What’s in a name?  Well, there seems to be some confusion in the market place around the terminology used to describe those people who pay us money for goods, services, experiences, donations, etc.

Different industries can have different terms for the consumers of their products and/or services.  We see terms such as customer, client, patient, guest, patron, member, subscriber, donor, etc. used to describe a person who buys our products or services and intends to use them directly.  In short, these terms are referring to the same person – the ‘end user’.  However, not everyone ‘consumes’ our products or services or is the intended ‘end user’.  Some people or businesses buy our products or services to ‘on sell’ them to another party, often the final end user, but not always.

Many industries might a have a chain of buyers and only one will be the end user.  For instance, if we follow the chain from the manufacturer who sells via a wholesaler (partner or client) who then sells to a retailer (client or customer) who then sells to the end user (customer or consumer), we can have several terms to distinguish who’s who.

If this is your situation, it does help to define who is who by having specific terms such as ‘client’, ‘member’, ‘customer’ or ‘consumer’ so we can keep track of our actions and key messages as each of them may want something different from you, and as sales people we need to know who we are working with.  For instance, you may use ‘client’ for the retailer and ‘consumer’ for the end user to keep roles and communication clear.  Marketing and advertising agencies use the term  ’client’ for their direct customers since marketers also have to refer to the consumers of the client’s products.

So where does ‘member’ feature?

Some businesses, often retailers, use ‘member’ to distinguish between those who buy regularly from them compared to those who do not.  They want to set up memberships so as to attract and retain regular users of their products/services and reward them with greater benefits or discounts so they keep coming back.  It’s a way of building up your database to build a tribe of followers or a community of users or supporters which, if done correctly, can make future sales that much easier to attain.  Retailers often have membership cards and reward programs for regular purchasers of their products or services.  There are usually benefits and special privileges to being a ‘member’ but essentially a member is a ‘customer’, ‘end user’ or ‘consumer’ of your business.  This means you can have customers and members in the same business.

When having ‘members’ can be a problem for sales growth

To avoid any challenges, you need to make sure that before you embark on a ‘membership’ program there are very clear definitions and actions in place that distinguish membership from customers.  However, do not make the mistake of thinking once a person is a ‘member’ that you do not have to sell.

We are seeing a trend in some businesses who claim to be there for their ‘members’ or ‘member associations’ dissociating themselves from the function of ‘selling’ when their members are customers.

Because these people choose to be ‘members’ of these businesses there is an expectation of being kept informed of the latest trends, best buys or ‘right’ options for them, or why would you bother being a member.  You expect the membership team to keep in touch with you and to help you make good ‘buying’ choices and decisions.  You trust them to offer products and services that meet your needs.  After all, they should know your current preferences and buying patterns.  Members expect to deal with people who are skilful in client centric consultative sales practices even if they do not know to call it that.

However, when speaking to some of these membership businesses we find a deep reluctance to acknowledge and admit that the skills they want their membership teams to be competent in, such as prospecting and client centric consultative sales communication practices, are indeed selling skills.

By denying this practical reality, member organisations can end up developing teams who are reactive, passive and reluctant to engage in proactive, problem solving, solution based interactions with members.  The number of membership based businesses that swear that being a member and a customer are mutually exclusive, are fooling themselves and are doing a disservice to themselves and their members.  By telling their people “we are not sales people, we do not use the word selling, we have members” creates cultural and competency issues.

I am happy for people to call their ‘end users’ members, patients, guests, donors, patrons, subscribers, customers or clients as long as they recognise that serving the end user of buyers of your products and services properly means employing ethical, consultative selling skills and processes if you mean to exchange something of value i.e. money for your products or services.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of sales people around the world use sales scripts.  Used properly, sales scripts act as scaffolding or bridgework to earn us the right to have a meaningful discussion with our prospecting customers, members, donors or subscribers.  The sales script is a well constructed set of guidelines that support us when we prospect.

Good sales scripts:

• are purposeful – have a clear reason why you are calling someone;
• use language the customer understands;
• are designed for the benefit of the listener with it always being “the prospects choice” to accept or reject what they hear;
• are brief and allow for questions and conversations;
• aim to achieve a result – an appointment, donation, purchase, feedback, etc;
• are planned not canned –they are flexible, allowing the sales person to adapt to the different needs or queries of the prospect whilst maintaining the integrity of the call’s purpose;
• leave the prospect feeling valued and informed, even if they choose not to proceed with you in this instance; and,
• are pleasant, respectful and engaging.

However, too many organisations push sales scripting too far creating word-for-word scripts that end up being stilted and clumsy at best and one-sided and ineffectual at worst.  We had an experience recently with a telecommunications firm whose telephone sales and service people seemed unable to deviate from a scripted response as the responses they gave us had nothing to do with our issue.  The impression this gave us was that our issue wasn’t even heard let alone acted upon – it didn’t fit their script.  The number of times we had to request information to check that our matter would be dealt with made the whole experience cumbersome, time consuming and very frustrating.  We ended up doing all the work, while the telephone sales and service person simply read from a script, which, as it turns out, could not account for our matter in its design.

Sales scripts are not meant to be regurgitated word for word with no deviation, nor are they meant to be a one-sided affair.  This type of approach is called ‘canned’ scripting.   You would think that in this day and age we would have ditched these ‘canned scripts’ but they still happen.

The Cluetrain Manifesto (a resulting force that rose out of the discontentment people experience with businesses and how they fail to communicate with people) really nails it when it says:

“Learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about ‘listening to customers’.  They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.  While many such people already work for companies today, most companies ignore their ability to deliver genuine knowledge, opting instead to crank out sterile happy talk that insults the intelligence of markets literally too smart to buy it.”

Building on this and taking the canned script one step further, some companies and political parties have even ditched the live person on the other end of the phone and opted for a recording instead.  And this is supposed to engage us?  This is free-to-air television advertising or junk mail in disguise.  At least with television we can choose what we watch and we can put a ‘no junk mail’ sign on our letter box but getting ‘canned’ advertising over the phone takes the biscuit in my opinion.  Yes there is the ‘do not call’ register which you can sign up to, however resorting to ‘recorded messages’ is lazy and only serves to create more angst in the already heated area of telemarketing.

If done properly, telephone sales is a very effective way of getting in contact with legitimate prospects.  But when scripting removes the ability to genuinely listen and respond to a customer, we all suffer.

If you want to create positive and memorable experiences for your customers, members, donors or subscribers then seek to engage with them in a meaningful way.  Don’t force your sales people to be rooted to the spot and limited by a one-size-fits all script.  Trust your team to engage with people in meaningful ways by giving them the guidelines and tools they need to communicate effectively with the wide variety of people they encounter on a daily basis.  The autonomy this gives your people puts back interest and challenge in the task of making effective prospecting calls and in the process might make the customers, members, donors or subscribers’ experience that much better.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

The New Competition was voted by you as the number 7  Sales Trend for 2010.  Over the coming years, we will see collaboration become the new competition.  Markets around the world are crying out for collaboration as innovation and differentiation become scarce in a sea of commoditised products and services.

Sales people who see themselves as collaborators, both internally (colleagues, departments) and externally (customers, competitors), will prosper more than ever during 2010 and beyond.

A large 5 year long research study conducted by B. Rosenbaum, Business Horizons, entitled Seven Emerging Sales Competencies and published in Jan/Feb 2001 revealed what makes highly successful sales people.  His research, among other key findings, showed that the most highly successful sales people are indeed collaborators.  In his research of over 1,000 B2B sales people across 5 years he found that top performers:

• collaborated with colleagues and did not allow competitiveness to get in the way of good business, and often assisted their colleagues in achieving their best by sharing ideas, information and resources;
• orchestrated internal resources so as to benefit the company, its people, and the customers and their people;
• invested time building collaborative, customer focused relationships inside their organisation;
• created an alignment between the customers’ and suppliers’ strategic objectives;
• looked to further the interests of their customers’ firms as well as their own;
• expanded the customer’s understanding of what a business relationship can be;
• built a flexible relationship that is responsive to marketplace changes;
• creatively drew on the full resources of the firm or business;
• introduced customers to other suppliers and potentially valuable support resources; and,
• invested time building collaborative, customer focused relationships inside their organisation.

These findings are not new as you can see.  However these qualities are still seen, if they are seen at all, as a novelty by most senior managers which is a major risk moving forward in such changing times.  Rosenbaum’s research revealed that, sadly, the vast majority of sales managers were completely unaware that these and other distinguishing qualities were what made their high performing sales people highly effective and successful.  What he observed is that these sales superstars where acting and performing this way despite management.  They knew what they needed to do to get the results.  It’s such a pity that their managers did not.

As I wrote recently, many sales teams are still held hostage by old school sales management practices and outdated mindsets that encourage internal competition, league tables and the like.   Too many sales leaders are still stuck in the 1980’s with ‘greed is good’ and ‘carrot and stick’ philosophies which do not work in the long term and only serve to hold us back in a 21st century world.  Most sales rewards are still self serving, endorsing selfishness which is completely at odds with the new world of collaboration and our natural state of being.

Daniel Pink’s new book Drive focuses a big spotlight on this very issue – what motivates us.  He reports that what business thinks works by way of motivation is not what the science shows or the vast majority of people want.

Besides the commoditisation of products and services, Rosenbaum’s research, Daniel Pink’s findings, and other corroborating research, the advent of social media and the multiple levels of engagement we can now have with our clients, suppliers and key stakeholders means that we need to work collaboratively with each other.  And this collaboration needs to take place across marketing, sales, service, supply, production and finance if we are going to create the ideas and solutions needed for our success in the 21st century.

Those 21st century enlightened salespeople will be the conductors or connectors of viable and valuable relationships across many levels.  They will be open-minded, humble and astute, and they will see patterns of connection and synergy in many places.  They will recognise that we are all interconnected and without kindness and cooperation we cannot exist.  They will identify competency and harness talent to achieve effective solutions. They will know that they are working towards something larger than themselves.  And they will know that their success is a shared success they will celebrate collectively.

So we need to get with the program and rethink our approach to sales motivation, sales mindset, sales skills, sales rewards and teamwork if we are to remain viable in this world.  Collaboration calls for a team effort.  Sales teams where everyone is pitted against each other to achieve ‘top dog’ status will be replaced by a ‘lead team’ approach.  Companies that want to bring in new business and grow and develop existing customers will rely on the united hands of many – rather than just one.  Successful sales people of 2010 and beyond will leverage the power of collaboration over competition because they understand that relationships never work if they are forced and manipulated, and that the sum is greater than its individual parts.  Synergy and collaboration will prevail.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

Many sales cultures are traditionally based on respect for authority, status and success, and encouraging competitive, challenging and achievement-oriented atmospheres. Although this is not true for all businesses, especially in the 21st Century! There are a growing number of businesses adopting more collegiate, lead team approaches. However, despite different types of cultures, sales performance and results are usually derived from the efforts of individuals. Harnessing those individual efforts to achieve synergy (the sum is greater than its individual parts) is a key task of management, yet so many get it wrong. Let’s take a look at one case study and see why.

What is wrong with the following scenario?

• Sales team has great products and service proposition and is part of an international business
• Sales team is made up of individuals who are measured on achievement of individual sales targets
• Each sales person is given a base retainer but earns the vast majority of their income on commissions made from sales converted
• There are a couple of high achieving sales performers, some average performers and some new sales people yet to prove themselves
• Annual staff turnover of sales staff has been about 30-40%
• Average tenure is 18 months
• The sales team is a state team all working in the same city
• Sales performance is purely measured on sales revenue results
• Sales League Tables are on public display showing who is ‘top sales dog’ each week
• The sales culture is based on respect for authority, status, success and competition
• The workplace atmosphere is competitive, challenging and achievement-oriented
• The sales people do NOT work to specific territories/markets or customer segments to manage and grow, instead it is ‘first in best dressed’
• The competitive environment encourages sales people to fight over leads that come into the business leading to ‘bullying’ tactics, attempts to ‘outdo’ each other, squabbling and fighting over who got to that client first
• Sales people ‘sand bag’ lists of clients just to make sure that the other sales people do not get them even if they themselves are not working on those leads at present
• Management provide no selling skills training, no sales coaching, no sales support, no CRM, no documented sales strategy nor a ‘go-to-market’ plan
• There are no formal sales management practices in place except for the weekly sales meeting which deteriorates into an ‘I’m better than you are’ bun fight

This is an example of lazy and ineffectual management. Only focused on outcomes with no regard for strategy, team structure, performance quality, clear leadership, staff retention, values or culture, this sales team is not geared for high performance and continues to lag behind its true potential.

Why create competition where it doesn’t need to be?

Why make selling harder than it needs to be?

‘Old school’ sales management said that you had to have sales people competing with each other or they wouldn’t sell. You weren’t a legitimate sales team if you didn’t have league tables. They said that internal competition would motivate people to sell more. Well they are wrong. The scenario above is not uncommon. It reflects an actual real life situation – happening right now.

This archaic approach doesn’t work. It’s outdated and old fashioned. If you want to generate real sales growth, try harnessing the energy, talent and ambitions of your sales people in a constructive way where they can all achieve their individual goals along with those of the company without trying to ‘kill’ each other in the process. Remember the old saying ‘a team of champions will not beat a champion team’?

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

We are not born with our beliefs or values, they are taught to us.  Our thoughts, feelings, views and opinions about the world are shaped by our experiences of many people and many things.  They are coloured, rightly or wrongly, by our perceptual filters which we learn from others.

‘Watch who you let near your mind’ is a statement that is often quoted in my articles and for good reason.  It takes between 6-8 weeks to unwittingly pick up and adopt another’s views, beliefs and perceptions and own them as your own if we do not question and thoroughly examine the consequences and impact of these beliefs and perceptions on our own thoughts, feelings, behaviours and actions.

Without accurate definitions and critical analysis we could be lead, metaphorically speaking, down the dark alleys and tunnels of misinformation and faulty beliefs which can affect us in many ways.  We see this happen every day where people are lead astray and adopt practices which are life threatening, morally threatening and unhealthy.

One of these dark alleys is the myth about selling being something bad or dishonourable.  For more years than I care to remember selling has been much maligned.  It is an act or career choice that is looked down upon with disdain as something distasteful and dishonourable by too many, often ill informed,  people.  ‘I don’t sell’ or ‘we’re not called sales people here’ or ‘we don’t have to sell’ are some of the statements we hear from organisations who cannot reconcile their beliefs about selling with the actual act of selling.  The irony is that these very same people, despite their predications, rely on the profession and skill of selling for their livelihoods every day yet they are in denial about this important capability in their businesses.  They dance around the topic trying to call it something else all the while people feel a sense of unease about something not being quite right.  There is a misalignment, a dissonance and no one can put their finger on it.  ‘Don’t mention the war’.

We came across one leadership team of a business recently, who could not bring themselves to mention the word selling without feeling as if they had uttered an expletive.  ‘We do not sell, we never want that word mentioned, that is not what we do…’ came across loud and clear.

Their vehemence and disdain for selling was palpable.  Some looked visibly ill.  The energy expended to defend their stance and justify their opinions was a waste in our view.   The customer culture that they had created was one of shame not pride.  It was like everyone knew that selling was part of what they needed to do but no one could admit it.  It was the elephant in the room.

Selling by its definition is the ability to influence another’s decision.  Aren’t we, by default, all involved with selling then?  What human being, by one means or another, doesn’t influence another’s decision in some way every day?  A child cries out for comfort or food, a person offers a helping hand to someone in need, a new idea is born and the creator offers it up for our consideration, a challenge arises and we seek support to understand and address it.  Whether we choose to respond or not to these situations will be influenced by our own views and priorities and how well the other person(s) was able to influence us to engage, participate and collaborate with them.

The issue this leadership team needs to address is their beliefs, perceptions and views of selling and the ethics around why they do what they do, not the act of selling itself.  Perhaps their beliefs and views of selling were born of bad experiences, actual or relayed.  Perhaps they had the mishap of engaging with others whose intentions and actions, via the act of selling, took undue advantage of them at their own expense.  Perhaps they were tricked into believing something that was not in their best interest.  The subprime market scandal is a case in point.

Any action can be tainted with unethical, illegal and dishonourable intentions, actions and behaviours. The act of selling is no different.  Selling, itself, is not a dirty word.  It is the aggression, intimidation, bullying, lies, deception and cheating that people choose to employ in place of ethical selling practices that is the real issue we need to address.

If you want your people to be able to proactively and ethically listen, show interest, find common ground, resolve issues, find solutions, work collaboratively, and influence others to make better, more informed decisions then you want your people to be able to say with pride when asked what they do ‘I am in a sales career, aren’t we all?’.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au