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Understanding the Sales Force
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
 One of the most amazing musical performances I ever witnessed took place about 9 years ago in New Orleans. We had front row seats at a small venue that advertised an "all star jazz band". The first musician to arrive was the guitarist, who sat polishing his axe (guitar). Next, the drummer arrived and introduced himself to the guitarist. Then the bass player arrived and introduced himself to the first two. The next to arrive were the saxophonist and trumpeter. They did as the others did, shaking hands and setting up. Someone mentioned to the guitarist that this was a jazz gig, not a rock gig, and he should get his other guitar out. The guitarist nodded and took out the more appropriate equipment. Finally, at one minute before 8 PM, the organist walked on stage, introduced himself to the other five musicians, mentioned that he was the musical director, handed out the arrangements, sat at the organ, and at 8 PM, yelled, "one, two, three, four" and the band began to play. They had not only NEVER PLAYED together before, they didn't even KNOW each other! Despite that, they were tight, in sync, confident, flexible and completely aware of the expectations, where they were in each tune, and what they had to do to make each song sound like they had rehearsed it together a dozen times. It's their masterful ability to listen, observe and improvise within a defined structure.
If you want to know what professional salespeople should be able to do, it's exactly that!
They should be able to walk into any meeting, at any time, at any stage of a sales process, and any stage of the buying process, having never met a participant, and within minutes, be in sync, confident, flexible and completely aware of the expectations, where they are in the sales process, and what they must do to move that sales process forward to a successful outcome. It's their masterful ability to listen, observe, and ask unscripted (improvised) questions within a defined structure (sales process).
Professional Selling is just like being in the All-Star Jazz Ensemble. It's being so good and so experienced, that one can perform perfectly, on demand, in any environment, despite tremendous pressure, regardless of product knowledge and expertise.
How many of your salespeople have this capability?
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
 Back in 2008, when I heard Tom Peters claim that women were better salespeople than men, I posted this article and looked at the data to determine if he was correct.
Last month, Reuters posted this article, describing research by Columbia University, which determined that both men and women are more likely to respond positively - and buy - when touched by a woman.
Touch or no touch, you can't take short-cuts. Even if touch does have a positive effect, I would never consider making it part of a sales process as in, complete step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4, touch, close. No way!
Successful, consistent, predictive, reliable selling comes down to having a formal, structured, optimal sales process, and a sales force of strong, goal oriented, committed salespeople who have been thoroughly trained to use proven strategies and tactics to execute that process. If your company is there, congratulations - you're one of only 9% of all companies that can make that claim. If your company is not there yet, it's not too late and it's not real difficult or expensive either. Select a sales development expert to help, someone who has done this before in multiple industries, won't over complicate it, gets your business model, and has the expertise to turn this around in a week or two.
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
 Inequities are the things that aren't fair and that don't happen to everyone.
Take the Boston Red Sox for example. If you don't follow them, you probably don't know that they are just 1.5 games out of first place despite the fact that they have lost these great players for some or most of the season:
- Speedy outfielder and offensive spark Jacoby Ellsbury has missed most of the season with broken ribs suffered when Adrian Beltre collided with him
- Veteran outfielder Mike Camerson has missed almost as much time and is playing with an abdominal tear;
- Back-up outfielder Jeremy Hermeda has missed a month with broken ribs suffered when Adrian Beltre collided with him (not a copy/paste error - Beltre actually did this twice!);
- Ace pitcher Josh Becket has been ineffective and missed more than a month because of a back problem;
- MVP 2nd Baseman Dustin Pedroia fouled a ball off his foot Friday night and will be out 6-8 weeks;
- Catcher Victor Martinez took a foul ball off his thumb yesterday and broke it and will miss time
- Mike Lowell is on the disabled list with a bad hip
- Starting pitcher Dasike Matsuzaka has been on the disabled list twice.
- Jed Lowrie, the guy who was supposed to be their starting shortstop for the last two years, has been injured for most of the past three years and has missed all of this year with Mono;
- Starting pitcher Clay Buckholtz pulled his hamstring during Saturday's start.
That's an inequity (actually it's just really bad luck) because all of the teams haven't suffered the same fate as the Sox. Another inequity is interleague play. The Red Sox have already played the Phillies, Braves and Mets (all NL East contenders) as well as the Rockies, Dodgers and Giants (all NL West contenders) while other AL teams get to beat up on weaker NL Teams.
So let's move over to business, and sales. There are inequities there too - with territories, margins on imported versus domestic components, parts and products, various markets a company sells into, the relative size and market clout of the competition, patents and copyrights, etc.
But there are advantages that companies can, but don't all necessarily have. R & D, leadership, people, product design and quality, expertise, service and support are a few that quickly come to mind. There are five areas where the sales force can develop a huge advantage over its competitors:
- Selection - when a company learns how to hire the right salespeople - those who will consistently succeed at their company - they can compensate for inequities through the effectiveness of their salespeople. Market leaders only need people who will show up every day. The rest of us need great salespeople to compete.
- Sales Process - 91% of the companies we evaluate don't have a formal, structured sales process. This is just stupid! An optimized sales process is a huge difference maker, keeping salespeople focused on what must be done, when, with whom, and in over what period of time. It helps salespeople gain traction, improves conversion ratios, leads to bigger margins and increases in revenue. What's not to like? Mike Workman, CEO of Pillar Data System, wrote a very funny article on his Blog about sales process.
- Strategies, Competencies, Tactics, Posturing - Most companies don't have much in the way of this stuff either yet, through training, this becomes a huge differentiator. If you're not the company people ask to do business with and you don't have the lowest price, your salespeople must be skilled in these areas.
- Pipeline - Everyone talks about pipeline but most companies have nothing more than a placeholder. There is a pipeline, but it's not staged properly, the criteria for each stage is lame, the method for factoring confidence sucks, and the data isn't properly integrated for coaching and accountability. Yet, when management has a properly set up pipeline, used within an effective sales management framework, good things happen!
- Metrics - Most companies have metrics but they are invented rather than derived from pipeline requirements. The most important metrics drive revenue but most companies ignore them, opting for lagging rather than predictive metrics. The latter makes all the difference in the world.
There isn't much you can do about inequities but you can compensate for them by doing all you can with those things you can take advantage of.
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
 Good Sales Managers know how important it is for their salespeople to uncover needs.
But it goes way beyond needs. As I detail in Baseline Selling - How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball, it requires that your salespeople learn about their prospects' compelling reasons to buy. Not just their needs. The issues, problems and frustrations - and even the consequences - that would cause them to spend money and spend it with your company, instead of your competitor. But it goes well beyond compelling reasons. After your salespeople have learned about those compelling reasons, they must go mobile. They should take those compelling reasons - along with them - to create urgency. Those compelling reasons are utilized again in the context of whether the prospects will spend the necessary money to solve their problems. They are used yet again to gain commitment, and for a final time in a proposal or presentation. If your salespeople begin a sales call with a presentation or demo, or even qualification, is it any wonder they convert so few of their opportunities? Here's an example from a coaching call last week: Selling an HR Solution to a VP of HR.
Their problem was that the company couldn't get any momentum going.
The consequence was that the problem was costing hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
The compelling reason is that the problem was causing enough anxiety so that the VP couldn't sleep at night for fear of losing his job. So let's take the compelling reason mobile! What follows here are just three key questions that utilize the mobile compelling reasons at various points in the sales process. There could be an hour or more of dialog surrounding these questions: Commitment (Between 2nd and 3rd Base): "So how committed are you to fixing the problem so that you can feel like your job is secure and get back to sleeping at night?" The Spend (Between 2nd and 3rd Base): "Are you willing to invest around $50,000 over the next 8 months to solve your $600,000 problem, regain your job security and get your life back?" Presentation (Between 3rd Base and Home): "In order to solve the $600,000 problem, regain your job security and get your life back, here is what I recommend that we do together. First, let's talk about how we will address the $600,000 problem..."
So as you can see, compelling reasons are mobile solutions!
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
 The Internet has made it easier than ever for prospects to find your company, a benefit of Sales 2.0. The upside is that your leads are coming from unexpected places and you are getting audiences with prospects you may not have found ten years ago. The downside is that this has changed the sales process, accelerated the sales cycle and in some cases, made it more difficult than ever for companies to close these new found opportunities.
We discussed this on this week's episode of Meet the Sales Experts. My guest was Sales Development Expert Rick Roberge, The Rainmaker Maker. Ultimately, the conversation came down to three things: - The importance of listening and questioning skills
- Why it is so difficult for salespeople to learn effective listening and questioning skills
- The importance of backing up and slowing the sales process down when in these situations
I've written about listening and questioning skills before: I've written even more about the sales process: Developing elite (top 5%) listening and questioning skills requires a tremendous amount of preparation. Athletes work behind the scenes every day. You may only see them on the field during games, but for every three hours they spend on the field, they invest six hours in the weight room, with trainers, developing their skills, participating in drills, studying video and practicing. Those activities contributed to how they became elite and today they influence how these athletes remain elite. Those practices aren't limited to athletes. Take any high-paid, high-profile profession and you'll witness the same practices. Talk-show host. Variety Show host. Actor. News Anchor. National Politician. Speaker. Musician. Band. Dancer. Comedian. Sales Development Expert! The stuff doesn't just happen! It requires preparation and Practice.
Most of the salespeople I've met at most of the companies I've helped didn't practice at all! No studying, no training, no practice. They didn't work on their presentations, listening and questioning or tonality. They didn't watch themselves in the mirror, record conversations, video tape their presentations or role play with others. Yet day after day, they would go on calls and expect different results without preparing differently. It's a choice. It's always a choice. You can wait for salespeople to figure it out (it's a long wait), you can figure it out for them (beats the alternative) or you can hire these people at the outset (you must know how to find, attract, identify, hire, on board and retain them). A note of warning though...if your culture isn't ready to support elite salespeople (you must have elite sales management and products) they won't stick around even if you can convince them to work for you.
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