The Art & Science of Tech Sales

Interesting post by Dave Kahle at SalesVantage.com (Beliefs That Limit a Salesperson’s Performance). He talks about thoughts and beliefs that prevent a sales person from being successful. While I think it would be commonly accepted that a salesperson must believe in their offering in order to effectively sell, he argues it is not necessary and that he has sold many products he doesn’t believe in. For example, would an ERP sales person buy an ERP system? Can a man not sell dresses (many millionaires do)?

He argues that lack of faith in one`s own offering is often stems from an inability to understand a product from the customer’s perspective. Who cares if you wouldn’t buy your product, if customers want it, thats all that matters? Their opinion trumps yours, correct?

You say, you need to be passionate about what you sell in order to do it well? Me too. I am pretty sure I could not sell something I did not believe was great, but perspective is critical. I once read that in the early days when Microsoft products were far from perfect (like they are now), their sales people were so successful because they assumed that no products were perfect and Microsoft products were the best available.

You have to believe your customer needs your product which takes us back to Dave’s basic point, that you can sell things that you wouldn’t buy -but you have to understand the needs of the customers and make them your focus.

Tip# 1: Focus on your prospect/client’s needs. When discussing a product, a service, or a solution, present your offer in view of the prospect/client’s needs. Talk in terms that the client can relate to.

Tip# 2: Deliver value before you ask for the business. If you have done your research, you know what matters to you prospect. Look for ways to deliver useful information or referrals that will be valuable to your prospect.

Tip# 3: Cushion sensitive questions with client-friendly talk. There are a dozen questions that are critical in any sales analysis and proposition; however, they pose a potential threat to the harmony between you and your client. Some questions may make your prospect/client uncomfortable. The trick is to not ask the question abruptly and directly. Precede the question with cushion phrases leading to the question - ie “companies typically find that…” Rephrase the sensitive questions in a manner that makes your prospect/client comfortable. Doing thus will help elicit all the information that is critical for the sale.

Tip# 4: Follow-up and follow-though with your clients. Follow-up on your client’s concerns, queries, and the product or service you sold. Always stick to all promises and commitments you have made to your client.

Tip# 5: Help clients improve their businesses. When you make a sales deal, do not look at it just as a sale, but as a contract that promises to meet your client’s needs. Understanding the requirements of your client’s business not only gives you a scope to make more deals in future, but also helps increase your goodwill.

“Luck is what happens when preparedness meets opportunity and opportunity is there all the time.”

Earl Nightingale

We recently founded a not-for-profit organization called the Sales Leadership Initiative, to raise the profile of sales in the tech community and increase the pool of sales talent, particularly at the executive level. We launched in Ottawa, with bestselling author Jeffrey Gitomer (Little Red Book of Selling, Sales Caffeine, etc.) speaking to about 200 attendees about the important of sales culture and developing a sales organization (see Sales: From afterthought to forethought). He was true to form, mocking mediocrity and complacency and challenging companies to be world class. For its part, the Sales Leadership Initiative, which is organized about ten sales VP’s and execs from tech companies, are introducing programs ranging from discussion panels to mentoring. Stay tuned for more good news at www.salesleadershipinitiative.org

Eliot.

Dave Stein wrote a great blog post on how the left and right brain contribute to success in sales (Sales: Is it Art or Is It Science). He writes that both art/left brain/intuition/soft skills and science/right brain/logic/following process are required to be successful and the amount of each depends on a particular role - we couldn’t agree more.

When we define the the profile of someone who will out-perform in a certain sales role, we look at the characteristics of the “selling environment” - things like sales mission, offering type (product, service, etc), sales type (transactional, solution, etc),  typical deal, sales cycle, competitive environment, sales process, sales team culture, and on. Each role at each company has a unique set of 30+ characteristics that make up the selling environment for that position (interestingly the selling environment varies widely even for the same positions at head to head competitors). By analyzing this information as well as benchmarking the reps currently in that role, we can develop a corresponding set of skills, experience and DNA that will be required to become top performers in that role. We have made a subset of this tool available for free on our website - Sales Role Analyzer

Check out other great insight at Dave`s blog - http://davesteinsblog.wordpress.com/ - Thanks Dave!

Eliot.

Talk to any sales manager and they will tell you that hiring reliable performers is one of the most difficult things to do. Even the ones who say they have a pretty good hiring track record will typically admit that too few of their reps are at target.

Why is that? What makes hiring good tech sales representatives so hard?

With thousands of sales search projects under our belt, here are the top 10 challenges we see again and again, from small companies to large, and the antidote. (I included some links in specific items to previous blog posts on these subjects.)

1. Salespeople are used to putting the best spin on their accomplishments. (Implement in-depth screening and cross-referencing to separate truth from fiction.)
2. DNA or personality traits, are the most critical factor in sales success, but are far more difficult for the untrained interviewer to assess than experience or even skills, leading to leaps of faith in order to select the right candidate. (Use behavioral assessments and interviews performed by trained interviewers.)
3. The hiring manager may not have benchmarked the profile of the top performers currently on the team, and can’t properly characterize what they are looking for. (Define the experience, skills and personality traits that are critical for the hire to be successful, and then have the discipline to stick with it.)
4. A high percentage of active job seekers have poor sales records which conditions the hiring manager to lower the benchmark for hiring. (The hiring manager needs discipline to not settle.)
5. The best candidates are gainfully employed and are not likely to respond to your job ad, and if you are lucky enough to get to them they may not be inclined to let you to make a full objective assessment. (You need to perform a the same interview process on every single candidate so you can compare apples to apples when selecting the candidate to be hired.)
6. Many sales managers are extroverts and are naturally attracted to other outgoing people regardless of qualifications. (This is a twist on the “halo effect,” where dressed or likable candidates appears more qualified to the interviewer.)
7. Performing reference checks on someone who is employed is challenging due to confidentiality. (There are always managerial contacts that can be approached, although you may have to be creative in your approach.)
8. Verifying income is easy, but verifying performance is tricky. (Rigorous interviewing and background checks are critical.)
9. Sales managers are trained to be sales managers, not interviewers. (Anyone hiring this critical position needs to get trained or — shameless promo — to engage experts to assist in the identification and selection of the best and right hires.)
10. The pressure of the clock counting down on a quarterly target forces the sales manager to settle on the best candidate available rather than the right candidate. (From personal experience and reams of data, hiring the wrong sales team members is way more costly than making the investment in time to do this right.)

The bottom line: when making a hire this important, invest in a proven process, and have the discipline to stick to it.

Salesforce Inc. is a household name in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) area. A pioneer in providing sales and marketing information and support over the internet, the company has gone a long way to becoming the most sought-after solution for on-demand CRM support.

But they are not alone in the market. Two years ago, Oracle made a major acquisition with Siebel, a best-in-class acquisition. In spite of its massive presence in the marketplace, Oracle has lost some major deals to Salesforce in recent months and now Oracle is making bold moves with its own on-demand software. Late last year, the company announced several new Oracle-Fusion based apps intended to compete head to head with Salesforce. See Ellison: More Fusion apps coming soon.

And then earlier this year, Oracle launched a new version of its on-demand CRM software, Oracle CRM On Demand. One of the most prominent features of the latest version is its social networking capability (news, RSS feeds, social networking sites, etc - see Oracle goes social with latest CRM offering), aimed at enhancing user productivity. Today Oracle announced another app, Sales Prospector aimed at mining and analyzing information across internal systems and public information sources for top prospects, recommendations, identifying potential references and analyzing purchase        probability.

With increased demand for a browser-based software, Oracle has taken care to create friendly, easy-to-use on-demand software.

There are some great sales discussion forums on the net where sales professionals share their insight and experiences and post questions to the rest of the sales community. They are a great place to learn from your peers. Here are some interesting ones to check out.

Sales Practice - a community of thousands of sales professionals and trainers with something like 30,000 posts. If you are looking for a specific answer, chances are it is there.

Software CEO.com - the site bills itself as “page one for software execs” and there is a well read discussion board on sales and distribution with about 3500 posts at the time of this writing.

Highprobsell - an acronym for High Probability Selling. Functional for a little more than three years and seems to be quite popular. Jacques Werth, the founder of Highprobsell, is the author of High Probability Selling.

Email us if you know of other forums that our readers might want to know about.

More and more sales is becoming a science. Increasingly sophisticated buyers, fierce competition and limited resources require that every ounce of sales effort produces maximum results.

As a science, sales can be summed up as analyzing opportunities, developing strategy, determining the right tactics, methods and processes, instituting discipline, running campaigns, measuring data and tracking performance.

Beneath all of these concepts are mountains of details and choices. for instance, there are whole books of theory related to territory planning alone. There are consultants and trainers that specialize in major account strategy. There are companies devoted to providing sales dashboards and salesforce measurement tools. The notion of sales as an “art”, that you can feel your way through is a distant thing of the past.

Some trivia - the concept of a Unique Selling Point (USP) originated in the 1940’s and was a technique used in advertising campaigns that were widely successful in increasing sales of a product. A USP is intended to outline your most unique advantage over your competitors in a simple statement that a potential buyer can easily consume. Whether one works or not is for the prospect to judge.  The proof is in the pudding, …or profits.

So, what makes your product or service unique? Or for that matter, where your career is concerned, what makes you unique?

Here are a few USPs inside the slogans of some well known tech and non-tech companies.

• Salesforce.com: The Leader in On-Demand Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Adobe: Transform the way you communicate
• Federal Express: When it absolutely, positively has to be overnight — Fedex it!
• Dominos Pizza: Pizza delivered in 30 minutes or it’s free.
• M&M’s: The milk chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand.
• Barrack Obama: Change we can believe in.
• Avis Rent-a-Car: We’re number two, we try harder. (Avis is the second popular service after Hertz.)
• Burger King: We’ll make your hamburger any way you want it. Hold the pickle; hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset us.

What’s yours?