WAIDHA sales people are the sales people who have over ten years of sales experience, have probably worked at several large organizations and have been through several proprietary training courses. WAIDHA stands for: What Am I Doing Here Again?
Sales is a strange profession that employs millions of people, and yet one which has no qualification or standards.
Training companies are offering training without any idea of what customer problems are.
The vast majority of people that sell in the B2C world are a transient population – students, part-time workers looking to earn a bit more for a short time, people on the first rung of the ladder of sales or business and the like.
What is the Critical Hour?
The core DNA of a sales person is tenacity, resilience and curiosity. If you have those attributes, the next step to high performance selling is the process and the skillset that need to be learned by heart.
How do you sell and deliver a compelling value proposition in 60 minutes in front of your prospect will determine whether you do business together.
Marginal gains can be achieved if you can do everything 1 per cent better. Then when you put all those 1 per cents together, it makes a huge gain.
All these sales people face a familiar problem: lots of prospects, great positive pipelines, but not enough of the deals are closing. They do not prepare for the meeting properly, and although their selling behavior is good (common with most sales people) they are not listening to the client or asking questions. Therefore, they do not have a platform from which to present and build a value proposition, even though they are trying hard to close.
If you get your Critical Hour wrong, you face competition from a number of angles:
- The client does nothing.
- They do it internally.
- They buy from your competitors.
Research by Cranfield School of Management (2008) and Ashbridge Business School (2007) with results published in HBR, December 2010, identified the following eight different behavioral traits in sales people globally:
- Socializer – an example of this type of sales person is one that pops in to see their client each week or month, has a long chat, asks if the client would like any more of the product or service, and when they get a no just say, ‘Bye – see you next month’ and move on.
- Aggressor – these people are bullies. They are high-pressure, aggressive sales people who are only interested in their commission.
- Narrator – these sales people have learnt the script and stick to it.
- Product pusher – these people are totally focused on features and benefits of the product or service they are promoting.
- Storyteller – this sales person is quite good at selling but talks to much. These sales people also tend to miss what their customer is asking for, their body language, and buying or boredom signals.
- Consultant – the behaviors that these people display are particularly valuable where the situation calls for complex or solution selling where the offering may be complicated and multi-dimensional.
- Product closer – this is someone who can really sell products or service. They listen and can think on their feet quickly, providing customer with excellent value proposition that suit their business needs.
- Expert – these people are adept at long-term, multi-decision maker, complex solution selling but could probably also do transactional sales if need be. If you have people with expert behaviors, think about how they could mentor and coach your less capable sales people and pass on their expertise.
95 per cent of accompanies fields visits by a manager with a member of their sales team are taken over by the manager.
Most sales people have no idea about their capability benchmarked against best practice.
Why it is important to be objective
People see things differently. The memory is a very fallible tool, open to decay, distortion and suggestion.
Seek first to understand before jumping to conclusions. Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups.
Assumption is caused by not enough detail or understanding of the actual facts. Combine that with the reality that one of the weakest areas for sales people is their questioning and listening skills, and you can understand why pipelines are not accurately forecast and deals do not close.
Often in sales pitches the sale person has not done enough fact-finding and therefore does not have the platform on which to build a compelling value proposition that will entice the customer to buy.
In order to create an objective way of scoring behavior author had to start by defining what good looks like in detail.
Model of scoring was set up in a way that 29 dimensions with over 170 skills and behaviors were set up in 5 categories: pre-meeting, behavior, questioning and listening, presenting and selling. The system is completely binary – they either did or the didn’t do it. So, it is objective.
The competencies of the Critical Hour
- Pre-meeting. This is all about ensuring that the meeting is worth having and it meets the required qualification criteria for having it. First impressions are key.
- Behavior. This is where we look at the sales person’s conduct behavior throughout the meeting. A key part of this is rapport.
- Questioning and listening. Simply allowing a client to talk about themselves and their company for ages is not listening. This competence is all about asking the right questions.
- Presenting. This covers not only how you present your marketplace, company and its products and services, but also how you use the earlier sections of your Critical Hour (above) to orientate your solution in a compelling way that demonstrates value to the client’s business in a number of different ways.
- Selling. The core skills of moving a deal to a close and contained in this section.
The dimensions of the Critical Hour
29 dimensions are:
- Qualification of the meeting
- Meeting preparation
- Personal presentation
- Agenda setting
- Rapport
- Introductions
- Sales person’s conduct
- Meeting management
- Specifying customer needs
- Understanding challenges/pains
- Listening and questioning
- Company background
- Positioning the company
- Company offerings
- Matching customer pains to company offering
- Case studies
- Sales value proposition
- Anecdotes
- Discussing value
- Marketplace understanding
- Differentiation from competition
- Differentiation from competition when challenged
- Product/service knowledge
- Next steps/timescales
- Objection handling
- Creating a solution on the fly
- Closing to the next stage
- Closing the deal
- Negotiation throughout the meeting
Qualification of the meeting. Some pitfalls at this dimension can be: seeing the wrong person, finding out there’s no budget, organizing the meeting just to look busy (when setting a measure, it should be qualified meetings). Some of the good steps: phone first, be irresistible (if they are canceling your meetings, you have a problem), find out who your competition is.
Meeting preparation. Agree the objectives for the meeting with the prospect over the phone prior to the meeting. Understand their industry and your competition. Find out if there is any history between your prospect and your company.
Personal presentation. Take the time to make sure you look and smell nice and are well turned out.
Agenda setting. Setting an agenda is a great way of creating clarity on what both you and the prospect would like to achieve in the meeting. Send the agenda to the prospect prior to the meeting. Use an agenda to manage expectations. Once in the meeting, use the agenda to recap the objective.
Rapport. Some pitfalls: no conversation – salespeople sometimes don’t talk when they meet a prospect, straight into your offering, no interest (if you don’t show it, prospect will not show it for you).
Introductions. Take time to introduce yourself and your colleagues and get your prospect to explain what they do and their responsibilities. In meetings ask people what you’d like to get out of a meeting.
Sales person’s conduct. Remember you are being assessed by your prospect throughout the whole meeting so ensure you are attentive, happy, enthusiastic, passionate and well-mannered throughout.
Meeting management. Don’t be taken ‘off piste’. Don’t lose track of time. Don’t do all the taking.
Specify customer needs. This and the next two dimensions are the most fundamentally important part of selling. Don’t do a product pitch. Don’t try and sell them something they will never be able to afford. Find out what the prospect thinks their needs are. Find out who the competition is. Find out if they have a budget. Find out who is in the decision-making unit (DMU).
Understanding challenges/pains. Don’t stop at needs. Don’t ask closed questions. By understanding pains, you get to the power play in selling. A transactional sales person will sell the features, benefits and cost of their software versus those of a competitor. A consultative sales person, who is looking to understand pains, will take a different approach and will ask a host of open questions to uncover their real pains. Once you understand a client’s pains, you can build relationships with them. The main relationships are: tactical, consultative and trusted adviser. Look for the personal pains of the prospect as well as the company ones.
Listening and questioning. This is essential part of the sales cycle and sales meeting. Conforming to social norms can take away some of the natural curiosity of a young child. Without curiosity, we do not manage to find out any information. Curiosity is fueled by great questioning. Great questioning is having the ability to ask the right question at the right time. Close questions should be used to close, pre-close or ensure clarification of understanding of the information shared. Open questions are driven by the big six curiosity words: who, what, where, why, when and how. Leading questions are those that plant seeds of direction in the recipient. Leading question help the other party to consider issues that are important to you. Layered questions are used a lot in everyday conversation. They are somewhat stealth-like in that they creep into conversation mostly without us knowing. Layered questions can occur due to high activity in the working brain. Using layered questions can lead to confusion and a lack of quality information for you to gather. Buyer questions are those great questions that get the buyer thinking hard about how to answer. Passive listening is defined as listening without reacting. Passive listening is allowing time for someone to speak without interrupting. Without passive listening, we may also fall into the layered questioning trap. Active listening is the opposite of passive listening. It demands that you react and get involved in the conversation. Emphatic listening is all about paying attention to the way in which the other person is talking. Emphatic listening can also take into account the body language on show.
Company background. Take time to explain the history of your company so that you build credibility.
Positioning the company. This is a very important part of the Critical Hour. This is your chance to occupy a space in their thinking that on one else can own. Make sure you position your company so the prospect will remember it distinctly.
Company offerings. Make sure you know your products and services inside out and be sure to describe the ones that are relevant to the prospect.
Matching customer pains to company offering. Match the appropriate products or services that you offer to what will now be of interest to the prospect. Reaffirm the pains that were highlighted earlier and get the prospect to see and agree that your offering can remove them. Reiterate the estimated cost of the pain(s) so the prospect has a value in their head.
Case studies. This is normally a two-page document. It highlights:
- The original pain that the customer had and wanted to resolve.
- What your company provided to remove the pain.
- How long it took and what was involved.
- The end result in terms of ROI and other intangible benefits.
- A testimonial from the client.
Sales value proposition (SVP). Why should I buy? Why should I buy from you? What’s in it for me? A well-constructed SVP provides effective way of communicating your unique business value and defining your level of competitive advantage. We have five types of SVP’s: company SVP, segment SVP, customer SVP, opportunity SVP, individual SVP. The SVP structures looks like this: The customer’s pain and its measurable impact. Your solution. Your differentiator(s). The measurable value (ROI) gained by the customer. Evidence – an anecdote of where you have solved a similar problem elsewhere. An SVP should take 30 to 45 seconds to read. Differentiation should be about: product/service, process, people or partners.
Anecdotes. An anecdote is a story about how a client has benefited from using your company’s product or services.
Discussing value. One thing to mention here is that too many sales people leave it to the meeting to gather the information they need. You should always know what information you need to uncover in order to know what to pitch, what it will cost and therefore how to discuss its value. Some questions should be asked over the phone before the meeting.
Marketplace understanding. Two categories. The marketplace in which you operate. The marketplace in which your prospect operates.
Differentiation from competition. Being able to differentiate yourself from the competition is probably the most important part of selling if you are trying to protect your margins. It is seen that unique selling points (USPs) and points of differentiation (PODs) are hard to come by. USPs are situational. This means that they match the needs of the buyer in that particular selling situation. PODs are areas in which you do the same thing, but your product is slightly different in some way. PODs can be broken down into four distinct areas: product, process, people, partnership. You always need to differentiate your offering whether competitors are mentioned or not.
Product/service knowledge. In the research only 16 per cent of new business people were narrators and did not know their products well enough to answer questions ‘off the script’. The description of your products or services needs to include not just the features of each element in your offering but also their benefits.
Next steps/timescales. By getting the prospect to agree to a next step you are confirming their interest in your offering and committing them to an action that will help them towards taking your product or service in the future. It is important that you create a sense of urgency. A really good way of doing this is to have identified a compelling event. Make sure when agreeing next steps that you discuss participation from the decision makers and confirm or reconfirm who they are.
Objection handling. Don’t think of objection handling as a bad thing. If your prospect raises an objection then they’re discussing their concern, which gives you a chance to answer it. Listen to objection. Say it back to the prospect. Ask more exploratory open questions. Answer the objection. Make sure the prospect is happy with your answer. Return to the pitch.
Creating a solution on the fly. Thinking on your feet. It’s the magic dust of selling in it is the area that separates the excellent from the average.
Closing to the next stage. Establish what the next stage of the sales cycle is going to be. To do this you need to discuss with the prospect what is required to get your product or service into their company. We have different types of buyers in an organization: financial buyer, user buyer, installation buyer, the champion.
Closing the deal. Sales is as much about timing as technique and skill. The days of hard sales and forcing people to buy things they did not want, or did not need, are long gone. Ethical selling is important if you want to create and maintain a respected brand. Never be afraid to ask for the order. Good question is when would you like to start the project. If you asked for the order or you are proposing a price for your service, be silent thereafter.
Negotiation throughout the meeting. Influencing others involves not only negotiation but also persuasion. Persuasion, is used to influence people throughout the entire sales process. There is a lot of ego in negotiation. You see poor negotiators resort to bullying and threats in order to get their way. David Merrill and Roger Reid provided psychological profiling model that distinct four types: expressive, supportive, driver and analytic. Expressive buyers are personable, social and often have a sense of humor. Supportive people are easy buyers to get an appointment with but the most difficult buyers to complete the sale with. Driver has a strong concern for outcomes and, when ruthlessly pursuing their goal, may become shark-like. You should now your bottom line with drivers. True analytical buyers methodically explore all options, leaving no stone unturned in their quest for a fair and economical outcome. LIMWAP framework of negotiations stand for: like, intend, must, walk-away point. Enter into negotiations with an offer that we would like to get, dropping back to what we intend to get and if necessary, settling on what we must get. There is also a final stage that we must be aware of, and that is our walk-away point. The profile of a skilled negotiator is made of four key elements: process and relationship; value (perceived value) and vision.
Measurement of the basic sales cycle
Stages of a new business sale (and their probability percentage):
- Creating a set of leads (0%)
- Making an appointment (0%)
- First presentation (10%)
- Creation of proposal (40%)
- Second presentation to present the proposal (50%)
- Negotiation (70%)
- Legal contract (90%)
- Close (100%)
Mindset and application
To have a right mindset and motivation for sales you need tenacity, resilience and curiosity.
- Tenacity – the quality of being determined to do or achieve something. Firmness of purpose, doggedness, perseverance, persistence, persistency.
- Resilience – the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, toughness.
- Curiosity – a strong desire to know or learn something.
One of the biggest challenges with trying to change someone’s sales capability is getting them to accept they need to change in the first place.
The change curve has 4 sections: unconscious incompetence (denial, fear, anger, resistance), conscious incompetence (acceptance and openness), conscious competence (testing and releasing) and unconscious competence (integration).
