The Sales Café

Here's something simple: how to read your customer's mind. Can you read it with certainty? Of course not. But can you read it with some insight? Absolutely.

Think about this for a moment: many of us rely on good psychics and fortune tellers who are right often enough to make a better living than most ordinary people. They're called stock analysts and brokers. When they're really good, we can make a fortune, or at least quite a few bucks on their predictions. How do they do it? There's nothing like a couple of well placed questions coupled with very good observation skills to predict the future.

What does this have to do with selling? Everything, really. The art of successful selling - and it most definitely is an art when it's successful - relies heavily on the skills of questioning and observation. We know that these are two pillars of selling, but what about before the sale, or aside from actual customer conversations?

Today, I'm going to focus on the most difficult customer mind-reading skill. This is the skill of preparation: studying public information, recognizing patterns, and making intelligent deductions (guesses) that more often than not allow you to peer into the mind of your customer before you ever meet them.
First, how do you prepare for a sales call? Do you psyche yourself up with positive self-talk? Do you spend your time on LinkedIn figuring out who the person is you're meeting and who you might know in common? Do you read 10-Ks and 10-Qs, shareholder letters and websites, competitive analysis and news reports?

Let's hope you're doing all of this and not winging it out there with all the other amateurs. Seriously - you are meeting at the buyer's pleasure, hoping to discover their needs and interests, so that you can earn the right to talk about your solutions. You need to be in the zone. You need to be on-message. And you need to be prepared. This is especially true during the opening minutes of an interaction with a buyer.

Download your customer's 10-Ks, 10-Qs and annual reports. In the management discussions and shareholder letters you will find your customer's view of the road behind and the road ahead - recent and long-term results, and short- and long- term goals. Did you know that you can also find out what your customer gets paid to do? Download the proxy statement and read the compensation committee report.

Now for the mind-reading part. What do the top executives get paid to do? What executive team (plus the direct reports, and the folks who report to those direct reports) ever focuses on anything other than what they get paid to do? The first answer gives you a significant glimpse into the mind of your customer. The second helps you check your assumptions.

While you're psyching yourself up and trolling LinkedIn for your next call, spend the time to research the public reporting and answer those two questions. Use your answers to prepare how you will explore your customer's interests when you meet them.

I'm interested to know how this works for you on your next few sales calls. If it does anything less than focus you and your customer on what's important to them and doesn't cause a few of your competitors to melt into the woodwork, I'll be very surprised.

Since the dawn of commerce, there's always been a thin line between marketing (telling the story of your product) and sales (getting someone to exchange something for your product). At one point in time, it was a chicken for some seeds while meeting on a dirt road. "This chicken will lay a golden egg for you." "These seeds willl grow the finest beans." (You get the picture.) Today, it's money/credit for products and services online. But we all started by telling our story. And, depending on which side of the line you lean (marketing or sales), your story might have a slightly different purpose, with a unified goal of making the sale.

I've always been sheltered from the sales side of my work. I worked on the "creative" side in publishing. The suits handled all the financial stuff, we creatives just made sure we offered the best content for them to sell. My only cold calling happened when I needed a quote for a story. It just didn't seem like sales to me. As my career evolved, I knew a lot of people who were already familiar with my work and my style. Through word of mouth, they hired me and, well, word gets around, so I get to write this column today.

You might say that I've been selling all along, that my quotas were calculated in word counts, white papers and blogrolls, that my leads have been honed meticulously throughout the years with every informant. My sales career is a work in progress.

Marketing and sales are intrinsically tied, but there is a definite space between the two. I experience it every day. Follow along as I tell the story of my journey to bridge the gap.

In sales, leads are everything. Who can forget the fighting over the leads in the cult sales film Glengarry Glen Ross? Everyboday wants leads.

But what makes a lead a lead? Most define leads as potential buyers and part of the first step in the sales process. With the proliferation of virtual sales, I think the high expectations of online sales have diluted the definition of a lead. A marketing lead is not a sales lead. It could evolve into a definite prospect, but it takes a few steps to do that.

Someone who visits your Web site is not necessarily a lead. In a brick and mortar world, when people walk into a store, just wanting to look, it doesn't mean they are sales leads. Sure, it's one step above window shopping, but they may not be ready or even interested in buying then. I consider this the early stage of SHOP in the four phases of customer buying.

It works the same in the virtual world. Think of how many times you've wandered through a Web site, just to check out the site. Are you a lead? Not necessarily. Depending on your intentions, it's the next few interactions that qualify you as a lead. Downloading a free paper, adding yourself to the mailing list, interacting on the site and responding to any calls to action, those are moves that move you along the lead continuum.

Unless you are just checking out the competition (and who hasn't downloaded the competition's latest intellectual property (IP)?, if you are that interested in the product or services, you are now a sales lead. You can expect to get a call from a sales person or, at the very least, an email discreetly probing about your intentions, moving you further along in the SHOP phase of the customer cycle and then into BUY.

It seems that some people were born with the genetic makeup to do their job. A case in point is the New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz. Mr. Shortz has gained prominence in his job as the puzzle king for the past 16 years at The Times and was the subject of the 2006 documentary about crossword puzzles, Wordplay.

For me, reading his story (which you can see at Talk to The Times: Crossword Editor Will Shortz) brought up the inevitable question, can you excel at your job if you are not predisposed in some way to that job? Do you have to be "born to sell" in order to be a successful sales leader?

What do you think?

Did you know that people who hold a cup of coffee or a hot drink are more prone to agree to things than people with a cold drink?

This tip, called the Coffee Cup Effect, came from the Twitter feed of @atra_intelexis (Alfredo Trabulsi) and it's had an extraordinary effect on my day, making me wonder:  What other things can we do to help people say Yes to us?

If we are in sales or marketing, it’s our job to make people agree to what we are offering them, whether it's a specific product, service or idea. I suppose the best place to start is to be agreeable ourselves. The next step, it seems, is to extend that feeling and proffer something warm and sweet. One successful sales person I know carries a large bag of Tootsie Pops around with her and hands out two with her business card. “Who doesn’t like a Tootsie Pop?” she asked me. And, by her sales results, she’s on to something.

I know that bringing chocolate and sweets to a meeting makes people more agreeable—especially during the mid-afternoon slump time. The word "Free" gives people an all-over warm feeling, too, as does the sound of their own name. (This depends on the tone of voice, however. Hearing my name spoken in a condescending way makes me quite disagreeable.)

In the end, it’s whatever you are selling that must light the ultimate sales fire for the customer. Without a strong product, service or idea, you just might leave them cold.

What do you do to get a prospect or customer to warm up to you?

Here is everything you need to know about social media networking:

It's all about the conversation.

That's it. Whether you blog, employ LinkedIn, spend time on Facebook, Twitter, post questions and answers on Sales 2.0 or even make daily visits to your dog's breed site and forum, you are engaging in a conversation. Conversation is the "informal interchange of thoughts, information, etc.," according to Random House. Okay, so usually it's spoken, oral communication and, for the most part, this is written (but that is changing quickly with the influx of video communication). But I submit to you that the reason you are engaged in any of these social endeavors, and what keeps you going back, is for the interaction with the other people on the site. 

Sure, you are trying to sell them something, but isn't the conversation where sales starts? In a cold call, it might begin with "Hi, my name is..." or "What do you do when you need...." On LinkedIn, it's posting your professional information--your background, your current work--and trying to drum up a following of contacts by talking to them. On Facebook, it means sharing something about yourself with your friends and colleagues. It's all a conversation.

The saying goes that no product moves without salespeople. The point here is that no sales happen without a conversation. And for many products and services today, the conversation is happening on social media.

ELA's lead generation survey results are in!  Nearly all respondents are from or with sales organizations where they are responsible for the relationship or partnership with their customers. Everyone expects salespeople to generate new leads, every month.

The best return on time invested included local networking/public speaking and asking for referrals.  Over 80% thought the lead generation approach used was vital or important to developing trust.

Respondent advice on lead generation ideas sorted into four primary buckets.

• 1) Reward lead generation activity as part of overall sales process
• 2) Focus on the Customer in all interactions
• 3) Be professional including making and keeping commitments to prospects
• 4) Always provide value by knowing your product and value proposition

Since relationships are based on trust, then the lead generation approaches like asking for referrals, networking, and public speaking must cultivate trust between the prospect and the sales person.  Let's create a list of tips for each approach that are both effective and build trust.  I will post a short ELA RTG blog entry on each approach over the next few weeks.  You can enhance the approach by adding your comments and ideas. 

Thank you to all who participated.

 Managing Outside-In selling means staying plugged into the real world

by Jeff Williams

In parts 1 and 2 of the blog series on Outside-In selling, we discussed the importance of putting yourself in the customer’s shoes and viewing everything your sales force does from an “outside-in” perspective. This includes the realization that the sales cycle must be aligned to the customer’s buying process, and that having a superior product does not always make you the winner. In this installment, we examine the ramifications that the Outside-In selling approach has on sales management behavior.

Although it may sound like a simple-minded cliché, in an Outside-In sales organization the customer is truly King. This can be unnerving for sales managers, who may have built their success on always having the answers to guide their sometimes fledgling sales representatives. However, in an Outside-In sales organization, everybody needs to listen to the customer. Yes, everybody . . . even the highly experienced sales managers. Since the world is ever changing, listening has emerged as one of the most significant skills that separates reasonably successful sales managers from stellar performers. 

Listening to customers directly is crucial to maintaining an understanding of what is relevant to the target customer base -- what business challenges they are wrestling with, and how your product/services portfolio can help address those needs. In addition, sustaining a close connection with customers is essential to understanding how your portfolio may need to change to continue to be relevant and competitive.  For many sales managers, face time with customers tends to diminish over time as internal administrative duties tend to consume more and more of their day, leaving less time for direct customer interaction. This raises two challenges for the sales manager. 

First, a conscious effort must be made by the sales manager to get out of the office and spend time with customers in the field. Scheduling a minimum number of sales calls per week is a good way to make sure these opportunities don’t begin to trend towards zero.

Second, and at times more difficult for the sales manager’s ego, the manager must begin to rely on what she is hearing from her sales reps as a window into what is happening in the real world. Listening to sales reps can bring much needed information “from the front lines” regarding competitive shifts and new unmet market needs. The trick is to develop a viable mechanism to encourage sales reps to share this information, without fear of reprisals.

One technique I witnessed that was very successful was the following: 

During the annual sales award dinner at a Fortune 500 company, impressive looking glass trophies were handed out to the top 50 sales reps, based upon criteria such as highest year-over-year growth, most dramatic competitive turnaround, and best team player. OK, so far, nothing out of the ordinary, every company bestows these awards to motivate its sales reps. What came next was different, however.  Following the individual recognition awards, all 320 sales managers in the region, from district managers to the region EVP were called up to the stage to receive a smaller, but nevertheless substantial looking trophy. On each trophy was a short, but revealing sentence:  “Sales Rep Opinions Valued Here.” The sales managers were instructed to go back to their offices and place the trophy in front of their telephones as a constant reminder to the importance of listening to their sales reps.  Needless to say, the distribution of the trophies brought a cheer from the entire audience of sales reps, and ushered in a new era of communication between sales managers and their representatives.

Let us know how you view the topic of sales managers staying in touch with their sales reps and customers by taking just a few minutes to answer this quick 5- questions survey.  In return, we will send you the results.   

Pleae click here to take the Outside-In Survey!

You’re on your way to an important meeting. Let’s say it’s with a prospect your company has been pursuing for two years and the COO has agreed to meet with you. You know she’s got a trough of problems – that’s what your sales team has found out so far, at least.

You’ve got an hour-long drive. You call your mate to check in. Your eastern regional sales manager calls because two of his salespeople just won big deals. You get stuck in lunchtime traffic at the bridge. You check your Blackberry (c’mon, admit you do). You turn on the news and none of it is good. You switch to a music station. As usual, none of that stuff is good either. You arrive at your destination, wait for fifteen minutes in the lobby, check your Blackberry three more times, and then finally go to your meeting. Sound familiar? Is it any wonder that listening skills are at a premium in the 21^st century?

This post isn’t about “listening skills” – nodding at the prospective customer while she answers your questions, repeating what she says and using her name, so that you’ve indicated that you’ve heard her (and hoping you did). It isn’t about quieting the noise in your head either. You didn’t really need to check your Blackberry six times in the last hour, did you? And, it isn’t about a technique to try and reconstruct that most important morsel of information your prospect has just told you, that you’ve just missed while your brain has been multi-tasking. You know, the one tidbit that means the difference between a $200K sale and a $2M sale. You’re a senior sales executive – a trained professional! You know this stuff by now.

Let me turn you onto a little tip, something that you may not know unless you happen to play jazz, blues or some other type of improvisational music. This tip will perhaps help you quiet your brain and get the bigger deal that solves all of your prospect’s problems.

Think of a great jazz show you’ve attended. If you haven’t been to one, then go, they’re good for you. Then, come back and read this again.

What distinguishes a great jazz performance from a good one is the listening skill, not the playing skill of each musician. In this day and age, any musician you hear on stage is highly skilled at playing their instrument, but many of the musicians you hear are lousy listeners. The great stuff that’s making you bob your head and dance in your seat is the interplay between the musicians – the subtle adjusting, reacting, leading, and inventing that goes on chorus after chorus. (For all you non-musicians, a chorus is each time the song goes around.) Each solo you hear is a product of both individual invention and supportive collaboration.

All of this fantastic interplay is grounded in intuition. This intuition isn’t something these musicians were born with. Their intuition was developed by paying attention, in other words listening, to what’s going on around them; absorbing the mood of the piece, moving to the rhythm, and inventing counter-melodies to something the bass player or singer might be doing at that moment. We jazz musicians call this improvisation, but really it is an intuitive management of the situation combined with an invention – original or not – that suits it.

One additional point: When you find yourself bored or yawning during one of these shows, it most likely isn’t that you don’t like jazz, or that you haven’t gotten enough sleep the night before. It’s because the musicians on stage aren’t there. They’re playing licks that they’ve played a thousand times in the same way and even though you may not have heard those notes in that particular way, the notes lack energy and creativity. These licks are not born of the moment, they are standard issue notes grounded in past years of meticulous practice and current situational distraction. It’s the soloist’s stock marketing material. No wonder you’re bored, who isn’t?

So what does this have to do with a sales call? The short answer is everything. As you know by now, anything can and does happen during these calls. Whatever you’ve heard before, or heard from your team is only information. What goes on during a sales call is all possibility. There is a rhythm and a mood to each one of these situations that calls for intuitive management and invention, energy and creativity.

To play like a jazz soloist, you need to listen like a jazz musician. Don’t rely on your licks, your marketing material, and your pre-planned competitive differentiation strategy. If you’re good at that stuff, you’ll get the $200K deal. When you’re on, you need to forget that stuff, and forget the jibber-jabber on your Blackberry as well. Key into the people in the room. Listen, absorb, react, and observe, and then step out and “take a solo” that’s driven by your intuition. That’s the difference between a good and great performance.

Peter Krammer is Managing Partner of ELA Consulting Group, co-author of Let Your Music Soar with Corky Siegel, and a jazz guitarist.