Share Sales Effectiveness Tips

Gwynne Young
Managing Editor, CustomerThink
Member

Posted 08-Sep-2006 01:24 PM
In his article, Effectiveness Vs. Efficiency: What Happens When Your Sales Productivity Is Maxed Out? , in the Sept. 11 Advisor newsletter, Barry Trailer passes along one tip he received for making salespeople more effective. If prospects balk at the price, arm the salespeople with answers on why the price is worth it. Don't let them start offering discounts.

What are some other tips you know of to give salespeople the ability to make their pitches more effective without giving away the farm?

Kregg
Member

Posted 18-Sep-2006 04:33 PM
Price discounts are the last refuge of an ineffective sales team. The author of the article has offered the advice of preparing a few 'value statements' to over come price objections. This may work in the medical products field, or in other circumstances where you have only person to sell to, but in complex sales with multiple constituents, this is not going to be enough.

It has been my experience that the best way to avoid price objections, which usually come at the end of the sales cycle, is to 'front load' the sales process. That is, ineffective sales organizations tend to have a very low level of activity at the beginning of the sales process and an increasingly higher level toward the end, when they are scrambling to 'close the deal'. This is the opposite of an effective sales process.

The concerted effort should be at the beginning of the sales cycle and focused on what is generally known as qualification. Average sales people believe qualification means finding out whether the customer has a budget to purchase the product. Once they get a 'Yes' to this question they believe it is all just a matter of 'relationship building" (read: acting like you are friends with the customer) and 'closing the deal' (read: having the courage to ask for the order).

If the sales process is front loaded effectively, the relationship will be built immediately and asking for the order will not be necessary.

Front loading the sales process means:

Establishing immediate creditability as a trusted advisor by conducting multiple detailed conversations with the customer to uncover needs, including those they may not realize they have—before giving 'the pitch'. The natural instincts of most sales people is provide the customer with what, back in the day of the mainframe, we used to call a 'core dump' on the very first call. In other words, tell, tell, tell the customer about all the great features of the product before asking any questions.

I always encouraged my sales reps to learn as much as possible about the competition but, to their surprise, this is not for the purpose of overcoming objections related to the competition, is to avoid the objection ever coming up. The best thing a sales rep can do their customer is to help them make the most informed decision possible. Most buyers are really quite lazy when it comes to competitive analysis (at least in the software industry where I have sold). It has always been my experience that the best relationship building tool is helping the customer look good in front of their boss and peers, not golf outings and martinis at lunch.

Once the needs have been uncovered and the competition fully understood, it is time to establish the value of the solution. The value is the cumulative cost savings, increased productivity, increased revenue potential, improved competitive positioning, increased market sharer, etc. that the solution will provide the buyer. The key to overcoming the price objection at the end of the sales process is to skillfully help the buyer to articulate (and I mean verbally) the value of the seller's solution at the beginning of the sales cycle.

If the customer cannot verbalize the value to the sales rep, they certainly cannot verbalize it to the CEO, or CFO or whomever they need to sell to inside their organization. If the buyer is the CEO or the CFO — the rule still applies, if they cannot verbalize the value to the sales rep, they cannot verbalize it to the board or to the investors who have to fund the acquisition.

Once the value has been verbalized and internalized by the customer, a good ‘pitch' will be nothing but a review of the conversations already conducted—generally in front of a larger group of constituents involved in the sales process. If the sales rep has done their job well, their primary contact will be their best advocate during the pitch, rather just another face in the board room.

Once the detailed needs analysis is done, as long as it is done in a consultative and not interrogative manner, and as long as the sales rep has continuously reinforced his company's ability to meet the customer's stated and unstated needs, especially during the pitch, the 'relationship building' and 'closing' steps should be natural outcomes of the conversation, rather than things that ‘need to be done' at the last minute. There should be no emotional or logical reason for the buyer to object to the price at the end of the sales cycle because they know exactly what the price is and more importantly, that the price is a fraction of the value that the solution will provide to his organization.

Kregg Ray
Co-Founder AppShore Inc.
415-350-3472
kray@appshore.com
www.appshore.com