Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
Dan Pink, Author of To Sell is Human, has been getting a lot of well-deserved exposure. He wrote a terrific book and most who have read it, really like it. I don't have a problem with his book because read in its entirety, it makes sense. I do have an issue with the people who write about his book and take the concept, that everyone can sell, out of context. The context is that everyone can sell their ideas. Agreed. But out of context, it is suggested that everyone can be a salesperson. I strongly disagree.
Forget for a moment all of the data from Objective Management Group showing that 74% of all professional salespeople suck. When we take the concept from selling an idea (at home, at church, in the neighborhood or internally to coworkers) to professional selling, 10 things change:
- There is money on the table and 53% of salespeople are uncomfortable having a conversation about money and another 33% think that just $500 is a lot of money. The money conversation adds a level of pressure that does not exist when one simply has an idea to sell.
- There is commission at stake and that adds a level of pressure and emotion that causes many salespeople to let their opportunity get derailed. The 47% of salespeople who desperately need to be liked, choose the tactic or strategy that preserves a friendship, rather than the one that gets the business, simply because they are afraid of doing anything to jeopardize their commission.
- There is a performance requirement at stake and just like in number 2 above, the pressure and emotion of performing, meeting quota and/or expectations, causes salespeople to approach opportunities with a "make sure you don't lose" mentality instead of "make sure you win."
- Recovering from rejection is an ongoing challenge for 72% of salespeople. However, if they are simply selling an idea - one idea - and it gets rejected, they don't have to get back on the horse.
- Some salespeople have conditional commitment - they'll do what it takes as long as it's comfortable for them. That isn't enough in sales - especially since 2008! But if you're selling an idea, with nothing at stake, doing what's comfortable is acceptable.
- Pressure and Emotion are in 3 of my first 5 and 52% of salespeople become too emotional to remain objective. More importantly, salespeople can't listen when they are emotional and if they can't listen, they can't ask questions and without questions they can't be effective.
- Alternatives may exist when selling an idea internally, but in professional sales there will be competition and its existence creates a variable that causes many salespeople to do a very poor job of differentiating themselves. Internally, a better idea wins the day. When selling professionally, the best solution, product or service may be overshadowed by a better price, more memorable salesperson, better quality or service, delivery issues, history with a company, size of a company, capabilities or a relationship.
- Speaking of relationships, internally you are a known entity - no relationships to establish, no trust to be built, no credibility to be earned, no expertise to be demonstrated, no question as to one's knowledge of the organization. Selling professionally requires that all of those criteria be established.
- The internal sale will never require a cold-call to get the discussion rolling. Today salespeople may need to make 10-20 attempts to get their cold-call answered or returned and then they must quickly break the ice, get the prospect engaged, and have a memorable 5-minute conversation to get a meeting scheduled.
- Dan Pink recommends hiring ambiverts. Here are my reasons why that strategy may not be the answer when hiring salespeople.
What do you think?
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
We talk a lot about the importance of using a consultative approach instead of a transactional approach to better differentiate and sell value instead of price. When we explain consultative selling, we usually emphasize the importance of listening and questioning. When we further explain effective listening and questioning, it becomes much more difficult to describe in a paragraph or in the absence of a demonstration or role-play.
Until today.
Snorkeling, or moving along the surface of the ocean, is akin to poor questioning, moving from fish to fish or question to question, never finding anything of significance and only seeing that which is near the surface.
Scuba diving, or doing a deep dive, is akin to good, tough, timely questions that lead to the buried treasure of selling - a prospect's compelling reason to buy from you. When you scuba dive, you explore a single site, but when you snorkel you go sight-seeing and continue traveling without really stopping to explore.
Dive in, continue your dive, and don't stop the dive until you find the treasure.
I'll be giving the keynote at an Executive Luncheon in Boston on Wednesday May 21 at the Westin Copley Hotel. My topic is Changing Trends in Sales and How They Will Impact Your Revenue. If you live in New England or will be visting next week and would like to attend, send me an email and I'll send you a discount code so that you can attend as my guest.
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
We are in the middle of the first day of our 2-day Sales Leadership Intensive. While most attendees admit that they must be more effective at coaching, many who said they have some kind of sales process in place didn't come to the same conclusion. So, why is it so obvious to sales leaders that they need to improve their coaching, but so elusive that they need to improve their sales process?
Change occurs in direct proportion to the availability of immediate feedback.
You get instant feedback from coaching. Your coaching either makes a profound difference - right here and now - and leads to an otherwise unobtainable sale; or it makes no difference, falls on deaf ears, gets an insincere thank you, and causes a salesperson to avoid future coaching.
Of course, there is a gray area where coaching is sometimes or moderately effective, but even that provides some immediate feedback.
With sales process, the feedback is either delayed - by months or years - or non-existent to the point where you can't determine whether your process had any impact on your success or failure. Without feedback, you lose perspective on whether you have the right stages, steps, milestones, to-do's, or sequence. It might be even more important to get your sequence right than your steps and milestones.
Here's the catch. As crucial as it is to be more effective at coaching, coaching conducted outside of an effective sales process and without the context of a staged, optimized sales process may be far less effective than it should be. [update - Frank just posted this related article]
So, how can you determine whether your existing process is any good? There's an app for that. Not really, but we do have a free tool that you can use to find out. It will give you a score and that comes in the form of immediate feedback.
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
Selling value.
What comes so easily to the top 6% and some of the top 26% is so very difficult for others.
Most salespeople have little capability to effectively build value. Talking about what your company does better or differently or telling a prospect what your value proposition is does not build value. Instead, value comes from 3 things:
- Uncovering the compelling reason(s) to buy and buy from you,
- Understanding the impact, ripple effect and cost of those compelling reasons, and
- Positioning yourself and company as the clear choice to help with numbers one and two. Then the salesperson becomes the added value.
Here are a few random thoughts accumulated through the combined efforts of evaluating more than 650,000 salespeople and training tens of thousands of others. In no particular order:
- The moment a salesperson attempts to be competitive on price, any value he or she may have built is forgotten and can no longer be leveraged. All the focus is on price.
- Compromising or negotiating on price sets a precedent. All future discussions about pricing will be based on this compromise.
- If a salesperson does successfully build or create value, or position himself/herself as the added value, they must not allow price to be one of the decision-making criteria.
- 53% of all salespeople are too uncomfortable with the subject to have a conversation about money. How important is it that your salespeople have a conversation about money?
- 33% of all salespeople think that just $500 is a lot of money. How much money are your salespeople supposed to be asking for?
- 40% of all salespeople don't determine whether their prospect is able to spend what they are about to propose.
- 64% of all salespeople make their own major purchases in a way that will not support the sales outcomes they must achieve.
- 86% of all salespeople believe what their prospects tell them, even when the prospect is bluffing about needing a lower/better price or that the decision will be based on price.
- 52% of all salespeople become emotional as soon as they hear that their price may be too high.
- 47% of all salespeople believe that if they hold their ground on price, regardless of how they do it, their prospect won't like them anymore.
All of these statistics come from
Objective Management Group. What does it all mean? Not only don't most salespeople know how to build value, but even when they do, they quickly undermine it with their self-limting beliefs, inappropriate behaviors, outdated experiences, and desire to have a competitive price.
It's as if coming in with the right pricing will make them a hero. Unfortunately, it makes them just like everyone else and there isn't much value in that.© Copyright Dave Kurlan All Rights Reserved
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
So you have your sales force evaluated and in addition to learning why you are getting the results you are getting, and what you can do to significantly improve those results, you are suprised by some of the individual findings on some of your salespeople. One of the findings that generates the most push-back is Lack of Commitment to sales success.
We could hear any of the following comments as push-back to this finding:
- our best salesperson,
- nobody tries harder,
- works longer hours than anyone,
- been here for years,
- landed our biggest customer,
- an up-and-comer and/or
- we really like her.
The list could go on and on, but none of the rebuttals actually addresses commitment - one's willingness to do whatever it takes (ethically of course) to achieve sales success. For the record, I believe that this particular finding is 100% accurate.
One such example of this occurred last fall, when after a sales force evaluation, one rep's results showed that she lacked commitment. Their sales manager spoke with her and was cautious, but optimistic that she was committed. A month or so later, he spoke with her a second time, pointed out a few concerns of his, and after listening to her responses, came away from the meeting feeling more optimistic, but still cautious.
Today the sales manager - a terrific guy and very effective sales manager - sent me a note saying that this rep is getting married and leaving the company - and sales - to spend more time working in her church ministry.
Sometimes, it takes several months to see what
we only can measure, but it always shows up sooner or later.
That's the danger in moving forward with salespeople who lack commitment. The proof might not be as dramatic as in the example above, but there will always be proof, like:
- lack of improvement from training,
- lack of improvement from coaching,
- inability to change their thinking,
- inability to change their behaviors,
- inability to embrace a new sales process,
- inability to embrace a new sales methodology,
- inability to embrace a company's new policies,
- inability to become engaged in a company's new culture and/or
- many more.
It's one thing to learn that one of your existing salespeople is not committed to their own sales success. It's another to learn that a sales candidate lacks commitment. Why would anyone fight that finding? You're not invested in that candidate and there are other qualified candidates out there; so why would any manager insist on hiring someone with a lack of commitment to sales success?
The simple answer is that employers fall in love - not in a romantic way as much as a hopeful way - with the wrong candidates all the time. Sometimes they fall in love because of their:
- personality,
- energy,
- experience,
- expertise,
- sense of humor,
- book of business,
- previous employers and/or
- good looks.
Whatever the reason, if they lack Commitment to sales success, they should not, under any circumstances, consider that candidate for a sales position at their company. Unless of course you like wasting time and starting over.
This is Dave saying over and out.
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