One of the quickest ways to get your sales back on track to building sales velocity is to understand why your current customers buy from you and why some buyers do not. It sounds like a simple question, but it is critical to gain this understanding to position your sales team for repeatable profitable growth.
Do you know why your buyers are buying from you today?
Do you know why some buyers you have quoted do not buy from you?
Chances are the buying process and criteria your buyers are using to make purchasing decisions have changed over the last six to eight months.
Once you identify why buyers today are buying or not buying from your team you can build the sales tools necessary to keep sales conversations moving to a close.
Nothing frustrates CEO’s more than spending the time to develop a strategic plan and then find out six months into the plan sales is not executing the plan. What are the reasons sales fails to execute the plan?
In my experience, most businesses do a great job of explaining their strategic plans, but they fail to provide sales the proper sales tools, a value proposition that resonates with buyers and the “how-to” for salespeople.
Market leaders create tactical sales playbooks by territory.
Market losers tell salespeople to “just make it happen”.
It may be perceived as “old school” but I have found the best way to avoid the “great disconnect” is to provide each salesperson on your team a sales playbook. Working with the salesperson we develop a playbook that breaks the overall strategy down into meaningful how to tactics for the salesperson and identify key performance indicators.
Have you experienced the “Great Disconnect; Sales Execution” in your sales team?
Does your organization provide sales playbooks for each salesperson?
Having led sales teams for over 25 years I have heard salespeople frequently say …”If I only had more leads I could…” They say they could close more sales, sell more new products, and become more important to their distributor network…and so on. Like a carpenter with only a hammer, the solution is to just nail more leads. The trouble is the quickest way to improve revenues is not more leads.
What you need to do to quickly impact the bottom line is improve your sales close percentage with the leads you already receive.
Market leaders clearly understand the buying process and buying criteria.
Market leaders create sales tools to help their sales teams close a greater percentage of sales leads and create sales velocity.
Market losers play “extrapolation exasperation” …if their team closes two sales out of ten leads, and they need to close six new accounts…its simple: we need more leads (30 or so)
You have already made the investment in marketing to drive the clicks…why not improve your team’s ability to turn clicks to customers?
When I asked CEO’s and business leaders where they turn when they face a problem in their business I heard two common answers and one that disturbed me. The common answers were;
I call someone in my network
I talk to my spouse
However the answer that also bubbled to the top frequently was;
“nowhere,… that is what I am paid to do, solve problems so I figure it out”
The third response disturbed me… when did business leaders decide they need to go it alone? When was it decided we need to have all the answers? I tell my clients in fact I do not have all the answers,… but I do , based on my experience know what questions to ask.
So let me get this straight….
if you want to improve your golf game you have no problem hiring a pro for a few lessons
If you want to get fit you join a gym and hire a personal trainer
If you sprain your back you see a doctor ,enter a rehab program with a physical therapist to get you back in shape and out of pain
But if your business has a problem…you feel you must go it alone based on your gut?
Market leaders have the emotional intelligence to know what they know as well as what they do not know. They seek help from experts that complement their gifts and realize faster and much more profitable growth.
So where do you turn when your business needs help? Why?
Are your salespeople costing you revenue you should be winning by playing “feature and benefit BINGO?” The only way you truly know is if you or your VP of sales is traveling and working in the market with your sales team.
Feature and benefit BINGO is a game untrained salespeople play far too often. They “show up and then they throw up” and they spew all the features and benefits they can think of waiting for your buyer to jump up and yell”…BINGO….I get it….I figured out what problems you can solve for me…”
Market leading salespeople ask questions and take the time to listen and understand the problems, the pain their buyers are experiencing and they position their product and or services as solutions to those problems.
As a quick litmus test, ask yourself who talked more in the meeting? Your buyer… or your salesperson? If it was your salesperson I promise you they are showing up and throwing up and it’s costing you sales revenues you could have won.
Are you playing feature and benefit BINGO in other areas?
If you have been in sales, led salespeople you know what it’s like when a sale “goes dark”. You had a “great meeting” , you listened, and you felt you heard the buyer’s pain, you followed up with a proposal that shares how your product or service solves their pain….and then nothing. A day turns into a week, a week a month and your buyer goes dark not answering your voice mails, emails, faxes, and so on.
To make maters more stressful the salesperson shared how they felt they finally closed “XYZ “and all of senior management is now waiting for the order.( and asking for what seems like hourly updates as to when it will come in)
What are your buyers doing when they go dark…does your team know? If not what you will experience as signs your salespeople are afraid of the dark include;
end of sales period price discounts
change in agreed payment terms
change in standard shipment terms
free products and or services added to “close the sale”
The most common cause of salespeople becoming afraid of the dark is a shift in the way your buyers are buying. Your current sales process lacks a clear understanding of the buying process and you require new sales tools to keep the conversation moving to a close.
Reminder, it’s not about how you want to sell, but helping your buyers buy …the way they want to buy!
How about your organization……
Is your sales team afraid of the dark?
Do you have one or two salespeople who seem more afraid than others?
Do you hear about a number of good meetings that never result in an order?
Market leading organizations are constantly in their markets and adjusting to shifts in the way their buyers are buying.
Is sales and “art” or a “science”? It depends….is your marketing strong, or does it suck?
In my last post: Is Sales an Art or a Science I shared how I opened a recent presentation to business owners and their senior leadership teams with a question;
Is Sales an Art or a Science?
The responses were pretty predictable;
Felt sales was a science: 30%
Felt sales was an Art: 60%
Felt sales was both an art and a science: 10%
This was interesting, however I heard the soft comment I was waiting for: “It Depends…on your industry, team’s training, product, price, availability of sales tools, your web site….” (Perfect! Now we are going to have a discussion!)
Then they asked me…what did I think? Art or science? I said “yes” as sales is often both. I find where sales falls in the spectrum with art on one end and science on the other depends on the organizations competency in marketing.
Marketing? Yes, because the fundamental job of marketing is to have an intimate understanding of your market, its buyer’s problems, and how they set out to solve those problems. Competent marketing teams clearly understand the buying process, cycle and criteria. They create tools to help buyers buy.
Market Leaders
If you have a strong competency in marketing, you know your market, and its problems that need to be solved. You know the buyers; you have clearly stated buyer persona’s and you understand the buying process. Your message is clear and does not require a translator (salesperson) to help buyers understand the problems your products or services solve.
Market leaders have such a clear understanding of the buying process their sales is more of a science. The art in the sale for market leaders is the salesperson’s ability to ask open-ended questions and apply proven sales tools for the right step of the buying process that keeps the conversation moving to a sale.
In market leading organizations, sales are 80% science and 20% art.
Unfortunately less than 10% of organizations would be considered Market leaders. Those that are, dominate their markets.
Market losers
If your team lacks a competency in marketing you will experience it for yourself on sales calls. Your team plays; “ feature and benefit BINGO” in hopes they rattle off all your features and benefits and at some point your buyer yells “BINGO” as they put the pieces together with the problem they have, and they understand how they “think” you solve this problem.
Market losers really do not know the problems their products solve for their buyers, the buying process, or buying criteria. In most cases their products were built from the inside out and marketing was tasked with “creating the need” for their products…losers!
Market losers launch products and believe they can “manage by objectives” and meet their goals by managing key performance indicators created without any knowledge of their market.
Market losers have high turnover as they replace those who fail to hit goal, and skilled team members leave to join market driven teams.
Market losers have websites that talk about their company, years in business, and they prepare the feature and benefit BINGO card for their buyers and salespeople.
For market losers 80% of sales is an “art”.
The CEO and CFO of market losing companies go crazy because there is a lack of predictability, and they can not “manage” their way to market leadership. In this model your salespeople need to disregard what marketing does provide, and listen to their buyers, understand buyer problems, and create their own sales tools that discuss how their product or service solves those problems.
The danger in this model is sales may be promising things your product does not do, and the message varies by salesperson and thus is not repeatable.
From my experience, I would say about 50% of the companies out there are Market losers.
They build products because they can and not because they should. They are sales driven or bottom line driven. They have high turnover and ironically the salespeople they are letting go today won awards for sales performance two years ago….so what changed?
From my experience 40% of companies are somewhere in between but striving to improve.
They often launch a product that becomes very successful and then have a series of launches that fail. As they grow, the leaders who knew the market are now “managing the business” and lose touch with the market and its problems. They forget it was their understanding of market problems that caused their success and often fall into the trap that they think it was their personal brilliance and or hut spa.
As I closed the discussion I asked everyone in the room to do two things in the next seven days….
Go out and meet with your customers and ask questions about their business and the problems they are facing, and how they try to solve those problems
.
Look in your top salesperson’s trunk of their car and or lap top and see the tools they are using
The good news is everyone can become a market leading organization and realize higher than market average profits, lower turnover and increased shareholder equity. When you clearly understand your market and buyers, and create sales tools to help buyers move through their buying process, you create a win-win-win.
So what kind of organization do you work for? Market leader? Market Loser? Or someplace in between? Why?
