Frankly, the entire selling
process needs to change.
This list from an article by Dan Waldschmidt on Hubspot.com
hits our industry right between the eyes.
Despite the sensationalism around recent trends in buyer
behavior, buying and selling is pretty much the same now as it was 5,000
years ago -- those who want pay those who have. It’s just that
simple. And regardless of the next evolution in buyer behavior, most of
that won’t change.
So why does the entire selling process need to be
transformed? Frankly, we’ve collected too many bad sales processes over
the years. We’ve become addicted to hollow phrases and people-less
selling processes. We’ve adopted conventional wisdom and selfish
behavior as guide posts for our activity. And as if that’s
not enough, we let social peer pressure determine what we do and who we
are.
Here are 17 sales practices past their
prime that salespeople need to rethink or eradicate them.
1) Believing in “Always Be Closing”
Made dramatically popular by Glengarry Glen Ross, we’ve
largely subscribed to the idea that the entire sales process is a series
of trial closes. We use charm, wit, and a series of leading questions
in rapid succession to build rapport, qualify budget, and get a commission
check. And while there’s nothing wrong with closing deals, the idea
that closing is the journey is misguided and limiting. You can only bully
your career so far.
Edgy
alternative: “Always be caring and collaborating."
2) Using Business Cards
Do we really need business cards any more? Seriously. It
used to be that business cards were the primary way to inform
potential customers of what you did and how to get in touch with you
when they needed your services. In the days of the rolodex, the business
card was your own personal Yellow Pages. In the era when an
executive worked 30 years for the same company, keeping phone numbers
on pieces of paper made sense. That seems distinctly out of place in
today’s social landscape.
Edgy
alternative: Cultivate your online identity.
3) Going to Networking Events
The second major evolution in selling came about with the
localized settlement of pioneers on their way out West. As towns
sprung up across the prairie, merchants caravaned a wide assortment of goods
from the East to their local area. Buyers appreciated the diversity of the
products and reputation of the seller. The shop owner would network
with the local buyers. Shaking hands and buying prospects drinks
became ways to build rapport and trust. That hasn’t evolved much in
the last few hundred years. We find ourselves still slapping backs, buying
beers, and feigning intimacy.
Edgy
Alternative: Formulate unconventional ideas and give away invaluable
industry knowledge -- creating attraction.
4) Disseminating Daily Status Reports
Just about the time we stopped getting the results from our
sales executives, we decided that them spending 30 minutes drafting up a
daily email about activity was the way to go. Instead of
creating accountability and transparency, we substituted process
justification. The daily email of sales activity is all about
quantity. It’s bulk achievement over breakthrough achievement. And in
spite of the added requirement for our sales team, it doesn’t seem to help
them be any more successful.
Edgy Alternative:
Hire better sales people and create a culture of accountability over activity.
5) Supporting Selfish Sales Processes
In our quest to be more effective salespeople and avoid
losing deals, we built sales processes to guide our behavior. And
with the best of intentions, we created a careful series of
qualification questions and buyer agreements. We started to demand
“upfront commitments” from interested prospects in order to share more of
our insights. While not thoroughly impeachable, the selfish attitude
behind these behaviors has made us less effective and impressive
performers. In attempting to remove fallibility from our work, we
forgot that it never was about us in the first place.
Edgy
Alternative: Demonstrate empathy and passionate investment in others.
6) Using “I” and “We”
It’s in our emails, voicemails, and PowerPoint presentations. All
we talk about is us -- our product, our process, our unique
differentiation. It’s how we start our correspondence and end our
sales pitches. We’ve forgotten the power of the buyer’s pain and
passion. And that’s just sad, because that’s really all the
buyer cares about. The “I” in your tone of voice is blocking the
way to a deal getting done.
Edgy
Alternative: Make it all about them (even when it hurts).
7) Writing Too Long Emails
Somewhere wedged between the novella and Webster’s
dictionary are just over 9,000 emails sent by sales executives to
potential buyers on a daily basis. For some reason we think that our
buyers have the time and interest to read this stuff. They
don’t. They are constantly pulled in 50 different directions for the
10 consecutive hours they are in the office. Sitting down and
reading emails (especially a long one) is the lowest priority on their
list. Being boring isn’t a good strategy for any business endeavor. Keeping
your emails mobile-friendly and focused is key to getting the action you
want from buyers.
Edgy Alternative:
Four to five sentences max sent two to three times (in a seamless
conversation) over a 24 day period or until you get a response.
8) Cold Calling
Calling new prospects with new ideas is in no way anything
to be ashamed of. But in the silliness of explaining the series of
actions and emotions that make this outreach method truly effective, we’ve
confused the real point of evangelism. We use terms like
“warm calling” and “hot calling” and build passionate line-in-the-sand
sales training about what is right and what is wrong. There is
nothing wrong with evangelism. Being a jerk, a bully, or downright shady
is something else. Maybe that’s where we should focus our sales
training efforts.
Edgy Alternative: Show
emotionally intelligent passion (some practice and preparation helps).
9) Checking In
The idea that we place a call or send an email to a customer
with the opening line “I just wanted to check in with you” is just
silliness. More than that, it indicates a sloppy
sales process. Somewhere upstream in the process, the opportunity
wasn’t qualified properly or key information that you needed to deliver results
was somehow lost. The "check in” is a clear indicator that you
need to check out your sales process and hone new skills.
Edgy Alternative: Start
every conversation with the word “you” and stop communicating unless you
are delivering new value.
10) Always-on Prospecting
Prospecting doesn’t need to turn you into a jerk. Just
because you are passionate about what you are up to doesn’t mean that
everyone else is. It’s a misnomer that you always need to be
prospecting. In fact if you try to do that, you’ll find yourself not
really prospecting at all. Instead, you'll be franticly flailing
-- tossing out business cards, and interrupting new friends with your “I do
that, too” tagline. Getting new business is vital to your ongoing
success, but when you force yourself at prospects it’s distasteful
and ineffective.
Edgy Alternative:
Implement intense short-term bursts of targeted activity aimed at attracting
key markets.
11) Performing Ponderous CRM Tasks
The sales process has rapidly accelerated over the
years thanks to the use of technology enablement. The Customer
Relationship Management platform is the single largest toolset at play for
sales teams. And it consumes incredible amounts of time from
team members. Organization is key to stay focused and
prioritized. Lists of tasks, opportunities, and customer contact
information are all vital. You need them. But are you sure you need a
CRM in the first place? Maybe you need to be a little more
disciplined and lose all the busy work that comes with organizing your
database.
Edgy Alternative:
Carefully select sales tools instead of running after what’s
being advertised.
12) Speaking in Industry Jargon
Buzzwords. What would we do without them? Every
industry has their own set of coy, unintelligible acronyms that are
bantered around with linguistic deft -- as if the use of the
words themselves qualify us as players. But it’s a big
fail. New customers are intimidated because they don't
understand what we are talking about. And prospects have a hard time
differentiating us from competitors, since we all happen to be using the
exact same vocabulary.
Edgy Alternative:
Develop your own "humanized” terminology and use it confidently.
13) Refusing to Apologize
Somehow our falliblility seems to vanish when we emerge
each morning and head out to sell. We fail to connect with
prospective customers in one of the single most powerful ways when we
refuse to apologize. Emotion is like a pendulum. Crying can turn into
laughter with the right comment. Anger and frustration can turn into
relief and appreciation with the right touch. And instead of using this to
our advantage (and frankly, just doing the right thing) we stand with
our chests pushed out, defiantly telling our customer that “we don’t
make mistakes like that.”
Edgy Alternative:
Admit when you screwed up and make amends until your buyer knows you’re sorry.
14) Listening to the Experts
You know more than the experts. Yet in every industry
we pay homage to the few intrepid leaders who emerge from the pack with a
vision of the future. But that “following the leader” ideology is
extremely self-limiting. Expertise is something we all have. And
sharing your unique perspective is a huge differentiator. An old
proverb states, “to learn, one must teach others." That’s exactly the
model for sharing expertise. You’ll emerge from the crowd, be different,
and attract new customers who want bold, new solutions -- rather than just
another “monkey do” consultant. Learn from everyone but be your own
person.
Edgy Alternative:
Defy the gurus. Build your expertise in exactly all the opposite ways. Be
bold.
15) Qualifying Sales Effort
As markets and services began accelerated diversification,
the idea of qualification became a prevailing methodology for targeting
potential new customers and maintaining effective
time management. Through a series of questions (that we continuously
refined) we were able to see if and how much time we should spend with a
prospect before our activity became a complete waste of our
time. Certainly, effective and efficient use of your time is wildly
important to your overall success. But no series of questions or
amount of industry experience can predict the intangibles. Rationing your
experience to those you feel are most eligible sounds a little selfish.
Edgy
Alternative: Give away as much help and insight as you can manage (without
asking for anything in return).
16) Blasting Out Emails
Almost three million emails are sent every second of the day. We’ve
evolved from door-to-door sales to direct mail campaigns to telesales to
email marketing. And as with all of the previous evolutions, quantity
seems to be the standard modus operandi. We send out horribly boring “all
about me” content that is shamefully one-way. We are even so bold to send
newsletters from our super-intimate “DoNotReply@bestcompany.com” email
address. And while the technology is impressive, we haven’t stopped
to rethink if we are adding any value to the world with our frantic emailing
activity.
Edgy Alternative:
Dedicate yourself to the conversation. Revolt against being boring.
Sales has come down to a bullet list of what you’ve done --
a series of actions and accomplishments. And we’re careful to share
our most recent “104% of quota” achievement with anyone who
will listen. Somehow we imagine that doing things is what makes us
who we want to be. And that’s horribly misguided thinking. Doing is
always a result of being. Who you are will always drive what you do
and who you become. So attitudes become more important
than actions. And yet we train new sales actions and downplay the
need for better sales attitudes. Then we wonder why our amazing “power
phrases” don’t help us close down more deals. Maybe it’s because
actions don’t really matter if our attitudes are broken.
Edgy Alternative:
Focus on “being” rather than “doing.” Fix the head games.
Without a doubt it’s time that we reexamine why we do what
we do. We’ve accepted the status quo with little question and it’s
undercut our ability to achieve outrageous success. We’ve become
addicted to predictable, “follow the crowd” mediocrity.
1 comment:
Sales reps/managers need to start thinking about providing a solution to builder/customer problems rather than "I'm cheaper than brand X" or only talking about themselves and their product. In addition, the lack of developing marketing strategies in this industry has cost them 100's of millions of dollars in sales. This is real.
Marketing is an investment, not an expense. It's already been proven for a few that are investing in an integrated marketing strategy are succeeding.
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