary personality bell-shaped graph.
Salespeople are not born, and there is no correct sales personality. Professional selling is a skill, and a skill that can be taught. Psychopaths may struggle, but the average person with the desire to succeed and the commitment to do what it takes to get there is trainable, regardless of their non-extreme personality type.
Do you disagree? If so, please comment – but in your comment, please do provide an example of a personality type that is a bad personality for sales. I am eager to hear what you come up with, and to compare that to the many successful salespeople I have worked with and the wide diversity of personality types that they represent.
Feb/100
Objection series – “I need to think about it”
Thinking things over seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. That is why so many poor performing salespeople accept this objection at face value when they hear if from their clients. The “I need to think about it” objection can be a hard one to get past, until you know how and why you should. This is a long post, but we’ll tackle this often thorny issue, so if it is one that gives you trouble, please read on.
First of all, you need to realize that “I need to think about it” is indeed an objection. In my book, Mastering Your Sales Process, I define objections as “questions that must be addressed after the proposal has been presented.” For the sake of contrast, questions asked BEFORE the proposal is presented are a normal part of the needs analysis process. I mention this now, because the best way to avoid objections is to get the questions answered during Needs Analysis before they even become objections, and they are still just questions.
However, if you have proposed a solution and there are questions outstanding, you will get objections. Sometimes they are very specific and relate to facts and figures in your proposal. Sometimes, they are not very specific, and reflect a general unease or uncertainly in the prospect about moving forward. For example, “I need to think it over”.
From the clients perspective, this usually means that they are not ready to make a decision. They may or may not know why.
They may know (and may or may not have told you) that they need to talk to someone else in the organization. They may know that they need three proposals before making a decision, and yours is not number three. Or it may be something else that they are able to articulate.
On the other hand, they may not know why, but they just are not ready.
In any case, what should you do when your client hits you with the “I need to think about it?” objection.
By realizing that it is an objection, and accepting my definition of an objection, the answer becomes clear. As a sales professional, you need react to this objection by realizing that you need to understand what still needs to be thought about. It would be best if you could be involved in that process of discovery.
So how do we get there?
Most people who work in a professional environment accept the chaotic nature of their own work schedule. Based on this premise, you can reply to the objection by saying something like:
“You know, that is entirely reasonable. We went over a lot of information, and it makes sense to consider it all thoroughly. However, as soon as we leave this meeting, we’ll both be hit with 1000 other things to distract us. So, since we are both (all) here now, and the information is fresh, perhaps you can help me understand what specific issues you still need to think about so that I can provide you with any additional information you might need in order to consider the problem more thoroughly.”
The logic here is clear. If there are unresolved issues, it makes sense to go over them while all are present and the information is fresh. This is especially true if there are multiply buyers in the room.
In using this approach, you have not rejected the prospects need to consider the problem, you only suggested that you do it together, and now. If you are successful, you are effectively back into the sales conversation, and if you can identify and resolve a few specific outstanding issues, you can put yourself back into position to set up the close.
But what if the tactic is just a stall? What if the prospect has no intention to buy or to buy from you? In this case, your approach will flush this out as well. When the answer to your suggestion is non-specific, you may want to say something like:
“You know, lots of times people tell me that they need to think it over when they have already decided not to move forward. If that is the case, can you just tell me now so that we can both save some time in the future?”
Any answer to this questions is good. If they say “yes”, then you know that you don’t have to waste time following up in the future. If they say “no”, then you can try again to flesh out the issues, or at least to agree on next steps. Either way you set yourself up to be efficient, and you demonstrate confident professionalism to the prospect.
Whatever you do, don’t just accept the “I need to think about it” objection”. Addressing it correctly offers opportunities to remain engaged in the sales process, or to learn that you should disengage. Either is better than accepting the objection, and the corresponding fate of the (usually) pointless follow up calls that come with it.
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