- June 8, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Would you like to start a business? Can’t figure out what business to start? I have three ideas for you:
In the past four weeks, I have tried and tried and tried to get a glass company to replace the tabletop for a large outdoor patio table after the glass exploded in an early April storm. Four weeks later, we still don’t have the glass replaced.
One of our garage door openers needs to be replaced because in every five out of six attempts to lower the door, the opener sends it back up again. After calling six dealers in four weeks, I have not received a single return call.
We have a double swinging gate at the bottom of our driveway and the electronics are twenty years old and need to be updated. After four weeks of calling dealers I have not received a single return call.
In case you’re thinking that it must be me, I have had success getting plumbers, stone masons, electricians, carpenters, power washers, and painters to the house but those other three categories are the outliers. Start one of those three businesses today and you’ll make a fortune!
In today’s article, I will explain why this problem exists and how it relates to a bigger problem in sales.
The people who don’t return calls are usually technical in nature. The garage door openers, gate electronics, and glass people are all entrepreneurs running small businesses and their expertise is not sales or customer service, it’s their technical subject matter expertise.
By and large, “salespeople” like these make up a large portion of the bottom 50% of all salespeople. They are passionate about what they do, know their product, can answer technical questions, are experts in their industry but don’t have a clue about what it means to sell. They believe that answering questions, explaining their products and producing a quote or proposal constitutes selling. They have little concept of sales process, sales posturing, messaging, positioning, listening and asking questions, qualifying, or closing, and even less on how to do any of that effectively. They don’t know what they don’t know.
A good example of this can be seen at Objective Management Group’s (OMG) Statistics site. Navigate to the site, click the “tell us what industry you are in” button, and expand Construction (23). Select 238 or Specialty Contractors and then scroll through the 21 Sales Core Competencies. You’ll notice that the industry specific scores are consistently lower than the average scores for all salespeople. Interestingly, the biggest gap is in the Hunting Competency where you will see that contractor salespeople score 18 points lower than the average for all salespeople. The reality is that they do little hunting, getting their new business from existing customers and RFQ’s.
The good news is that after senior management makes it clear that those in a selling role will be expected to proactively sell, rather than explaining and quoting alone, things do improve. While some in the role are not well-suited for selling, with exposure to sales process, strategy, tactics and methodology, most will improve, become more comfortable, and more effective. After an evaluation, introduction to the company’s new formal sales process, and appropriate sales training, most of these people become more comfortable, more aware, and as a result, more effective.
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