Change the Sales Curve

Change curves are a powerful tool – I think they ought to be taught at school since few people are well equipped to deal with all the challenges that relationships present. Change curve stem from how people behave when they experience a shock such as an unexpected death. The typical stages are something like Shock, Denial, Resistance, Exploration and Acceptance.

Many of these stages are common to sales. The cold call is where you'll hit Denial or Resistance. “We don’t need that”. “The problem isn’t that serious – we don’t need to fix it”. Using the change curve can help you in sales. By understanding where your prospect is on the curve, you can tailor your message and help progress the sale towards Acceptance.

Change curves don’t solve all problems – just like real life some people can get stuck on the curve for example not being able to accept and come to terms with a death which happened 20 years ago. 

So don’t expect all your sales to be magically turned around. Change curves can help you look at the sale from a different perspective - you'll be working on the sale not in the sale!

Getting Past the Bouncers

It seems getting the attention of prospective customers can be one of the hardest thing in sales. Once you've broken the ice things often seem to flow much better. The trouble is that people have night club bouncers guarding their brain – protecting it from unnecessary information. There's an almost automatic defence reaction - “Whatever you're selling, we dont need it”.

Why is that?

Interestingly you may think people are highly rational but the reality is the reptilian brain  (the oldest part of the brain which is separate from the left and right brain - it's job is to keep you alive) is usually in control. It's busy filtering out all the irrelevant messages. You might think getting past the over zealous secretary is hard – reptile brain can be far worse.

On the first encounter, the prospects' reptile brain is evaluating your opening message and deciding – fight, flight or ignore. If you're pitch looks like something else that's been rejected then guess where you're headed.

How do you get past security then? Just like stage hypnosis, you need a mechanism to get past this zealous protector of the brain. Stage hypnosis works by using shock or confusion – if your sales pitch causes shock or confusion , the reptile brain needs some help from the more intelligent brain since your confusing message is beyond the processing power of the dinosaur relic.

Examples of how to cause confusion. “We don't need xyz?”. “Abolutely. That's exactly why we should meet to discuss”. Here they are expecting you to argue but instead you agree! OK this was a simple example but it will throw them off guard for a couple of seconds. You need to use those couple of seconds before the defensive shutters come down again.

Other ways to get past security are to not be seen as a threat. If you are asking too much of them then you are a threat. If you are simply asking for a few minutes of their time to ask a few question to see if you MIGHT be able to help then you are not making too big requests and not making wild claims so there is more willingness to have a short exploratory conversation.

In summary using confusion (in a positive way) can create openings and making sure you are not seen as a threat are the ways to be more successful in the opening approach.

Sales partnerships

It seems fashionable to say your customers are your partners.

How many sales partnerships truly operate on a partnership basis?
I usually come back to the real world of relationships to validate concepts and this one is no exception.  A marriage is a partnership.  I'm  a bit hazy on exactly what I signed up to on that big day many years ago but I definitely remember something along the lines of "for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health".  Pretty much it said "Hey guys you're entering into a partnership - it could be a roller coaster ride - are you happy to accept that the value of your relationship can go up as well as down?"

So back to our partnership selling - does it really extend to the same level of commitment?  The seller may think they are in a partnership but does the buyer?  What if the seller has convinced the buyer that they are in a partnership and then really call upon their "friendship".

Customer: Things are not going so well.  We need to invest in the factory to reduce our costs but haven't got any cash. Will you lend us the equipment for 1 year to see us through this tough time?
Salesperson: That's a big ask! I don't think we can swallow that.

I think most sales partnerships are fair weather relationships. I also think most sales  relationships are one sided.  The customer usually holds the power to walk away from the relationship more than the seller.

I think when most sellers use the term partnership, they are thinking about what's in it for them - locking in the customer. Some buyers do think of some sellers as partners - it's when the cost of walking away from the relationship is high - one that causes a lot of heart-ache and angst.

How people behave in parternships is also different to a classic transactional relationship of buyer-seller.

I recommend reading Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational.  It's kind of an economics book but he does some great real world experiments that are very relevant in sales.  There's one example which I think was fascinating. It revolves around a child day care centre that had a problem with parents collecting their children late.  So the care centre decided to introduce a financial penalty for late collection.

Interestingly this changed the social norms of this buyer-seller relationship.  Parents were in fact feeling guilty about late collection but the transition to one where it was financial had the unexpected effect of parents being even later collecting their children.  There was a social norm part of this "partnership" and the rules were changed. The care centre didnt want this so they changed it back but too late - the damage was done. The parents now had the benefit of a guilt free late collection and no financial penalty either !!

Prior to the rule change parents had guilt - they hadn't put a price on guilt.  Charging for late collection changed that - it now had a price and parents could weigh up how much being late was worth to them!

What's the moral of this story?  Well if you intend to run your sales on a partnership basis because you're following the fashion, understand what it is you're signing up to.  Once you operate on a partnership basis you are in this for the long haul - just like a marriage. Changing the rules mid way because things have got a bit tough can have unexpected consequences.

Marriage is a good benchmark for behaviour in a partnership.  What kind of change to your marriage relationship would you get if your wife presented you with a price list for sexual favours?

If you're inheriting an account make sure you understand where you are.  If the previous account manager had shown lots of good will and flexibility supporting the customer and you come along with a black or white approach to the account, the mood of the relationship will change - beware!

Purpose Outcome Structure Timing

Having a plan for sales meetings, before the actual meeting will improve your chances of success.

Winging it is not a good strategy. You really need to think in advance what is the Purpose of the meeting and what is the Outcome of the meeting.  You want the Purchase Order (PO) so think about the Purpose and the Outcome.

Be realistic about what can be achieved in the meeting.  Ideally think about what  the customer wants from the meeting - not just what you want. If you draw an analogy with dating - you might want sex on the first date but is it realistic?  Having a clear view on small incremental steps forward towards the end goal is important otherwise you can end up in a protracted Engagement and never get Married (get the sale) or worse still turn the sale off by being too pushy!

Using the POST (Purpose Outcome Structure Timing) tool will help you have more effective sales meetings.
Purpose - what is the reason for the meeting.  If it's a first meeting the purpose might be to introduce yourself and the company and what's in it for them. 

Outcome - the outcome from a first meeting might be to confirm there is an opportunity for what you are selling and agree to further meetings

Structure - might be a face-to-face informal meeting over a coffee

Timing - a 20 minute information sharing session.

Gratitude

This is an interesting article. http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/gratitude-true-secret-to-success.html

The jist of the article is that glass half full people are more successful than glass half empty.. If you think about what things you have done well it will lead to success whereas if you dwell on the things that went wrong (even if they were a success) then it breeds internal resentment.

Certainly the brain can be conditioned and build negative emotions so there is no reason it cant build positive emotions.

My personal take on this is that  there are some people who are perfection driven and they are quite clearly glass half empty people. These people tend to be "away from" motivated - their drive for perfection is they want to get away from imperfection.

This article is more about self gratitude however I think an interesting side effect of glass half empty mentality is that generally if they feel unhappy about their own progress they are probably going to feel unhappy about other people's progress.  Showing gratitude to other people and recognising and rewarding effort, particularly when the person doesn’t feel confident of their abilities can be a powerful motivator.

Truthful selling

Selling  does have a bit of a reputation for being dishonest. Not necessarily lying but then again not fully exposing the full facts.

If I contrast that with relationships - trusted relationships require a good degree of honesty and truthfulness.

So does being completely open and honest win you more business than being selective with the truth? Whilst researching this, I found several articles suggesting this tactic works well, there was however little empirical evidence to show that is that case.

Exposing the truth can clearly  un-sell something - I've had direct experience of this myself but I've also had situations where the sales person helped convince me by divulging short-comings.  So what was different? Why did one sale progress and the other not?

In the first case I can barely remember the sales person yet in the second, I can recall them quite well and their approach helped me feel that they were trustworthy.

Clearly my analysis here is based on a sample size of two but I think the difference here is where the truthfulness was in the sales cycle.  In the first sale, I was not sold and therefore not yet convinced I wanted to buy. Exposing negatives just helped me to convince myself  that I didn't want to buy.

 In the second example I was sold on the product.  Reflecting back on this, the sales person new what was important to me and the product fitted those requirements.   I'm pretty sure he knew the volunteered down-sides were not important issues for me, so in reality volunteering the information didn't detriment the sale of the product - it improved my perception of him as being a truthful person.

So contrasting that with relationships I came up with the following.  Lying on a first date will probably not win you long term success with a relationship since you will be probably found out - the same must be true in sales. Exposing all the negatives about you on a first date will not help you win the heart of your date.  Do you  think they really want to know about your bad habits?  As a relationship matures, the dark secrets of your bad habits can be leaked out and provided they are not show stoppers (for example you killed your whole family) they can probably be accepted and will not detriment the relationship/sale.

So does it pay to be honest and transparent early in the sale?  This week I did an experiment to find out. It was a very first sales engagement for a new technology.  The prospect was aware of the competition but hadn't done any evaluation.  In this case there are about 5 companies in the world to choose from - each one is different and because it is a new area, there is a lack of clarity about which product is the "right tool for the job". Although I am representing one of these 5 companies, the approach I took was to act like a consultant.  By helping the prospect understand the strengths and weaknesses of each product, it lead to a more open discussion - much quicker than I would have expected. Again this is a sample size of one and maybe the rapport would have built up quickly anyway without this approach.  Although I am not telling the warts and all situation at this stage, comparing the relative strengths and weaknesses was a useful approach since it helped flush out what was important to the prospect. This is a new area so he didn't really have a good picture of what his needs are.

As this sale progresses, I provide updates on any insights I glean from this approach.

I would conclude being truthful in sales is a good strategy but timing the whole truth requires judgement. No product is 100% perfect so the trick is to make sure the negatives for your offer don't take your product from 90% to 0%.

Relationship Selling

I read this blog post How to Turn a Relationship Into a Sale.

It raised some interesting points so I felt compelled to write a blog post. The essence of the blog is that if you have a strong relationship within an account it can be high value.  I think it's worth focusing in on the word 'relationship'.  I'm busy writing a book on selling drawing comparison between selling and dating (romance). Not all sales warrant a relationship.  You'd think it a bit freaky if the person selling you a pair of jeans wanted to hang out and be friends.  Complex sales require an on-going relationship since there is an on-going need after the initial sale for example product support, maintenance and enhancement. Ultimately it is like a marriage.

The jist of the blog is that if you give into the sale it will be beneficial. Now contrast that with a marriage. If there is no trust then the relationship will fail. If there is no give and take in a relationship, it will lead to divisions and rifts.  It should not be a surprise that in complex sales relationship needs to be two way. It is not simply about taking the order and shipping product/service.

Strong relationships can overcome differences, challenges and the hard times.

I have come across my share of sales "professionals" that weren't bothered in helping me out unless they saw a purchase order as a result.  I may have needed them but it was not a mutual relationship. They wanted/needed my money but not necessarily me !  In the long term this relationship was at risk of suitors coming along and whisking me off my feet with their attention.

Fostering long term mutual relationships can be a powerful way to retain account loyalty.

As with real relationships, this gifting and mutual exchange needs to be real.  It can't be just going through the emotions otherwise it is like being in a marriage of convenience without love.  Simply giving because of some Machiavellian ulterior motive will come across as false. The relationship needs to be genuine.

Interestingly I've come across situations where a strong relationship can be a hinderance. When I have
tried to sell into former employers, this deep knowledge of their business can trigger defensive behaviours.
I compare this to someone of the opposite sex that you've been friends with since childhood. To suddenly be in a romantic relationship with them is a change in the relationship - it is not a straight forward transition or evolution - the roles of the relationship have changed. 

Looking at long term sales relationships, I can see some organisations reacting when they read the How to Turn a Relationship Into a Sale blog post. Any change in a relationship needs to be done carefully and evolve over time. 

I liked the "You know what I do. Is there anything we can do to help you?".  A powerful right brain question.

A good blog post which has given me some ideas for another chapter in my book.