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June 4, 2011 stacySales 4.0 - B2B Lead Generation
I have spent a great deal of my life in sales, both as a salesperson and as a sales manager. As a consultant, I have also been afforded the wonderful opportunity, being asked by many executive teams, to evaluate and improve their sales & marketing strategies. This means, I have had an unusually large exposure to the inner workings of multiple companies in multiple industries.
Time and time again, I run into one major misunderstanding that affects 90% or more of salespeople and sales managers. Want to know what it is? ANSWER: they almost always build a sales process off of their agenda – trying to “close the sale” instead of making it easier for the prospect to “buy”according to the process the customer is using. I’ll explain.
Most sales people approach a sale on a “sell cycle” which consists of 4 steps:
Prospecting
Needs Analysis
Quote / Propose
Close
Can you see it? Customer’s don’t buy this way. Especially as the sale increases with complexity. You know it, I know it and the customer knows it…but time and time again salespeople and managers work this process because – they are focused on “closing”.
As the modern day executive looks as purchasing new products and services, they actually go through a 9 step buy cycle which looks like this:
Listen – (can you get thier attention?)
Interest – (does it interest them?)
Value – (do they see value?)
Explore – (willing to look at options?)
Decide – (100% they have to do it – might not be with you however)
Ability – (Can you deliver – prove it!)
Cost Justification – (Does it make financial sense?)
Best Alternative – (are you better than competitors?)
Buy – (Let’s ink it baby!)
Can you see how different that looks when compared to how most salespeople approch a selling process? This is exactly why when a sales manager asks one of his team how close to closed a deal is…the sales person will usually say something like “its about 90% closed”. Which is complete garbage most of the time. What’s the difference between 90% closed and 91% closed? EXACTLY! It might be 90% closed in the sales person’s process but its only 20% closed in the buyers process. If you leave just one of these items open…it can come back to bite you, and it could cost you the sale.
Companies would be better served to align their sales processes with the way their customer’s buy. It also gives sales managers a wonderful tool to actually understand where prospects are in the process and how to maximize strengths and limit liabilities.
If you have a bunch of customers who aren’t buying into your “ability” conversation, then perhaps it would be wise to build more case studies or get testimonials or create sales materials based on processes you use…anything to get you over that hurdle.
Good sales people, typically work the “buy cycle” process naturally. That’s why they are so good. They naturally ask the prospect things like “how would you like to explore this”, or “how are you going to cost justifiy this” and believe it or not, prospects will tell you exactly how to sell them. That is if you work the system. You ask, they tell, you do and you move it down the field. Its a beautiful thing. Oh…and BONUS! Using some of this system will give you actual things to talk about in sales meetings instead of saying things like Company ABC is 90% closed.
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