I recently met a CEO who was asking for advice on maintaining profit margins.  He was frustrated by his sales manager, who kept requesting permission to offer give-aways and discounts.  He wanted to know if Z3 Performance Development could train his people to become better negotiators.  After a bit of probing, it became obvious that this CEO possessed a popular misconception, one that had him believing that salespeople should be “negotiating” (aka: dropping prices or offering concessions in exchange for a promise to buy).

Negotiation includes built-in conflict.  It has potential to break down trust.  It occurs when salespeople (or principals) try to convince or “sell”.  If you are committed to helping your clients succeed, you will need information from them.  To gather information, you will need to ask questions and listen actively.  The intent of a person’s questions is a vital determinant of their effectiveness. Your clients and prospects are constantly making decisions about what questions are safe to answer.  As they make these decisions, they are continually sizing up your trustworthy-ness.  In this dialogue, intent is always more important than words.  So if you are a person who “sells”, I would suggest you look into the mirror and ask yourself this honest question.  “Is the intent of my questions to help our clients get what they want in a way they feel good about, or is it to help me get what I want in a way I feel good about?”  In other words: Whose agenda are you really on?

It is difficult to understand why anyone would intentionally choose to create conflict with a client.  However, I watch salespeople and businesspeople do it everyday.  Trusted advisors and superior salespeople do everything possible to AVOID negotiating.  They seek to facilitate the mutual discovery of costs (both tangible and emotional) of buyer’s problems.  They will then determine what level of commitment and resources are available to solve them before discussing the best solution.

The majority of people like to listen selectively and to avoid “tough” questions, the ones most vital to successful transactions.  They avoid selling properly because they are not comfortable talking about things like money and decision processes, so they defer any conversation of these topics as long as possible—forcing a conversation into a negotiation.  When trust deteriorates and they begin to feel separation occur, fight or flight takes over and they try to close the sale, setting up all sorts of problems.

Salespeople who find themselves in frequent negotiations likely possess one or more of the following (extremely costly) symptoms or blind spots:

• They are uncomfortable talking about other people’s finances
• They feel the product or service they sell is expensive
• They believe that buying is an intellectual process, not an emotional one
• They don’t gain an understanding of the costs associated with the problem.  If they do, it is typically far too late in the discovery process.

I’m not suggesting that great salespeople never need to negotiate.  However, if you, your partners or your salespeople are finding that price reductions and concessions are occurring too frequently, it is a good idea to evaluate your people to see if the blind spots above are present and to implement a system to erase them.  The results will fall quickly to your bottom line.

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In today’s rapidly changing marketplace, it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate your company from your competition.  If you cannot differentiate, the only weapon that will be left in your arsenal is dropping prices, cutting deeply into your profit.  Ask yourself these questions:

Is My Company Differentiated? 

In 20 words or less, how would you say your company is differentiated in the marketplace?  (Better Service?  Best Pricing? Better Products? Highest Quality?)

If I asked your biggest competitors, what would they say differentiates THEM?

Are their differentiator(s) very different from yours? 

If not, is your company TRULY differentiated in the minds of your prospects?

If so, how long do you think you can maintain your differentiated advantages?

Are You and your Salespeople Differentiated?

How would you say you are different when compared to your selling opponents?

What do you think your PROSPECTS would say?

What do you think you can do today to improve your advantages and develop qualities so that you are ALWAYS differentiated and show up as the MVP (Most Valuable Person)?

For some specific guidelines to becoming a differentiated MVP, email GrowMySales@zthree.com and write MVP in the Subject Line.

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If your company is like many today, you may be experiencing the perfect storm of a shrinking market, shrinking margins and greater competition.  You may also be trying to deal with this storm without a surplus of available cash, or under conditions of tight credit.  Many business owners are frustrated with the lack of new business and the fact that few, if any, of their people relish the role of obtaining it.  Some currently have people in a selling role, but the results are sub-par.  They feel they are being held hostage by mediocre salespeople who may have valuable information or relationships.  The answer to these seemingly perplexing situations is YOU.  By virtue of a simple choice, you possess much more power than you might think to dramatically upgrade your Sales Team and grow now.  Upgrading to a true Sales Culture will not only affect your top line revenue, but can also improve your margins and net profit.  If you decide to go for it, here are simple steps that will be required: 

1.   Acknowledge the Brutal Facts:  If you want to upgrade to a powerful Sales Culture and reap the rewards that doing so will bring, it is vital to realize that the very people you would like to change have chosen to behave in the way are currently behaving.  They act the way they do for one reason–because they want to.  So despite your strongest desires, they probably will not choose to do what you would like them to do – Hunt and Close.

2.   Needle in a Haystack:  Hunters and Closers represent a microscopic portion of the “salesperson population.  In fact, only a very small percentage of people are really suitable for taking on any part of a sales or business development role.  

3.   Use Effective Tools and Processes:   You must be able to identify that small percentage of people.  This isn’t hard to do if you use the right types of assessment tools and processes.

4.   Raise Your Expectations, Trumpet Your Intentions:  This is not the time to be wishy-washy or vague.  You must clearly communicate your desire and commitment to create a powerful, lasting Sales Culture, especially to those who must carry part of the Sales Culture load.   For example, let’s say you want the regional managers at your professional services firm to go out and find local business customers, the customer service call center to become proactive by making outgoing calls, or your professional service providers to bring new clients into your firm.  In all of these cases, a common mistake management makes is to neglect the clear communication of expectations to those very people they would like to change.

5.  Appoint a Competent Culture Transformation Director:  Again, this is going to take steady commitment on your part.  But it will pay off.  Appoint someone who understands what needs to be accomplished as well as how to accomplish it.  Then hold them accountable for executing.

6.  Train and Coach:  Make sure that the chosen people are provided with the training they’ll need to succeed in this strange new world of selling and new business development.  The assessment tools can provide you with a development roadmap.

7.   Demonstrate a Path to Success:  Don’t throw them out to sink or swim.  Even with the most talented of salespeople, it is up to you to clearly define what it is they should do and how often they should do it.

8.   Don’t Try to Push Water Up Hill:  You must get buy-in from the people that will participate in your culture transformation.

9.   No Surprises:  You must be clear as to how their success will be measured.

10.  Hold Them Accountable:  The Culture Transformation Director must hold the participants accountable to doing what they agreed to do.

A sluggish economy is the absolute best time to perform a Sales Culture Transformation.  With a simple choice, the right tools, and a simple checklist, you’ll be well on your way to higher revenues, increased profits and consistent performance.

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2009.   All Rights Reserved.

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Who will drive Change in YOUR Sales Organization? 

Over the last two weeks, I gave five talks on Upgrading Sales.  I spoke with over 200 highly engaged entrepreneurs.  I asked all five groups to raise their hands if they would rank their Sales Organization as “Great”.  Less than 2% of them raised their hands.  Next, I asked them to raise their hands if they would rank their Sales Team as “Good”.  Maybe another 8% of hands went up.   In other words, approximately 90% of a diverse group of private business leaders in varied industries in multiple states ranked their Sales Organizations as Average or Poor.

So here is my question:  “Since Sales in the Lifeblood of Consistent Success, why do so many owners TOLERATE Mediocrity?”

If you are a business owner seeking to build a consistent, scalable and predictable Sales Team, don’t look far.   It all starts with YOU.  This doesn’t mean that YOU need to Sell.  You don’t even need to know how to sell.  It also does not mean that you need to Manage Sales.  It does, however, mean that you need to DECIDE and COMMIT to Upgrading Your Sales.  Building a Great Sales Team takes no magic, just a decision, a checklist and execution.

If you’d like a copy of the Uncommon Sense© World Class Sales Checklist, email me and write “Checklist” in the Subject Line.  If you’d like to expand on your biggest sales challenge, I will reply in short order. 

Stay tuned–I’ll be expanding on this step-by-step approach to Upgrading your Sales in the coming days…   

Onward!

Joe

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I found this recent blog posting by Dave Kurlan extremely interesting.  As you read it, give some thought to the Sales and Branding messages YOUR Company is sending into the marketplace.
Last week I received an email from my Dell representative’s sales manager.  It was five paragraphs, and started out great:

“Many of our customers have told us that, in the wake of this financial crisis, their IT budgets have been reduced, and that their finance organizations are requiring several competitive bids for every purchase.  Let us help you get the most out of your end-of-year budgets.”

If he had stopped there it would have been good for him, for the rep, for Dell and for me.  But he didn’t.  He kept going and wrecked everything!  He wrote:

“Our ‘refuse-to-lose’ commitment to you is to lead with the best pricing we can offer, taking into account your company’s total spend with Dell.  We promise to work hard to get you the best value for your company at the best price available.  Our goal is to BEAT every competitive bid you send us.  We’re still in search of a bid that we can’t beat!”

Again, if he stopped at “best value for your company” he would have been fine but no, he also went so far to offer the “best price available”.  Even that wouldn’t have been fatal - Dell’s best price, as opposed to the best price on the planet - but he finished with “beat every competitive bid”.

I’m having a difficult time believing that this is Dell’s new strategy.  If it is, it is surely a sign of the times.  It’s much easier for me to believe that this is the manager’s strategy.  Either way, if you don’t have any money, best price, lowest price, lower than that price is still something that you can’t afford to pay for. If you do have the money, and you were going to purchase technology before the year ended, Dell would have probably earned this business anyway (this went to loyal Dell customers) at their regular prices.

If you sell by undercutting, you erode your value, modify your market position, change what your brand stands for and turn the market into an even more price sensitive, commodity driven horror show.

What do YOU think?

© Copyright 2008 Joe Zente

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