Posted by Bob Apollo on Tue, Sep 07, 2010
The quality of any conversation, whether business or social, is largely determined by who we choose to talk to, what we choose to talk about and the form of language we choose to use.
But in the business domain, and particularly as a sales person, your choices have another important impact - because if you get these choices wrong, and whether you like it or not, you’ll end up getting delegated to the person you sound like.
“Solution selling” is only part of the solution...
If you’re in high-tech, it’s hard to maintain high growth through technical product superiority alone, because the early adopters who buy that way represent such a shrinking percentage of today’s market. Today’s buyers are mostly risk-averse pragmatists who are looking for proven solutions.
That’s why many sales organisations have bought into the concept of “solution selling”. They acknowledge the advantages of solving problems rather than promoting features. They make determined efforts to sell “top down” within a potential prospect. Their top performing sales people are often successful. But many more fall short of their targets.
Zen and the art of quality conversation...
Like many of us, the protagonist in Robert M Pirsig’s best-selling “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” struggled to formally define quality - but knew it when he saw it. Now, I’m not suggesting that we need to master either motorcycle maintenance or Zen, but I believe that we can all identify the characteristics of a “good” conversation.
One of the key attributes is relevance. When I conduct voice of the customer analyses on behalf of clients, senior decision makers frequently offer the same feedback about sales conversations: “As long as I am learning something of value, you’ve got my attention. Share a relevant insight, and I’ll want to hear more. But the moment you start pitching your product, you’ve lost me”.
Cut out the techno-babble...
These decision makers weren’t interested in product features - particularly if they were described using the techno-babble that still resonates around so many high tech industries. They wanted to be sure that the vendor empathised with their problems, had valuable insights to share and had a track record of delivering relevant solutions.
They distrusted claims that the vendor’s products were better, and wanted to understand how and why they were different. They needed to be sure that if they went ahead that the vendor would help them manage change and mitigate risk. They recognised the need for someone in their organisation to understand the underlying technical detail, but they “had people who did that for them”.
What top performing sales people do well...
When you look at the habits of successful, top-performing sales people, it becomes clear that they do one thing particularly well. They are able to empathise with senior decision makers, and they understand, use and reflect their language. Their conversations are full of anecdotes, examples and illustrations.
They resist the temptation to prescribe a solution until they fully understand the prospect’s problem, the underlying causes, and why it might be important to deal with it now. They avoid dealing with product detail until the time is right, and the need is clear. And when they do, they negotiate and manage access to the prospect’s relevant internal experts.
This behaviour can be learned...
There’s no doubt that some top-performers just have a natural gift for this sort of behaviour. They have the emotional intelligence that Tony Blair recently claimed was so lacking in Gordon Brown. But this customer-aware behaviour can be learned, and average sales people with potential can significantly boost their success rates by embracing the principle.
Above all, they must learn to take their time diagnosing the prospect’s situation and avoid prematurely prescribing the solution. When a prospect acknowledges a problem, issue or a goal, they must take the time to understand the root causes, the potential consequences and who else is affected. They need to build the economic case for change before they propose their solution.
Key next steps...
How can this be accomplished? It requires a team effort. Marketing (with sales’ help) needs to identify the issues that are catalysing change within their prospects and market to these themes. Top sales performers need to share the questions and anecdotes that they find most effective in advancing quality conversations in prospects.
The organisation needs to identify the common characteristics of winning deals, and to find ways of both connecting with similar prospects and conducting similarly successful sales campaigns. And sales people need to both be coached and encouraged to share best practices in the art of sustaining winning conversations with senior decision makers.
If they sound like the right people, they are less likely to get delegated to the wrong ones...
Posted by Bob Apollo on Fri, Jun 04, 2010
Jill Konrath's "SNAP Selling" identifies the "itch to pitch" as one of the most damaging habits sales people can possibly fall into - and my own observations suggest that it's one of the most common and dangerous ways of driving an otherwise promising sale off-track and into the weeds, with little hope of recovery.
The itch to pitch - otherwise known as "showing up and throwing up" or (in particularly trigger-happy cases) "premature elaboration" is an all too common condition. It can be observed whenever a sales person, upon hearing their prospect acknowledge an issue or challenge they know they can fix, can't wait to pitch in with an enthusiastic description of their company's offering or capabilities.
"As long as I'm learning, I'm listening..."
Within seconds, the previously receptive prospect has usually completely tuned out and the opportunity has been lost - potentially forever. When I talk to today's B2B buyers, one theme comes through loud and strong - they tell me that "for as long as I am learning, I am listening. But the moment I feel I'm being pitched to, I'm outta here".
Today's buyers hate being sold to. They can't stand over-enthusiastic sales people who can't wait to tell them how great their product is, or how many features it boasts, or all the acronyms that are inevitably associated with it. And they have come (with good reason) to dread the phrase "and here's another feature...".
Missing the golden moment...
Sales people who cannot resist the itch to pitch are missing a golden moment. When a prospect acknowledges an issue that you are confident you can help with, the worst possible thing you can do is to jump straight in and tell them how.
Time to explore...
Think of their acknowledgement of the issue as a golden opportunity to explore. Instead of prescribing your "solution", determine instead to learn more about their circumstances.
What first drew their attention to the problem? What are the consequences of the problem? Who else is affected? What would happen if no fix can be found? Could they live with the status quo? Have they tried to deal with it before? With what results? Why is solving it important now?
Interesting, important or urgent...
You'll learn an enormous amount by following these lines of enquiry. You may even help your prospect to think differently, and to take a fresh perspective - and earn their respect as a result. Perhaps most important, you'll be a better position to judge whether the issue they have acknowledged is interesting, important or urgent to their organisation.
Interesting needs can get you considered. Important needs can get you evaluated. But only urgent needs will get you bought. There's no point in pitching a solution to a problem that isn't regarded as urgent. But by asking these questions, you may be able to elevate an interesting or important need to an urgent one - or to identify a related need that turns out to be truly urgent. Or you may be in a position to conclude that there's no urgent need to be solved, and nothing that you can do to secure a sale.
Making it easy to buy...
When the time finally comes to present your solution, you'll be in much better shape. You'll be confident that you are addressing a real need that demands an urgent resolution. You'll have discovered who else is affected. You'll be confident in your business case. And you'll have built a rapport and a reputation with your prospect as an expert advisor, rather than a trigger-happy sales person.
When was the last time you were exposed to a sales person who can't resist the "itch to pitch"? And how did you feel about the experience? Well beware, because if you can't resist the tendency, your prospects will be feeling the same...
Posted by Bob Apollo on Thu, Jun 03, 2010
Jill Konrath is the acclaimed author of “Selling to Big Companies”, and an acknowledged expert on the new sales strategies that are required in the face of the dramatic changes that have taken place in B2B buying behaviour. Having enjoyed Jill’s previous work, I was looking forward to reading her latest book, “Snap Selling: Speed Up Sales and Win More Business with Today's Frazzled Customers”, and I wasn’t disappointed.
The acronym SNAP reminds us that our interactions with our prospects need to be Simple, iNvaluable, Aligned and Prioritised. Simple, because we have a vital role to play in helping our prospects deal with the complexities that surround any decision making process. iNvaluable, because in a world where it’s hard for prospects to differentiate vendor offerings, we need to find ways of elevating our unique value through our interaction with them. Aligned, because we need to remain focused at all times on the things that really matter to our prospects, and Prioritised, because if we’re not dealing with issues that are urgent, we’re ultimately irrelevant.
Jill skilfully explains how these four factors play out through the three key phases of our prospect’s decision making journey, which she identifies as:
- The decision to allow us access, during which we help our prospect to move from Oblivious (no interest in connecting) to Curious (agreeing to a conversation)
- The decision to initiate change, during which we help our prospect move from Complacent (will listen to ideas) to Committed (they have concluded that the status quo is unacceptable)
- The decision to select resources, during which we help our prospect move from Open (they are considering their options) to Certain (they have made their choice)
The book is packed with simple, illuminating insights into why these principles are relevant, and how they might be applied. Jill highlights the potential pitfalls that sales people can stumble into, and helps them anticipate and avoid the roadblocks that can so often derail the best-intended sales efforts.
Jill has an engaging, easy-to-read style. I found that my copy was quickly filled with scribbled notes in the margin and that before I got to the end of the book I’d already determined to put many of the ideas into practice. I’d be surprised if you didn’t find the same.
If you’re involved in complex, high-value B2B sales, and have been looking for a guide to help you navigate today’s challenging buying climate, the few hours it will take you to absorb the ideas in this book will undoubtedly represent time well spent.
You can buy the book on Amazon UK or US. Once you've read it, let me know what you think... and which ideas you plan to put into practice first.
Posted by Bob Apollo on Wed, May 05, 2010
Many B2B-focused organisations to prefer to talk in terms of delivering “solutions” rather than selling products. CEOs speak about becoming solution-driven rather than product led. But, as I’ve observed in a previous article, that transition is by no means straightforward – or necessarily appropriate.
The s-word is over-used and frequently misapplied – to the extent that British satirical magazine Private Eye used to have a column that regularly poked fun at the worst excesses, including one hapless vendor that described the humble cardboard box as a “flexible storage solution”.
Solving the solutions problem...
Before accepting any more abuses of the English language, it’s probably worth getting back to basics. Dictionary.com defines a solution as “the act of solving a problem”. It’s clear (or it ought to be) that without a problem, you can’t have a solution.
But there’s a world of difference between identifying a potential problem and understanding its implications for your potential prospect. Many sales people suffer from what I’ve described as a premature elaboration problem – they rush to propose a solution at the first sign of an apparent problem.
Diagnose before you prescribe...
This is not only irritating for the prospect, it’s deeply damaging to the sales person’s chances of success. Research by the TAS Group and others has shown that sales people who take the time to diagnose the prospect’s underlying issues and carefully qualify the real opportunity enjoy dramatically better success – in terms of increased win rates, higher deal values and shorter sales cycles – than their over-impatient peers.
You can’t offer a complete solution until you understand the whole problem...
I’m often told by my client’s prospects that “as long as I’m learning something, I’m willing to listen. But as soon as the sales person starts pitching to me, I lose interest”. Your prospect’s first acknowledgement of an apparent problem should always be used as an opportunity to explore, to really get to the heart of the matter, to open doors rather than to slam them shut - and to uncover the whole problem.
Understanding the “whole problem” includes identifying who else is affected, determining the consequences of preserving the status quo, and – perhaps most important of all – understanding what else would need to change before a solution could be agreed and implemented.
Only then are you going to be in a position to propose a solution that addresses all of the implications of your prospect’s current situation and which stands any realistic chance of resolving the real issues.
Solutions are an exercise in change management...
Many sales people under estimate the degree of change required for a proposed solution to be effected. Some deliberately shy away from confronting the complexities in the hope that this will simplify the sale.
But this is a bad tactic on two levels: first, the buyer is going to have to navigate these complexities anyway with or without your help before they decide if and how to solve the problem, and secondly, if you do succeed in winning a sales where your new customer is faced with unanticipated issues, it’s going to do nothing to improve their chances of finding a complete resolution to their problem or of becoming a loyal, dedicated and profitable customer in the longer term.
Improving your problem solving skills...
So how can you systematically improve the problem solving skills of your organisation, and enhance the quality of the solutions you provide to your customers? At the risk of prescribing before I’ve had the chance to diagnose your unique situation, here are a few pointers from other organisations that appear to exemplify best practice in this area:
- Learn from the winning habits of your top sales performers – what questions do they ask, and what techniques do they use to qualify prospects during the all-important need identification stage of the sales process?
- Encourage all your sales people to adopt a questioning framework that really gets to the heart of the problem, rather than accepting the prospect’s first acknowledgement of a solvable problem as their signal to propose a solution
- Ensure that your sales people explore the consequences of the prospect simply continuing to live with the status quo – and identify who else would be affected
- Never underestimate the degree or scope of change within your prospect’s organisation that may be necessary before a complete solution can be achieved. Expose and confront the issues rather than sweeping them under the carpet
Please share your comments and experiences. And if you’d like to hear more about what I’ve learned from observing best solution selling practice across some of the top-performing B2B sales and marketing organisations, please drop me a line at bob.apollo@inflexion-point.com or give me a call on +44 7802 313300. I look forward to hearing from you.
Posted by Bob Apollo on Thu, Dec 17, 2009
The past year has proved challenging for some sales and marketing organisations, but others have seized the opportunity to rethink their plans, out-execute their competitors and win market share. Our own observations, backed up by the latest research from the likes of McKinsey, Stanford, the HBR, CSO Insights and others, have identified 5 strategies that seem to be particularly relevant as we enter 2010.
These strategies are already enabling top-performing teams to eliminate wasted effort, increase revenue predictability, and improve the return on their sales and marketing investments. We're pleased to share them with you here, in the hope they might prove relevant to your own situation:
How do these strategies align with your own priorities for 2010? We'd love to hear from you. By the way, we've captured some of the key implications in a 15-point checklist which you can download here.
Let me know how you get along...
Posted by Bob Apollo on Tue, Oct 06, 2009
Jill Konrath's "Selling to Big Companies" website is a must-read resource for anyone concerned with improving their sales performance. In a recent blog, Jill asked her readers to share their experiences of dealing with their prospect's perceptions of risk. It's a key challenge in today's risk-averse buying climate. Here's what I wrote:
Hi Jill
Great question - and one that’s incredibly relevant in today’s market, where the avoidance of risk may well be the predominant emotion driving buying behaviour, and where so many buying journeys end in a decision to hold off and do nothing for the moment.
I’m speaking from the perspective of complex B2B buying processes, where it seems that having a strong ROI is not enough to win the prospect’s confidence. Successful vendors are having to prove that they offer the lowest risk of all possible alternatives, including - this is critically important - the decision to simply “do nothing”.
Sales people can’t hope to emerge as the lowest risk alternative through some last-minute slight-of-hand during the closing process. The foundations need to be built from the start of the buying process. Rather than diving in to premature (product) elaboration, when a prospect acknowledges an issue, the top sales performers I’ve been able to observe seize the opportunity to explore:
- What has caused the issue to become important at this point?
- Who else is likely to be affected by the issue?
- What would be the cost/impact of not dealing with the problem?
Handled well, these and similar questions can open the door to identifying and connecting with the other affected stakeholders early on in the sales process. Just as important, they can lay the foundation for helping the prospect identify the costs and consequences of not dealing with the problem.
In fact, I advise the clients I work with to think very hard about qualifying out opportunities where the prospect cannot easily articulate the consequences of inaction – because in today’s risk-averse climate they run the risk of doing all the hard work of eliminating the competition, and getting chosen, but not getting bought.
Vendors who are able to help their prospect clearly balance the benefits of solving the problem against the costs of doing nothing, and to present this to the financial approval process, will be in a much better position to address the risk issue – and will have truly earned their role as “trusted advisor”.
What's your experience? How importance is risk avoidance in your prospect's thinking? And how have you been able to help them alleviate the perceived risks in making a buying decision?
Posted by Bob Apollo on Wed, Sep 09, 2009
Selling undifferentiated products is tough. Margins are declining, competition is increasing, and the buyer has all the power. Wouldn’t it be so much nicer if you could sell highly profitable value-added solutions instead? Well, possibly...
I’ve lost count of the number of organisations who have expressed their ambition to transform themselves from a product-driven to a solution-led sales organisation – but been sadly disappointed with the results.
Clearly, the transition is harder than it first appears – which is why many companies find themselves state of limbo that combines the worst of both worlds, saddled with expensive “value added” strategies that create little or no true customer value, but simply add cost and complexity to the operation.
My advice is to think carefully before you decide that solution selling is for you – are you prepared to commit your organisation to the change?
Becoming “solution-led” (or customer-centric, or any of the other related fashionable terms) can never be achieved simply by sending sales people on a course - it frequently requires profound changes to an organisation’s structure, priorities and mindset.
You will find that much of the activity you have taken for granted creates no meaningful value to your prospects and customers, and will need to be eliminated. You will find that some – maybe many – of your people are unable to make the transformation.
If you are prepared to make the necessary commitment, and if you can develop the right offerings for the right markets, you can indeed transform the potential of your organisation in a way that can create lasting competitive advantage. But if you fail, you may end up worse off than you were before.
My recommendations? Be thoughtful about whether becoming solution-led is right for your organisation. Be sure that you are prepared to commit to the journey. Be clear about where your real value lies. And remember:
If your prospect hasn’t acknowledged a problem, there can be no solution – and that the only one that is entitled to call it a solution is the customer.
In the next blog in this series, we’ll explore the 3 dimensions of value – but you can get a head start by considering who your most valuable customers are, what their most valuable issues are, and which of your potential actions they would find of the most value.
Posted by Bob Apollo on Sun, Aug 16, 2009
I was reflecting with a client the other day on the current economic climate, and how hard it was to recruit really good sales people, and how challenging it was to win new customers as a new technology business. It seems that these two challenges are connected.
Crossing the Chasm
Let’s start with something familiar to most of us in high-tech – the technology adoption curve, and the challenges of crossing the chasm that separates the early market from mainstream buyers. When the author Geoffrey Moore introduced the concept – nearly two decades ago – it was reasonable to believe that as much as 20% of many markets behaved like early adopters.
And it was just was well that they did, because these early adopters offered significant sales opportunities to new and relatively unproven technology companies. These early adopters bought new technology because they were interested in finding competitive advantage from new applications for emerging technologies – and were prepared to accept the risks involved.
They assessed vendor offerings in a very different way from their mainstream market colleagues, who insisted on proven solutions to identified business issues.
The Chasm is getting closer
So here’s the first issue – the chasm has moved a great deal closer. Buying behaviour has become more conservative – accelerated by the current economic climate – and most observers would now agree that early adopters now represent a single digit percentage of the buying population. It’s become even more urgent that vendors master the art of crossing the chasm and satisfying conservative mainstream buyers. There simply aren’t enough early adopters to sustain them.
Now let’s turn to the second issue before we see how the two elements are colliding together. It’s the question of the quality of the sales population. Some proportion of the sales population are intuitive sales people, inclined to have conversations and ask intelligent questions. “Solution selling” comes naturally to them, and they are able to qualify early and accurately.
Eagles - and the Flock
Unfortunately, the majority often seem less naturally gifted. Whilst generally competent, they are inclined to give presentations, to make statements and generally depend on good process if these members of the “flock” are to emulate the quota achievements of their “eagle” colleagues. There was a time when these deficiencies might be papered over. But the current tough climate has served to highlight just how few eagles there are in the sales population.
Eagles always represented a minority. I’m not sure that there were ever more than 20% genuine eagles in the sales population. But comparing notes with a number of chief executives, I’m inclined to suspect that true sales eagles may make up an even smaller percentage of the total sales population.
It's inevitably hard (and probably unwise, impossible, or both) to recruit and maintain a sales team consisting exclusively of eagles. So most vendors need to find a way of making competent average sales people more effective.
The 70% Solution
What’s the effect of the interplay between these buyer and seller trends? Here’s the problem: early market buyers have the imagination and inclination to work out for themselves how technology can be used to solve problems. But mainstream buyers need the sales person to convince them that they have a proven solution to their business issue – something that average mainstream sales people are not naturally adept at doing.
So you have a majority of the sales population who don’t naturally sell the way that the majority of the buying population want to buy. No wonder average sales performance – by a number of key metrics – has been declining.
The Answer? Dynamic Scalable Sales Process
The answer lies in crafting a dynamic, scalable sales process that embodies best practice and equips, encourages and enables the average sales person to sell the way their mainstream buyers prefer to buy – and which is reinforced by their CRM system and the sales management regime.
Much of this best practice can be gleaned by observing what the top sales performers are doing to facilitate each significant stage in their prospect’s buying process. Additional valuable insights can be learned from the behaviours and supporting processes of industry-leading sales organisations.
These processes exemplify the way the vendor intends to do business, and provide the framework for aligning sales and marketing around a common purpose, finding, winning and satisfying more of the right sort of prospects.
Using sales play books to share best practice and creating customer anecdotes databases that encourage selling through storytelling have proven to be particularly effective in reinforcing the chosen go-to-market approach.
The benefits can be striking. CSO Insights, in their latest annual survey of over 1,000 B2B sales organisations, concluded that organisations who had implemented a systematic, dynamic company-wide sales process outperformed their peers by over 30%.
About Us
Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners are B2B Sales and Marketing consultants with a systematic, evidence-driven approach to improving sales and marketing performance. To find out more, please browse our site and when you are ready, please call us on +44 (0)845 519 0295 or contact us here.
Posted by Bob Apollo on Wed, Mar 18, 2009
That's Gartners' #1 prediction in their 2009 survey of key trends in technology - and you can see why. According to Gartner, high-definition based video meeting solutions will replace 2.1 million
airline seats annually, costing the travel and hospitality industry
$3.5 billion per year.
They go on to observe that while there will always be strong cultural and
other reasons for face-to-face encounters, not every meeting needs to
be face-to-face.
The transition is already underway. It's already common for software demonstrations - particularly for cloud computing based applications - to be conducted on line.
Few of us can have missed the relentless (to the point of being unavoidable, not to mention tedious) promotional campaigns from the on-line meeting vendors about how sales costs can be reduced through this means.
And if you were determined to get caught between that rock and another hard place, what about the $40bn high-tech business unit (and a former employer of mine) who requires that all travel requests get approved personally by the head of the BU. Better have a pretty well-argued reason, I imagine...
Other than avoiding airline shares, how else are we to react? I think we need to understand where our prospects will accept remote selling, and where face to face interactions are necessary to develop trust - and when we do get face to face with our prospects, we had better make that meeting so valuable to them that they would have been prepared to pay us for it.
Face to face meetings are wasted on one-way pitches. It's encumbent on all of us to ensure that we use them as a real opportunity to bond and learn.
Posted by Bob Apollo on Sun, Nov 25, 2007
One of the pitfalls in having your salespeople naively adopt
"solution selling" is the danger that your sales people may present
themselves as knowing more about their prospects business than the
prospect does themselves - which is either unlikely or insulting ...
This was brought home to me the other day when talking to one of my
clients about a particularly salutary experience. It turns out that one
of their sales people had been calling on the VP of Procurement of a
Fortune 500 Company.
The sales person hadn't started off very well - he launched into a
premature product pitch without making any meaningful attempt to
explore the potential prospect's key issues, but things REALLY went
downhill fast when the sales person made the bold claim that they could
save the prospect 20% of their annual procurement costs.
At which point, the hapless sales person heard their so-called
prospect offer the unexpected response "Well, in that case, I guess one
of us in this room must be an idiot".
The 'prospect' explained: "If I have spent 20 years in this company,
and 5 years in this position, and somehow missed identifying how I
could have saved my company 20% in its' procurement costs, I guess that
makes me an idiot."
"However", he continued "If you can turn up on my doorstep, claiming
to be able to save me 20% on my costs, not knowing anything about my
company, and without making any attempt to truly understand my
business, I guess that makes you the idiot".
The meeting ended at that point, and needless to say, the sales
person did not leave with the order - then or at any time afterwards.
THE LESSON?
Sales people must always diagnose before they prescribe - and avoid
claiming to be able to solve the client's problems for them.
It's always better to find out how you can make your prospect a hero
- by equipping them to solve a problem, address a need, or reach a goal
that they have acknowledged - than to make it appear that they must
have been doing it wrong all these years.
Imagine how much better the sales person might have done if they had
packed the product presentation away, asked a few relevant questions -
and educated the potential buyer as to how they had helped in similar
situations through a few well chosen anecdotes.
In sales situations, it's generally better if neither party thinks that - or behaves as if - the other is an idiot!