Does Your Team Sell Transactionally or Are They Trusted Advisors?

What I find very interesting is that both selling tactics exist in the market and are successful...to a certain extent.

From the perspective of the buyer, competitive pressures among vendors and the rise of the internet positions many products and services as commodities.

What does this mean and why is it important to sellers?

1. The amount of vendor and product information on the internet allows for in depth comparative analysis of features, benefits, and vendors before a meeting with a salesperson is necessary
2. Features, benefits and vendors are starting to look the same to buyers, so that leaves price as the only real differentiator in the buyer's mind
3. This places downward pressure on profit margins as buyers beat up the salesperson on price or the transactional salesperson believes the only competitive advantage is price

Now here is where things get interesting.

I ask Sales Mangers and Sales Professionals "When you're in a competitive situation and it's down to you and two other vendors, what percentage of deals do you win?" The answer is usually somewhere around 33 percent or one in three. That means the Sales Representatives of the competing vendors are taking turns winning in competitive situations.

These numbers hold up when the vendors in the geographic market are all selling using transactional selling tactics. I need to point out here that when price is the only real differentiator the buyers are not loyal to any one vendor.

Consultative, strategic, and collaborative selling gained popularity through a few key landmark books that studied how elite high-performance Sales Professionals sell.

These sales tactics promoted the idea that vendors could differentiate themselves from competitors by transitioning their Sales Professionals away from transactional selling to value or solution selling. Meaning the Sales Professional repositioned themselves as a trusted or strategic advisor.

From a skill perspective Sales Professionals don't discuss their products or services (solutions) before having a discussion about the prospects business objectives, obstacles, solution performance requirements, and success metrics no matter how much experience they have in the industry.

Due to increased competition, these selling tactics became sales strategies that the vendors' Executives and Sales Mangers implemented to address several high priority business issues:

1. How do we increase our win rates in competitive situations?
2. How do we preserve margins?
3. How do we reduce customer/client churn?
4. How do we increase customer/client loyalty?
5. How do we increase deal size?
6. What does our market value?
7. How do we increase market share?
8. How do we reduce the cost of sales

Lets go back to the situation I described above where all the competing vendor's sales tactics are transactional. Once one of the vendors starts repositioning themselves as a trusted advisor their:

1. Win rates in competitive situations dramatically increase
2. They charge a premium for their products and services - profit margins go up
3. Clients and prospects view the vendor as a valuable resource/partner - customer loyalty goes up and churn goes down
4. Deal size increase due to selling full solutions
5. Market share increase
6. Cost of sales go down

This is a very long way of getting to the point that the era of selling products using tactics that assume an understanding of the prospects business without going through a questioning process that focuses on the prospect's business first, is rapidly coming to an end.

For the Salesperson who's sales tactics are transactional, that find themselves competing against high-performance Sales Professionals who's sales tactics focus is on asking questions and becoming a trusted advisor, the competitive future is not bright.

It won't matter how many times the transactional Sales Representatives calls, leaves voice mail messages, sends letters, faxes, emails or meets with the prospect in an attempt to keep their name in front of them.

In a head-to-head competition a well trained Trusted Advisor will win almost every time. In fact, transactional behaviors will only magnify the differentiation and value of the trusted advisor and the vendor they represent. This is about competing and winning.

What's The Difference Between Training and Development?

Yesterday, I completed another Sales Management Leadership Program workshop. As a facilitator and coach it's gratifying to see the lights go on when Managers realize the difference between training and development. So I thought I'd take a moment to discuss it.

Training is an event. Development is a process.

Training has a beginning and end. Participants are exposed to knowledge and skills associated with new concepts during the event. Many companies think, all we have to do is conduct some training and everyone will embrace the new: strategy, system, method, process, procedure, tactic or tool. They will go back to work the next day, use the new way and execute flawlessly within a short period of time.

In reality, what we see is a temporary positive change in behavior in some of the learners... but after awhile things seem to slowly drift back to the way they were. Maybe it doesn't drift all the way back, but the positive impact we expected fades rapidly and eventually falls short. In fact in some instances we experience an outright revolt as most of the team resists applying what was learned:

The list of reasons we hear from the learner for not applying what was learned is long:

• I don't have time to do it that way
• It doesn't work as well as the old way
• I don't remember how to do that
• I couldn't figure out how to do it under these circumstances
• I've gotten good results for a long time doing it the old way, why should I change now?
• The training was good in theory, but this is the real world
  
• The list goes on and on

But there is another often overlooked list... the Manager's list

• I've got production pressures so we can't focus on this right now
  
• It slows things down
• I never agreed with this
• I don't understand why this is important to the company
• I can't get everyone on the same page
• The information on how to apply this is confusing
• The compensation, recognition, and rewards system still reinforces the old behaviors
• I didn't get the training my team got
  

Why doesn't a training event create the sustainable behavior changes we're looking for? The answer is simple and straight forward.

There's no way around failing our way to success. This is an uncomfortable proposition, so people naturally resist change.

If that's true then how do we realize the return on investment as advertised? How do we effect sustainable positive behavior change?

Sales Productivity Secrete #3

We develop our people through our daily relationship with them in three areas: Job Skills, Business Maturity, and Adaptability.

Sustainable behavior change takes time. The more complex the new thing is the more time it takes to become proficient. The more disruptive the new thing is the higher the resistance to change. People learn and embrace change at different rates

Both scenarios require a focused communication strategy that continuously:

• communicates the value of the new way to the company and learner
• clarifies the gray areas to reduce confusion
  
• reinforces practicing and applying of the new behaviors.

How do we do that?

Through collaborative coaching, but I'll discuss that in another blog.

What are your thoughts?

The Marriage of Talent And Passion Leads to High Performance

Research on what makes a satisfying work life indicates that the most personally satisfying times in a person’s career are usually also highly productive in terms of meeting the organization’s goals.

If that's true the Sales Manager's strategic focus should be to build an elite high-performance sales team.

But how do you build such a team? I'm glad you asked because that brings me to

Sales Productivity Secret # 2

The only real improvement is self improvement

1. Align management systems and behaviors with the company's strategic focus and productivity objectives.
2. Assess the performance gap for the management and sales teams
3. Build a compelling business case for change – that aligns the team and engages emotional commitment to personally participate in improving individual and team performance
4. Focus on identifying and isolating the most relevant and strategic activities necessary to improve results.
5. Create tactical level development plans and implementation schedules to achieve desired results.
6. Develop success metrics, and accountability systems that link to development plans and schedules.
7. Focus on measurable results to revise plans and schedules

What do you think?

Top 6 Things A Salesperson Wants From Their Manager

A number of years back Applied Concepts Institute conducted a survey with their clients to find out what salespeople wanted from their Sales Manager. Several thousand salespeople with tenure of 1 year or greater participated in the survey.

The top six things (in order) Salespeople wanted from their Sales Manager were:

1. Build a positive daily relationship with them
   
2. Communicate effectively
3. Have consistent, logical behavior
4. Be a respected teacher and coach
5. Listen before providing feedback
6. Help create a sales strategy

I was wondering do you think that these are still the top 6 things Salespeople want from their Sales Managers?