Selling
Sales Success for the Individual Contributor
Let’s start with two of my favorite personal quotes:
“Luck is what happens when Preparation meets Opportunity.” – Seneca, Roman Philosopher.
“Become the person who would attract the results you seek.” – Jim Cathcart, Author of “Relationship Selling”
Why are those quotes important? Because they point out that you are responsible for your own success.
Great companies with great products or services and great management teams make it much easier to be successful, but anyone who is prepared, curious, focused, motivated, and has a system they follow can succeed anywhere.
My experience has shown the following to be true:
- You are unlikely to succeed without preparation and understanding of your prospects, their customers, and their competition. This understanding provides the foundation for asking relevant questions to understand the real need and effectively qualify a deal in or out.
- Most sales occur because a Product or Service solves real and immediate business problems or ties into strategic business initiatives.
- Your early goals should be around getting the meeting, having real discussions, understanding problems from your prospect’s perspective (including the terminology they use to describe those problems), and helping them describe what success “looks like to them” and why that is important (logically and emotionally). At this stage, you are learning and positioning, not selling.
- Deal qualification is an essential skill that enables you to focus your time and efforts where you are most likely to succeed. The faster you can “qualify out” a prospect that is not a good fit, the better it is for you and that prospect. Eternal optimism is not a plan for filling your pipeline.
- If you have a supporting team, ensure that everyone understands the situation, their role and contribution to success, and what you want them to focus on. Never assume that things will just fall into place on their own.
- Have a repeatable process to track activities, measure progress, and identify the best next steps. Remember, “To measure is to know.” (Lord Kelvin)
- The sale is not over until your new Customer is happy. Become their internal advocate within your organization, and you will be rewarded with the customer’s trust, loyalty, and repeat business.
Ideally, your Sales Leadership Team has defined a Sales Strategy and created a couple of repeatable Sales Plays and compelling supporting materials such as Success Stories; Case Studies; ROI and TCO charts; brief but targeted Demos; and realistic Product Comparison information for internal use. These become the foundation for repeatable and scalable success.
But, if that is missing, collaborate with your peers, seek guidance from your leadership, and get creative. Remember, you are ultimately responsible for your success, so don’t allow things to become excuses or a crutch. In the words of the Buddha, “There are three solutions to every problem: Accept it, Change it, or Leave it.”
To help ensure success, you will need to follow a Sales Methodology. Here is a link to a good high-level overview from Spotio.com. I’ve used several and there are pros and cons to each. None of them effectively addresses the successful progression from:
- Initiation, Understanding, and Qualification.
- Defining a compelling Solution and successfully positioning it against the competition.
- Closing the Sale is an area in which many salespeople fall short.
The sales methodology that I personally believe is one of the easiest to use and most effective is MEDDIC. It is a Deal Qualification process, which is more encompassing than a simple Lead Qualification approach. The biggest blind spot is that it fails to address these four key areas:
- Influencers within a buyer’s organization. Knowing who these people are and their biases will allow you to direct various resources towards each and ideally provide a multi-threaded approach for each deal.
- Incumbents and the sentiment towards those vendors and their products. This is key to not wasting time on an opportunity you would unlikely win.
- Related/Adjacent needs. Being able to tie success to multiple areas provides leverage and increases the value of your solution.
- Timeline/Urgency. This allows you to work backward from milestone dates for efforts like typical lead times for Legal and Purchasing, Integration Testing, QA/QC, Training and Documentation, etc.
Being prepared, creating a common vision of success based on the outcome rather than the approach, being responsive, and developing relationships and trust based on knowledge and a desire to help are easy ways to differentiate yourself from many lesser salespeople. Invest in your skills, set aggressive goals, and always hold yourself accountable for success.
Do this and you will become part of the 20% of any sales team that ‘moves the dial.’
Are you Thinking About Starting a Business?
The last post on Starting a Business was popular, so I thought I would share a key lesson learned and then provide links to previous posts that will provide insights as you launch your own business. If you have any questions, just post them as comments; I would happily reply.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a great deal of uncertainty and opportunity. For many, now is the ideal time to explore their dream of starting a business and jumping into entrepreneurship. That can be exciting, fun, stressful, financially rewarding, and financially challenging, all within the same short period of time.
Being prepared for that roller coaster ride and having the ability and strength to continue pushing forward is important. Something to understand is that “Things don’t happen to you. They are the Direct Result of your own Actions and Inactions.” That may sound harsh, but here is a prime example:
When I was closing my consulting business down, I trusted my Accountant and Payroll company to handle all of the required Federal, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Colorado filings – something they stated they would handle, and I accepted at face value. Both companies had done a great job before, so why would I expect any less this time?
About nine months later, I started receiving letters from Ohio and Colorado about filings due, so I forwarded them to the Accountant and Payroll company. I thought this was “old business” and was being handled, plus I had moved on. It was probably just a timing error, something easy to explain away.
Skipping forward nearly three years, I had been threatened by the IRS and the Revenue Departments from both Ohio and Colorado. I started with a combined total of nearly $500K in assessments. Slowly that dropped to $50K, and then to $10K. I spent countless hours on the phone and writing letters explaining the misunderstanding. It wasn’t until I finally found a helpful person in each department willing to listen and tell me specifically what needed to be done to resolve that situation. My final cost was around $1,000. I was relieved that this fiasco was finally over.
I blamed both the Accountant and Payroll Service for these problems for the longest time. Ultimately I realized that it was my business and, therefore, my responsibility to understand the shutdown process – regardless of who did the work. I would have saved hundreds of hours of my time and several hundred dollars by gaining that understanding initially.
I was not a victim of anything – this situation directly resulted from my own inaction. It did not seem very important at the time, but my understanding of the situation and its importance was incorrect, and I paid the price. Lesson learned. It was my business, so it was still my responsibility to the very end.
Below are the other links. You don’t have to read them all at once, but it would be worth bookmarking them and reading one per day. Every new perspective, idea, and lesson learned could be the thing that helps you achieve your goal a day, week, or month sooner than expected. Every day and every dollar matters, so make the most of both!
- Comments on and a link to an on Curt Culver about Entrepreneurship.
- Comments on and a link to an HBR article about Start-ups and Entrepreneurship.
- Innovation, Intelligent Failure, and Failing Productively.
- Acting Like an Owner – Good Preparation for Becoming an Owner.
- Profitability Through Operational Efficiency.
- What Are You Really Selling?
- Continuous Improvement and a Growth Mindset.
- The Value Created by a Strong Team.
Perspective and Expectations Establish your Starting Point
We may have seen the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and now I am seeing more and more articles about the “New Normal” and “Next Normal.” Interestingly enough, I have also been seeing a few articles over the past two weeks about this being an opportunity. Once the fear, uncertainty, and doubt (aka “FUD”) began to diminish, people finally began to look for a silver lining.
Fear is a powerful demotivator, so I find it interesting that some managers and executives use it to help achieve their goals. There may be short-term gains, but the long-term effects can be devastating. In times of chaos (real or perceived), one of the best things that a leader can do is be genuine and concerned for the welfare of their team, communicate in an honest and timely manner, and display confidence as a way to help shift emotions from a negative state towards a positive state. Fear holds you and your team back.
What I find interesting is that two months ago, I posted about this unfortunate time being an opportunity – something that led to several negative comments at the time. Three weeks ago, I posted about changes coming as part of the “New Normal.” I believe this is simply insight coming into play, which is one reason why Consultants, great Salespeople, and new Executives can often add immediate value to an organization.
As an aside, diversity of backgrounds, experiences, knowledge, expertise, and opinions lead to various perspectives- fostering creativity. The best team-building practice is finding people whose strengths help cover your weaknesses.
So, perspective and expectations determine where you begin and not where you will end. The benefit of having a better starting point is that you should be in a much better position to win. The best part is that you can teach yourself to become better at identifying different perspectives. You may find it much easier to understand the big picture of whatever problem you face with that new skill.
From time to time, we are all faced with situations that we know will suck. Avoidance may be an option, but it usually isn’t the best option. The military has a saying, “Embrace the Suck,” that essentially boils down to “just deal with it.” Focusing on “the gain” (rather than “the suck”), identifying the small wins along the way, and visualizing success is part of the process that I have personally found helpful to maintaining a positive attitude and an open mind. This simple process helps balance optimism with realism and, most importantly, creates high expectations.
So, what are your thoughts? Do you want to lead or follow? There is nothing wrong with following, especially when contributing to the team’s success. Perspective and Expectations are two tools that can help in any role.
What are you doing to improve CX today?
In challenging times, minor frustrations can lead to harmful, long-term negative sentiment. Your approach to Customer Experience (CX) matters more than ever during this pandemic crisis. Your business needs to protect relationship capital and see this as an opportunity to appeal to your next generation of loyal customers.
Recently, I sold a few gold coins on an auction website. The transactions were great and concluded quickly. However, the payment arm of this organization appears to have a bug in its tracking system for USPS Registered Mail. The transaction status displayed “shipped,” but when you clicked the “Tracking” button, it was clear the package had been delivered a few weeks earlier. Still, they were holding a significant amount of money without a clear release date.
While that was a little frustrating, what happened next changed my feelings about this company. I sent several emails to Support and received canned responses. I used their chat option and spoke to a couple of “people” who were either chatbots or should be replaced by chatbots, because no matter what information I provided, the response was always the same and not helpful. Positive, consistent interactions matter!
Now, think about tens, hundreds, or even thousands of customers or prospects having problems getting information about your products and services, getting assistance with questions or support for problems, and working with your company in general. In this time of increased stress and uncertainty, the customer experience for each anticipated archetype must be as ideal as possible in order to increase engagement and loyalty. BTW, those things lead to increases in lifetime customer value, repeat business, and overall business growth.
I’ve always told my teams that “People buy easy,” so, as a group or organization, we aim to make it as efficient and frictionless as possible to conduct business with us. By doing that, being fair, and acting with integrity, we are rewarded with loyal customers who help our business grow.
Relationships develop over time, and each interaction helps determine the eventual outcome. Understanding what differentiates your company and products in your customers’ and prospects’ eyes can help you create more meaningful, consistent, and valuable interactions. People appreciate a positive customer experience, so those efforts may ultimately lead to developing Customers for Life.
Now is the time to evaluate your processes, procedures, guidelines, and interfaces. Be extremely critical as you ask yourself, “Is this how I would like to be treated as a customer?” By setting CX as a strategic priority, your business or organization will focus on eliminating friction and ensuring that your customers are treated well. Moreover, you are building a more loyal install base by supporting the activities that comprise the customer’s journey.
Investments in CX today can deliver an immediate payback and increase long-term growth.
Continuous Improvement, Growth Mindset, and an “Attitude of Better”
This was originally posted on LinkedIn.com/in/chipn
When I had my own company, we focused on providing the absolute best services in a few niche areas. Our goal was to succeed in the spaces that were important yet underserved. We identified those areas, validated the need, evaluated the competition and our competitive positioning, determined the market potential, and then made an informed decision based on that data.
But, this was not a plan for winning. It was a roadmap to places we could win, but nothing more. What would our strategy be? What specific problems would we solve? How would we create awareness around the potential impact of those problems? And how would we position ourselves as the best candidates to address those business needs? In short, what was our real purpose or raison d’etre?
Recognizing that void led to a couple of powerful revelations –
1. It is great to have a goal of being the best at something, but don’t use that as an excuse to procrastinate. Learning and improving is an iterative process, so that goal itself was not good enough.
2. Adopting an “Attitude of Better” became a game-changer. We set our focus on continuous improvement and winning. We became customer-obsessed, driven to provide better service and better results for every customer. We gauged our success by customer satisfaction, repeat engagements, and referrals.
3. But it wasn’t until we adopted an intentional Growth Mindset that our business evolved and improved.
· We leveraged every win to help us find and create the next one.
· Our team constantly pushed each other to raise the bar of knowledge, expertise, and performance.
· Just as important was what occurred next. They became a safety net for each other. Failure for one meant failure for all, and nobody wanted that. They became a high-performance team.
· We created standard processes and procedures to ensure consistency and maintain the highest levels of quality. This applied to everything we did – from working on a task to writing trip reports, status reports, and proposals. It also reduced our risks when we chose an outsourcing partner to help us take on more concurrent projects.
· Whenever possible, we automated processes to maintain consistency while increasing efficiency, repeatability, scalability, and profitability.
· We measured and tracked everything, analyzed that data, captured lessons learned, and continuously worked on improving (and documenting) every aspect of the business.
· A byproduct of this approach was that we could offer leaner pricing based on accurate estimates with very small error margins. Our pricing was competitive, we could fix the price for much of what we did, and our profit margins were very good. This allowed us to invest in further growth.
Our “attitude of better” also came across as confidence when selling to and working with new customers. Not only could we tell them stories of our success that included tangible metrics, but most of our customers became references willing to talk about the value we added. Their stories included discussions about how much better things became due to our work.
Better became the foundation of what we did and the basis of those customer success stories.
Where Ideas, Experiences, and Lessons Learned Intersect 