Style adaptability is where a person can read another person’s preferred communication style and adjusts their own communication style to that of the other person, thus making shared communication and understanding easier.  It is imperative to the principle of exchange and critical to any sales role, yet it is often one of the most poorly executed skills.

Time after time we come across teams of sales people who have no conscious idea about how to adapt their style to that of another.  Instead when they come across differences, communication usually breaks down and they will speak about the other using derogatory terms such as calling them an idiot, or moron, etc.  Sound familiar?

Those who are adaptable often do so unconsciously, it just seems to work for them.  For the rest of us, we are often left wondering if we have landed on another planet when we meet with people who are different.  These interactions often leave everyone confused and worse off.  People make judgments about difference claiming them to be difficult because they are seeing things from their own perspective and missing vital clues that could have been dealt with simply and easily.

A case study

We worked with a Customer Service team who supply scientific instrumentation equipment and consumables to scientific and medical laboratories.  Our role was to help improve their customer service and telephone selling skills.   When we started discussing dealing with customers, they told us that almost all their customers were difficult and rude.  When asked why this was, they advised:

“They are so abrupt and blunt.  They never say ‘hi’ or ‘how are you going’.  They are cold and seem to ignore us.  Some are really pushy and always seem to be in a hurry, while others always want too much information and take forever to make a decision. It drives us crazy.”

We acknowledged their feedback and then introduced them to a 4-quadrant Communication Style model. We use this as a starting point to help people understand and adapt to different communication styles.  The first place is to understand where you are, so we got the team to identify their own individual communication styles (both what their preferred style at work and at home or in their personal lives).  NB: It is true that some people like to communicate a certain way at work that differs in their personal lives.  We then asked them to identify what communication styles they thought their clients were.

The findings were as follows:

• With a few exceptions, the customer service team was very people friendly and quite fast paced in their preferred communication style.  They are bubbly and enthusiastic, warm and social and readily shared stories and feelings.
• Their customers on the whole, who were either lab mangers, scientists or lab technicians, were very task oriented, liked facts over social conversation, were direct, to the point, on the other hand others were slow paced, methodical, liked a lot information, and didn’t like to be rushed.

When asked to consider the differences, silence fell over the room.  It became clear to the team what had been happening.

We can clearly see that difference does not necessarily equate to difficult. We ran a series of follow-up sessions with this team and to their credit two weeks later during the first follow-up session we asked them how they were going with their ‘difficult’ customers:

“We don’t have rude customers anymore.  We adjusted our communication style to how they like be approached and they are really easy to deal with now.  And what is even more amazing is when we did that some of them then started to warm up and become friendlier which we never expected.”

So, as illustrated, it is possible to learn how to adapt your own style of communication to other people.

We taught the team some simple tips and techniques they could remember and apply easily. But they needed to listen and tune in very quickly to clues the other person was giving them and adjust their style to meet that of another without changing who they are as a person. It was all was about speed, tone, and topic.

Another term that is used to describe style adaptability is Mirroring.  As described in Wikipedia, Mirroring is a human behaviour in which one copies a person while communicating with them. It is often observed among couples or close friends. It may include miming gestures, movements, body language, muscle tensions, expressions, tones, eye movements, breathing, tempo, accent, attitude, choice of words, metaphors, or other features discernible in communication.

Mirroring is common in social interactions and awareness of the process is a powerful way to influence other people’s behaviour while maintaining your own position and intent.  The best rapport may be gained by mirroring not too exactly, but close enough so they get that comfortable feeling without feeling mocked.

By simply tuning into your customer or colleague you can quickly work out how they like to be communicated with and adjust your style accordingly, whilst remaining sincere to your own authentic self.

Rather than venture any further into the topic of style adaptability at this point, I would like to acknowledge that much has been written about how to relate to and read people.  Some of it is valid, practical, and useful.  Some is valid but very complex and for experts only and some of it is downright dubious and boarders on deceitful and manipulative.  I would suggest that whatever method you use you should ensure that it does no harm to you or others and is backed up by sound research.

My intention here was to highlight the importance of style adaptability in sales and its power to enhance honest and open communications with others and to help improve our chances of working effectively with our customers and colleagues.  Understanding how we and others like to communicate and acknowledging that there are differences, rather than difficulties, can make the life cycle of sales and customer attraction and retention easier. Remember, if one can understand and respect oneself, one is more likely to understand and respect others.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Sue Barrett is Managing Director of BARRETT

It’s time to get back to basics.

I don’t know about you but recently I have found myself getting more and more distracted by the latest trend and fads, especially the social media phenomena. My reason for this is that I have been trying to get my head around social media and specifically, the impact on the sales profession.

As you may have gathered, I like to keep on top of what is current, what is emerging, and what is still an idea. This is why I make time each week to do research as it helps me navigate my way around the present and into the future. However, I am finding there is so much to read, so much to get my head around, and so much to integrate into my business that it can take up a lot of time… and it only seems to be increasing.

I read recently that 20 years ago information was doubling every 5 years, 10 years ago it was doubling every 18 months and today it is doubling every 9 minutes.  There is a plethora of information – the trick, however, is knowing the right information to access.

For example, getting your head around the social media space and how Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and other online groups impact on the sales profession is a big job. This is why I think it is timely to stop and review the information I have gathered so far, make sense of it (where possible), and determine whether it can be of value to me and my business moving forward.

This is why I want to get back to basics.

As I wade through all of the information on social media, I predominantly want to get answers to a few simple questions:

• How can it help make us more and better quality sales?
• How can it help forge better relationships with our clients?
• How can it help us be more effective and competitive in the market place?
• How can it help our competitive advantage?
• How can it support our business strategy and make our lives easier (work smarter not harder)?
• How can it support our brand and increase visibility?

From my observation, there seems to be a great deal more written about social media and the Business to Consumer (B2C) space (simpler, transactional sales) than has been covered in the Business to Business (B2B) space (more complex sales interactions). As is my nature, I am usually the first to want to incorporate new things into my business and learn how it can add value, however once all the hype and excitement boils down it is important that we weigh up energy expended and value added.

From our discussions with other businesses, I am finding that I am not alone in my enthusiasm for social media or alone in my reflection of the time spent. Now, I am not proclaiming that we should go back to the Dark Ages pre the internet and shut out social media rather that we take a moment and consider how we can integrate the regular sales activities such as prospecting, face-to-face meetings, building real long term relationships and social media

While there are fantastic benefits to social media, many of our B2B clients are reporting that their sales teams are getting distracted and ignoring the tried and true tasks required to grow sales.

Getting back to basics in the B2B sales space means:

• Defining what type of clients you want for your business
• Knowing: WHO you need to be in front of? HOW you need to make contact with them for? HOW OFTEN you need to do it?
• Use your networks (where appropriate) to research and target specific referral sources, prospects and industry contracts
• Prospect, prospect, prospect for new business opportunities– for most people that means picking up the phone and calling both new-to-business and existing clients directly to make an appointment and secure a meeting
• Meet the client or prospect– find out what they really need and how they want to work with you
• Deliver on what you say you will
• Follow up with a blend of purposeful phone calls, face-to-face meetings, emails and other valued add support that they can benefit from
• Don’t make assumptions– speak to people directly and regularly communicate in person
• Use resources such as Linkedin, social media and a CRM with purpose to help you forge meaningful connections and networks

Getting back to basics does not mean throwing the baby out with the bath water, it just means that while we integrate new methods into sales, we need to make sure we are still doing the necessary ‘basics’ to keep the sales momentum going. At this point, some of the main things we see social media adding great value in are building networks, getting a message out, getting access to information and opinions, getting your brand out there, and stimulus response activities.

But as yet (and quite possibly never), do I see social media as a replacement to purposeful prospecting, purposeful client meetings, and purposeful business relationships.

The key word here is purposeful. Social media is most effective in sales when it is applied with purpose and in context of a bigger picture and plan. So as we go back to basics, I think we need to question ourselves as to the purpose of our actions. For instance, with more people accessing Facebook and Linkedin are we building business networks that will lead to better business opportunities via qualified contacts or are we just building networks for the sake of showing off a large number of contacts i.e. I have the most number of ‘friends’ syndrome.

So, I ask you these questions:

• How purposeful are your social media activities to your business?

• How can we make social media work for us in business rather than becoming a slave to it?

• How can social media enhance or hinder the sales efforts of business, especially B2B?

The social media phenomenon reminds me somewhat of the early days of the dot.com boom and how businesses were jumping in and riding the wave only to come crashing down, some learning a great deal, others worse for the experience.

I am not suggesting this will happen with social media but perhaps we should hasten slowly and make sure we do not throw out good, sound business practices for the sake of the new.  I urge sales people to continue with the fundamental, basics that still give a real return and begin to integrate, where appropriate, these new tactics into sales push and pull strategies.

Does this mean ignore social media? No, not at all but it does mean that we need to put it into perspective. So, let’s get back to the basics that make us real sales, real money and real relationships with the clients we want to work with.

And remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Sue Barrett is Managing Director of BARRETT.

First of all what does CRM stand for?  CRM = Customer Relationship Management.

The concept of CRM has been around for a long time. The original form of CRM was a manual card system kept by a sales person that usually sat on the sales person’s desk or alongside them in the car.  These client cards sets were very valuable to the sales person as this is where they kept important customer information such customer contact details, key contacts in the company, a running commentary on their activities, personal and product preferences, buying patterns, business connections and so forth.  Each card was a dossier on each client.  To successful, well managed sales people, their client cards were gold.

However, often times, this vital data resided with the sales person alone. The company, the sales person worked for, did not have ready access to this important information and when the sales person left the company more often than not so did the client information, client relationship and sales did as well.

The ‘softwarising’ of CRM for businesses is seen as a major breakthrough in being able to capture important client information and better manage client relationships.  CRM promises faster customer service at lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, better customer retention and ultimately customer loyalty and more sales.  However many companies still believe that CRM is simply software, or technology and the full benefits of CRM are not being fully realised by business.  CRM is much more than just a data-mining tool.

CRM is not (just) technology.

CRM is a business strategy!

Your CRM has the potential to and should be your corporate memory.  It can be the  archeological record of your business.  In fact, if introduced and applied correctly, one of the most significant benefits of having and using a CRM in your business is being able to fully realise and map the true value of your clients as company assets.  Besides the obvious benefits to you and your business, if ever you chose to sell your business, having a CRM with all this valuable information tracked and mapped can be valued and sold for premium.

This trail of information becomes a real asset in itself. A potential buyer can see your business in real client terms and understand the value of the client relationships to the business.  Therefore instead of the wisdom and knowledge going out the door with the previous owner it can be captured and retained with the new owners to be further cultivated and developed.

NB: Not  all data is good data. You must make sure you have the right information in place.  Too many CRM’s are filled with rubbish data and the wrong stuff making them a liability not an asset.

As a CEO, you can’t make the right decisions if you don’t have the right data/information foundations in place.  If you are going to get the best benefits from a CRM strategy and CRM tools you need to know how to you are going to align your key business objectives between your clients, sales people, suppliers and the rest of your business so every piece of relevant information and action adds value to the client fulfillment process.

The interconnectedness of clients to your business can begin to be truly mapped and you will then see how everyone in your business can affect the retention and growth of your clients, not just your sales people.

According to Mark Parker, MD of www.SmartSelling.com and expert in CRM’s and Customer Systems:

“Sales reps often represent the “face” of your company. In order for them to do their part in driving outstanding sales results, they should be empowered to put their best foot forward when representing their company. To do this, a Sales Automation or CRM needs to be in tune with their needs.  Putting their best foot forward is going to mean many things.“

Further to this I would like to add that a CRM should also be in tune with your customers needs helping them have the best experience they can have with you.

What does an effective CRM system look like?

An effective CRM system should be what your strategy needs and wants it to be.  These days you can get access to open source CRM software where you can configure what you want in your CRM so you do not have to be tied to proprietary CRM’s that cannot be customised to your needs.  Also CRM’s do not have to be prohibitively expensive either. Many people have put off getting CRM’s in the past due to their high cost and focus on big corporations.  But now good CRM’s systems are available for SME’s and home based businesses at very cost effective rates.  For instance we use SugarCRM at Barrett which is an open source system we can configure to suit our business needs.
This means you need to think carefully about what you want your CRM system to do and be and who you partner with to make it work for you.
A good place to start is to:

1. Know your business  strategy and key outcomes you want to achieve and work backwards from there.
2. Know your customer, their needs, wants and motives and your path to market
3. Appreciate the length, width and depth of the relationships between the customer and your organisation
4. Understand how you properly manage of all interactions with your customer
5. Know what your sales and service people need to do make sales happen in your business.
6. Aim to build a business system that manages prospects, clients and projects.

Look at what data, behaviours, and outcomes you want to track:

• Client data, sales person activity data, product sales data, effectiveness of marketing initiatives including your website, direct mail/email campaigns, etc.
• What behaviours do you want to encourage and reinforce in your sales and service teams as well as your clients and prospects?
• What do you want to measure by way of lead and lag sales indicators?
• How do you want to communicate data internally and externally?

Important point: you do not want you CRM to turn your salespeople into glorified desk jockeys.  We need to make sure any CRM is easy to use, doesn’t take necessary time away from vital interpersonal sales activities.  If you think your CRM can replace your sales team you will fall short in your efforts.  If your business needs to be in personal contact in some way with your clients you need your CRM to enhance these relationships not replace them.
Here are some ways a CRM system can serve you well:

• Provide immediate insight into prospect and customer leads originating from any channel
• Provide deep visibility into the sales pipeline and opportunity details which quickly produce accurate sales forecasts.
• Allow for a consistent, informed, and personalised customer communication approach i.e.  automated emails relevant to the specific customers
• Give sales people and everyone in your business access to a consolidated view of the customer across your organisation – this will allow everyone in the organisation to know how they can help play their part in taking control of every opportunity and managing it to a successful conclusion
• Encourage, enforce and track best-practice sales methodologies you want in your sales  teams i.e. logging of Lead Indicator Activities such as: # of prospecting calls made, # of client meetings had; # of real deals in the pipeline, # of sales made: # of cross sales made, # of sales made with new clients, # of sales made with existing clients, # of follow customer service enquiries, # of service calls, etc.
• Encourage, enforce and track best-practice service methodologies you want in your customer service and support teams i.e. logging of Lead and Lag Indicator Activities such as # of follow customer service calls made post sales, # of service calls made, # of customer service calls and complaints received, etc.
• Monitor and map effectiveness of have automated sales and marketing activities that are specific to the customers and markets
• Steamline and automate those customer activities that can go online i.e. confirmation emails, automatic emails sent out at periodic intervals for things like renewals for instance
• Map work in progress with clients and staff allocated to client projects
• Have the ability to integrate with your website and keep track of web activity
• Support your entire frontline sales and sales lead management team with the right information they need to quickly and efficiently fulfill all of their daily requirements.
• Deliver knowledge at the point of action
• Keeps vital customer data in the business whether the sales person stays of leaves thus creating a valuable company asset.

Word of caution: Before you even think about integrating Twitter or Facebook into your data mix and CRM, which is a hot topic at the moment, make sure your current data is clean and relevant because if it is not then you will be piling more garbage on an already big garbage heap and there’s no value in that.

Remember CRM systems are tools that should support, enhance and grow the customer relationship by giving your sales team and others in your business access to vital information they can act upon with purpose and in the easiest manner possible.

A CRM should not be an imposition on anyone, a CRM should be a part of your vision to continually improving the relationships with your customer, your sales team and everyone in your business.

CRM is a strategy and way of life not a piece of technology.

Remember everyone lives by selling something.

Happy selling.

Sue Barrett is Managing Director of BARRETT Pty Ltd.

As part of my ongoing professional  and personal development I belong to a CEO leadership group where we meet monthly and discuss a whole range of topics to stimulate our thinking and decision making.

Recently we discussed the concept and qualities of Successful Entrepreneurs.  Besides making the obvious comparisons with ourselves as to whether we met the criteria of successful entrepreneurs I found the content translated extremely well into what I and other research is seeing in successful sales people today.

It seemed to me that successful sales people had a lot in common with successful entrepreneurs who are often the main sales people in their own businesses anyway.

I thought we could use this information to help us find and cultivate Entrepreneurial Sales People for our businesses, especially to help we entrepreneurs who need to grow our businesses beyond our own capabilities and personal time constraints.

Here is a summary of my notes:

1.    Successful Entrepreneurs are calculated risk takers note gamblers.

Unlike risk adverse people who avoid stepping outside their comfort zone and trying anything new or gamblers who seem to act before they think and often stake everything on one risky deal, Successful Entrepreneurs and successful sales people will step outside their comfort zone but not too far at first.  They will stretch themselves check for evidence of success and recalculate their actions to try and step out even further.  Good sales people do this with their clients all the time.  They will trial different options and gauge the interest and suitability of these options with their clients.  This is how new products or service emerge.

If you want to test someone’s entrepreneurial tendencies here is one way.  Play the game of Coits.  Ask anyone to try and get all six coits on the stand and see what they will do:

• Conservative, non risk takers will stand right over the top of the stand and not move dropping all six coits on the stand from above.
• Gamblers will stand far away and just throw hoping something will stick.
• Successful Entrepreneurs and successful sales people will take a few steps back throw 2 coits, get them on and then step further back and throw again always checking their accuracy.  If they miss one they will step in a bit throw again get the coit on and then step out again and so on.   They are engaging in self testing and feedback which is why they keep getting better.

2.    Needs
They also found Successful Entrepreneurs have 3 fundamental needs:

• need for achievement
• need for affiliation
• need for power or influence

It was found that the need for achievement was by far the most important, with successful  entrepreneurs marshalling the need for affiliation and power to support their need for achievement. This coincides with the research on successful sales people.

3.    Questioning

Non Entrepreneurs specialise in ‘Social’ Questioning’ which revolves around their need for affiliation and not much else.  Which is why I get annoyed when sales training over emphasises  ‘building rapport’.  You hear it all the time, sales people being told that to build rapport by asking about people about their personal lives, footy teams etc.  This is very old fashioned and not as effective as people think it is.  In fact for many first time client encounters it can be a real turn off for the client.  It often comes across as fake.  You will build more rapport by focusing on what you are really there to do – and that is work with clients priorities and address their issues.

Successful Entrepreneurs and Successful sales people specialise in ‘Opportunity’ Questioning.  Here they are looking for evidence that opportunities exist for them to work on effectively with others.  They are inquiring, curious and ideas oriented.

By looking at these qualities you can see you don’t need to start a business to have entrepreneurial tendencies.  Entrepreneurial qualities, in my opinion, can be applied in many roles, especially in sales roles and more people have them they we maybe recognise.

1. Who in your team, especially your sales team is showing these qualities?
2. How can you and they capitalise on this, especially in these markets?

With the world presently in a major transition we need more people taking calculated risks, being prepared to ask ‘opportunity’ questions and look to achieve great and positive things by marshalling affiliation, influence and power.

Your advocate for selling the right way.

Do you have the wrong sales team delivering your sales strategy?

Ask yourself the follow the questions:

• How has your strategy and /or market place changed recently?
• How have you seen the role of ’sales’ change over the last few years in your industry?
• How do your sales people compare to your competitors?
• How do your sales people need to sell now?
• How is your product offering behaving in the market place now? Was it once exclusive and now a commodity?

The definition of a ‘good’ salesperson is driven by many possible needs. Those needs are a function of industry standards, changing market conditions, competition, corporate strategy and culture, personalities, past experiences, just to name a few.

In addition, many organisations overlook the shift in their products or services from being customised and exclusive to a commoditised entity and the impact this has on their sales force and sales efforts.

So it’s not just how your sales people behave that can affect sales, it’s also how your product or service behaves.

Let’s take a look at computers

For many years (in the late 1980s and early 1990s) computers were highly priced, exclusive products sold by highly priced, exclusive sales people.  These sales people were specialists, experts or advisors selling into the big end of town because these were the only businesses who could afford computers back then.

However, as:

• the cost to manufacture these products decreased making them more accessible and cheaper to buy, and
• customers education, knowledge, awareness and experience with these products and processes increased

The style of the sales people required to sell computers changed.

Now you can go to small or large retail outlets and buy a computer off-the-shelf from retail sales people (most of who are paid much less than their highly priced, exclusive predecessors).  Or easier still, you can buy custom built computers online at Dell, thus eliminating the traditional type of computer sales person all together.

Daniel Pink wrote, amongst other things, about the commodisation of products and services in A Whole New Mind and specifically how we need to look at creating value beyond product.

This is why more thought needs to be given to how a business translates its sales strategy into sales action.  You need to make sure the current products and style of sales people you have are matched accordingly.

If customer’s product or service education level changes (i.e. they become more sophisticated), and there is change to the product and access (i.e. online), there will be a change in your sales force requirements.

However, some products which can behave as commodities in their own right can become part of a complex sales solution and need sales people who are specialists, experts or advisors.

Let’s look at Business Banking

Business Banking is really an essential service for any business, however the products on offer are often standard and commoditised in their own right.

So what is a business banking customer wanting from a Business Bank?

It depends on the relationship.

Current research indicates that many want ‘ease of doing business’ and ‘value for money’.  The research also shows that many customers are not as sophisticated and savvy in knowing the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of  Business Banking and therefore many would like to rely upon the expertise, advice and support from their business banker.

However, many Business Banking providers have not developed, trained or supported their Business Bankers to be specialists, experts or advisors.  Most customers still go to their accountant for that advice and then use Business Banking products rather than extracting the possible value from their Business Banker.

As with Business Banking, there is often a great opportunity to capitalise on the potential long-term, in-depth customer-supplier relationships even if you have a range of commodity products.

I suspect many opportunities for further profitable sales sit untapped in many businesses because misalignment with strategy, product and sales people fit.

Knowing your market, where your products sits in isolation and in combination, and the types of sales people you need to have to deliver your strategy is critical.

So as you prepare for the next Financial Year you may want to review the sales force you currently have and see if they will stand up and deliver what your business needs in FY 09/10.

I will talk about this next time in “Creating your ‘Ideal’ sales team”.

Sincerely, your advocate for selling the right way.