This will be the 18th consecutive year that we attend the Boston Ballet's performance of the Nutcracker, and while it is the same performance every single year, it is a wonderful family tradition and we wouldn't miss it for the world.

Traditions are important.  They ground us, give us a sense of stability and purpose, and provide something that we can look forward to.  Rituals are like traditions in that they serve the same purpose, but occur much more frequently.  Selling, is filled with rituals, from the sales process we always follow, to those specific questions we always ask to those specific talking points, comparisons, and stories we always share.  Why?  They work!

So it is with that sense of tradition that for the 10th consecutive year, I republish my Nutcracker article which is always the most popular article each December.

The Top 3  Lessons  from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker

If you attend a Nutcracker performance or simply listen to some of the suite during the holiday season, one of the selections you'll hear is the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy".  Perhaps you can't match the music to the title, but I'm sure if you listen to the first 30 seconds of this version, you'll recognize the melody regardless of your religion or ethnicity.

Even though you've surely heard it before, can you identify the four primary musical instruments at the beginning of the selection?

In this version, you're hearing the glass harmonica, while most orchestral versions and performances feature the celesta, oboe, bassoon and flutes.  Can you hear them?

Just as the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" sounds familiar to you, your salespeople find familiarity in the sounds, questions, comments and discussions on their sales calls.  As much as you may not be able to distinguish the specific instruments creating those sounds in "Dance...", your salespeople may not be able to distinguish the credible comments and questions from the noise on their sales calls.

During a first sales call, suppose your salespeople hear one prospect say, "This has been a very interesting and productive conversation and we might have some interest in this."  And imagine another prospect at the same meeting says, "We'll get back to you next month and let you know what kind of progress we've made."  And still a third might say, "In the meantime, please send us a proposal with references and timeline."

Lesson #1 (based on Objective Management Group's data) - Of every 100 salespeople:

• 70 rush back to the office to begin work on the proposal and tell their bosses that their large opportunity is very promising because all 3 prospects in the meeting were very interested;
• 19 leave the call and make 2 entries in their journals - "propose" and "follow-up" - and they'll do both eventually;
• 11 are still at the meeting, asking more questions.

Lesson #2:

• Prospects' voices are like musical instruments.  Each instrument in "Dance..." has a specific role in the performance.  If the wrong instrument or notes are played or they're played at the wrong time, the entire selection is ruined.  Prospects' comments in the scenario above have different meanings depending on their business titles and their roles in the buying process.
• If "please send us a proposal", "we're interested" or "very productive" are spoken from an Executive - the CEO, President or VP of something - it has a far different meaning than if the comment were to come from a buyer in Procurement.
• When any of those 3 comments are spoken by a user - an engineer for example - rather than a buyer or an Executive, the comments may be far more genuine, but carry much less authority.

Lesson #3:

• Sometimes it's more fun to listen to a song, symphony or simple melody and to figure out how and why the composer or arranger selected the particular instruments to play the particular parts of the selection.
• Your salespeople must apply that wonder and analysis to their sales calls.  The prospect may be the composer (started the initiative), arranger (selected the vendors to talk with), director (charged with the initiative and conducting the process) or musician (following directions of the conductor).  It's the salesperson's job to figure out who they're dealing with, what role they play, what influence they'll have and how to get the various players aligned on the compelling reasons to buy and your ideal solution.

Homework Assignment - Return to Lesson #1 and answer 2 questions:

1. Which of the 3 sales outcomes do your salespeople typically find themselves doing?
2. Which additional questions do those 11 salespeople stay to ask?

Leave your comments on the LinkedIn discussion thread.

Image copyright iStock Photos

I've written extensively about how salespeople score in 21 Sales Core Competencies. Typically, both the articles and data are shared in the context of the difference between top salespeople and weak salespeople but rarely have I written about what happens after salespeople have been evaluated.

Here's how it usually works.  A company asks their outside sales expert for help growing sales.  As a first step, the expert suggests evaluating the sales force using OMG's incredible suite of tools.  The results are shared and reviewed with the client and anonymous data from the evaluation is added to our nearly 1.8 million rows of data.  That is the data I so often write about and you can see the aggregate scores, sorted by sales percentile, industry or region, at our public statistics site.

Post evaluation, the expert will likely help the company by providing some combination of training, coaching, consulting, recruiting, systems and processes updates in the areas that need to be improved.  As a result, do salespeople actually get better?  That's a direct result of the trainer's/consultant's effectiveness, the company's commitment to change, and the sales managers' ability to coach to the sales process and methodology, all well out of OMG's hands.  However, we do have some insight into how much their salespeople improve.

Approximately one year after the initial sales force evaluation, OMG offers to conduct a checkpoint where change can be measured and now I have the data.

I looked at the before and after scores for eight of the 21 Sales Core Competencies as well as the Reaches Decision Makers, Account Manager and Farmer competencies for a total of 11.  See the table below:

One of the first things you might notice is that scores went down in 2 competencies - Relationship Building and Account Management.  Many salespeople believe that selling is simply having relationships and showing up. Then, when training and coaching targets the more impactful competencies, it's not unusual to see scores actually get worse in the two competencies they previously took for granted.

Another thing you might notice is the significance of change for Closing, Reaching Decision Makers, and Selling Value, a bi-product of what I assume the training and coaching would have been focused on post evaluation.

Twelve months later, there is an overall 18% improvement in scores.  We know that just a 10% improvement creates a 33% increase ins sales.  Don't believe me?  Check out this table:

If a 10% improvement creates a 33% improvement in revenue, what does an 18% improvement create?  Math is a really important tool in creating value and in this case, math tell us we can expect a 59% increase in revenue.

Image Copyright iStock Photos

Have you ever visited a Cheesecake Factory?  I LOVE the menu - they offer EVERYTHING.  The downside is that because there are so many items to choose from, it's difficult to decide what to order.  That's better than the options you have with my Blog.  [Please stay with me - the info on how to become a better closer is coming and if you can't wait, just scroll to the last 4 paragraphs.]

Buried in here - somewhere - are more than 1,700 articles.  But can you find any of them?  I can't!   If you scroll the left-side navigation of the Blog, you'll see that I created several categories but most of the series are not up-to-date.  Shame on me.  Despite that, there is a better chance of finding the articles you are most interested in by selecting the appropriate series than by scrolling or using the built-in Google search functionality..

The left-hand navigation menu begins with an opportunity to subscribe to the Blog, order Baseline Selling, followed by the article series, the most popular articles of all-time, 10 most recent articles, awards, and finally, free resources.

My top 5 favorite categories are:

Data and Research 
Comparing Salespeople to Children 
Sales Pipeline 
Music and Selling 
Articles Debunked 

From the most popular articles of all time, my top 5 favorites are

Exposed - Personality Tests Disguised as Sales Assessments
SPIN and Miller Heiman Compared to Baseline Selling
Personality Assessments - The Definitive Case Study
How Your Salespeople Measure Up in 21 Sales Core Competencies
Rebuttal to What Elite Salespeople Do Differently

As with the Cheesecake Factory, the choices are practically limitless but the restaurant has a much better menu.  Salespeople are guilty of the Cheesecake Factory approach too.  We'll call it the CFF for Cheesecake Factory Factor.  Several complications occur when salespeople provide their prospects with too many choices:

• They GIVE prospects a reason to think it over which results in delayed closings
• They FAIL to be an expert.  If they asked the right questions and actually listened to the responses, then there would be only one ideal recommendation and/or solution that is both needs and cost appropriate.
• They ALLOW their competitors to demonstrate their own expertise, recommending a single ideal solution and differentiating.

This will seem cheesy but compare the Cheesecake Factory to a 1960's era McDonalds.  There were only 2 choices back then - a hamburger or a cheeseburger. Of course you could order fries and a shake too.

Here's how it might sound: 

Based on what I know about you, I strongly recommend that you order the cheeseburger from the Cheesecake Factory, which will be a healthier choice than McDonalds.

Image Copyright iStock

Everyone has had this happen...probably more than once.

You worked hard and smart, thought you did a great job, expected to win the business, but didn't.  Later, you learned that the prospect "Didn't really like your style."

It's not at all unusual, but it is almost always misinterpreted.  Salespeople tend to take this personally by internalizing the comment as, "They just didn't like me.  But why?"

What most salespeople fail to understand is that "style" is really code for something completely different.  I have listed 12 possibilities that style could really mean.  Think back to one of those situations and determine how many of these 12 could have been the real culprit:

1. Relationship - it wasn't strong enough and you failed to connect.  In extreme cases this would be termed a personality conflict.
2. Resistance - you were not effective enough at managing their level of resistance and it failed to drop.
3. Accommodating - you were actually too accommodating and failed to gain their respect.  They saw you as a facilitator as opposed to an expert, a resource or an adviser.
4. Value - the prospect failed to receive value from the time spent with you and considered you to be more of a vendor or supplier than a resource or adviser.
5. Content - they did not like what you presented, suggested or recommended.  It wasn't what they wanted to hear.
6. Listening - they didn't believe that you listened to them or to what they wanted.  You were too interested in following and achieving your own agenda.
7. Authority - your statements lacked authority and you failed to establish credibility.  You were just like everyone else.
8. Aggressive - they found you to be too confrontational, or obnoxious.
9. Intellectual - you relied too much on facts, logic, and figures and failed to include anecdotal stories and examples.  You weren't engaging.
10. Cultural - they have a defined culture, specific core values, and you didn't fit with their culture
11. Flow - your meeting or call wasn't conversational, it lacked the give and take and back and forth associated with being a mutually authentic conversation.
12. Expectations - they had certain expectations of you, your capabilities, your offering, the meeting or call, and you failed to meet those expectations.

Have you been guilty of any of these dozen?  If so, what can you do to improve?

I was listening to CNN on Satellite Radio and in between rants about the immigration ban, protests, the federal judge who issued a stay, and Trump's first week's worth of executive orders, an advertisement came on promoting How to Close Anything and Everything, no matter what you sell and who you sell it to.  And to make their offer even more enticing - it's being offered for free!  Did you hear it?  It wasn't a promotion for my company...

Closing is awfully important. Nothing happens until the business gets closed.  But most people don't know the real truth about closing.

I am going to share the real truth about closing and it's quite different from what you've read, what you've listened to, what you've watched, and probably from what you've practiced.  Countless books, tapes, videos and podcasts have been devoted to closing techniques.  Thousands of companies deliver seminars and training programs to help salespeople develop their closing skills.  They're all wrong and they have all wasted your time.

I have written 1,600 articles and not once have I shared the closing secret that I am about to share in this article.

Objective Management Group (OMG) has evaluated and assessed 1831506 salespeople.  If we review the 21 Sales Core Competencies, zoom in on the 10 Tactical Selling Competencies, and then filter the results to show average scores for elite salespeople - only the top 7% - you will see this:

Top 7% of All Salespeople

Notice that the best salespeople in the world possess fewer than half of the attributes of the Closer competency - it's their second worst score next to Social Selling (isn't that ironic?).

If closing is so important, then how come the world's best salespeople don't have very good closing skills?

The top 7% have closing skills that are twice as good as the general sales population who average only 23% of the attributes of the Closer competency. 

All Salespeople

But this isn't about contrast. I told you that I want to share the truth about closing.

The average scores for elite salespeople are very good for Hunting, Consultative Selling, Qualifying, Presenting and Sales Process.  

If you start with an effective sales process and follow it, keep your pipeline filled through consistent hunting, use an effective consultative approach, and thoroughly qualify, the business will simply close and most of the time, you will be the one who wins it.

However, if you don't have an effective, predictive sales process, don't take a consultative approach and don't thoroughly qualify, then the pressure will be on you to be a great closer.  And even if you are a great closer, most of the time, it still won't be enough to get the business.

Some of the companies that have asked me to help were winning an incredibly small percentage of business.  Most of them believed they needed training to improve their salespeople's closing skills when the reality was that they were not executing the milestones and competencies that precede closing.

Winning business is not brain surgery, but developing the skills to execute an effective process, be a consultative seller and qualify effectively takes time and a lot of practice.

Great salespeople do this.  Great sales trainers know how to teach this.  Great sales managers know how to coach to this.  Nike said it best.  Just do it.  

It's not a secret anymore.