After thousands of hours of study and many years honing technical skills to be a competent professional in your chosen field, it can come as a rude shock that you now need to sell your services and capabilities as well.  In today’s busy market, a competent selling capability isn’t a nice-to-have it is an essential business and life skill.

Interestingly, the topic of selling and growing a business often doesn’t feature in those university lectures does it?  In fact, selling is in many cases covered over and, if spoken about at all, was only mentioned as an unsavoury aspect employed by the desperate.  ‘We don’t have to sell because we are …’ are the famous last words of many failed professional or small business owners who focus only on their domain of expertise as the distinguishing factor.  Well those days are well and truly over.

This myopic view of the essential life skill of selling has often left people feeling vulnerable, confused and financially worse off.  No longer can you rely upon only your technical competence to guarantee your success or wait around for passive referrals.

The bad press that often accompanies the profession of selling doesn’t help either.  Often the only ‘selling’ stories we hear or read about in the media are those about shonky operators exploiting anyone they can, especially the vulnerable and weak. For instance, the plethora of insulation businesses and telemarketing firms exposed as fraudulent and incompetent has done nothing for the PR of selling.  This type of behaviour is labelled as ‘selling’ by the media which I argue is incorrect.  The type of behaviour and intentions exhibited by these operators and other ‘shonk merchants’ is actually fraud and deception, and in some cases bullying and intimidation. That is not selling.  This is one reason why many people don’t want to be in sales.  Who wants to be associated with ‘shonk’?

There is another issue too, the old Australian legacy of the ‘tall poppy’ syndrome.  Heaven forbid that you take proactive control over your destiny by getting out there and promoting your business and your capabilities so others may benefit.  Heaven forbid that you actually make a name for yourself.  ‘Who do they think they are?’ or ‘They’ve got tickets on themselves’ are some of the catch cries from people who begrudge those who get up and make what they do visible to other the people.

These syncs often confuse proactive, ethical self promotion, prospecting, and selling practices with self- grandiose, boasting or big noting.  Sure there are a few people for whom this is true; it’s all about them.  While these people can be highly entertaining in some instances, people often tire of them if there is nothing of real value and substance to support them.  The truth is one can lead a very successful sales career without becoming a boastful, self-absorbed git.  In fact, the research into highly effective sales professionals shows they are often humble, highly self-aware, collaborative, see the big picture and details, effective at what they do, and have a ‘we’ not ‘me’ focus.  They are very capable, resourceful, and engender trust on all levels.  They are worth knowing.  Is this what most of us want for ourselves?  Don’t we want people to know that if they work with us they will be better off as a result?

Despite the overexposure of those shonky operators by the media or the cringe factor brought about by the ‘tall poppy’ critics, there are a lot of good untold stories about ethical selling practices out there.  They often don’t make the mainstream media or general conversations because they are happening everyday in millions of ways.  It’s a bit like IT, we never celebrate or talk about the fact that our IT system hasn’t crashed we only hear and complain about it when something goes wrong.

Yet many people struggling with the concept of selling pay good money to go on selling skills courses to learn how to sell and yet they never put it into practice.  So before you pay money for selling skills, examine the state of your mind; the beliefs, feelings, and intentions you hold about selling.

Your beliefs, not your abilities, could be holding you and your career hostage. Before you can dedicate the energy to become skilful and masterful in something as complex as selling, you need to want to sell.

So let’s cut to the chase, for those of you who now need to consciously include the capability of selling in your business mindset and skills here are a few things to consider:

• Why do you need to sell? Who will benefit from you being able to sell competently?
• How will ethically and proactively promoting and selling your capabilities help you and your clients?
• What is your current view of selling? Do you hold onto a view that makes you feel ashamed of selling?  How is that view affecting your ability to keep your business healthy and viable?
• Can you reframe your thinking about selling? See it as a way to make what you do visible to the people who need to know about you so they can benefit from your skills and talent?
• How do you feel about the statement ‘everybody lives by selling something’?
• How can selling be incorporated into your business and align with your ethical values and desire to run an honourable business?
• Do you feel worthy of being able to earn what you are worth?

Sadly limiting beliefs about selling are a significant issue for many people and something that can be overcome with patience, clarity, and persistence. If this is an issue for you please feel free to contact us to discuss this further. We would be happy to help you get started on your sales career.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

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

Who wants to work with accountable, responsible, and self-directed sales people?  Of course we all want these types of sales people in every sales team.  Yet, most businesses do not support this by setting up their sales team to clearly measure and manage their sales performance.

Sales performance management begins with accurate role descriptions and perception, data collection, and measurement in line with set goals and strategy, however many organisations measure only one variable, sale results (outputs measures).

This type of approach leaves businesses and sales teams in the dark about how they arrived at their sales results making it hard to replicate good results and eliminate poor results.

What is needed in sales teams are clearer measures of what constitutes good sales performance and we need to be able to measure and manage the right things.

So, what is performance and why measure it?

Performance can be equated to behaviour, as it involves what people actually do. It is observable, measurable, and can be changed through the learning and application of new behaviours.  It is, however, important to select the right measure in a performance management system as performance measures can influence behaviours and attitudes within the organisation. A good performance measure will reinforce desired behaviours, while a poorly selected or incorrect measure can encourage behaviour that is unproductive and inappropriate.

An effective Sales Performance Management System measures sales results (output measures) and two additional critical variables, input and behavioural measures. The framework means this is done in a consistent and structured way.  The following diagram illustates examples of Input, Behavioural and Output measures for sales people.

By giving sales people access to explicit performance information about how they need to do their job they can begin to align themselves to organisational expectations.  With adequate training and coaching to support them we will now have sales people working consciously in their roles and on themselves to achieve greater, more competent performance.

Take this opportunity to check if, or how well, your sales people know their performance measures and are they on the path to being accountable, responsible, and self-directed sales people.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Sue Barrett is Managing Director of BARRETT

There are many things written and said about effective sales people, effective leaders, successful entrepreneurs, great teams and so on.

Many descriptions are in circulation.  There is an overabundance of experts recommending this approach one day and that approach the next.

Those of us who want to be effective and successful often follow the advice of those experts however we are at risk of turning ourselves inside out and losing sight of what we are really here to do if we keep trying to bend to the winds and whims of the latest management trends, fads, findings, research, etc.

I am not against reading widely, continuous learning, adopting new ways and adapting to change as you have probably realised by now.

However, in recent times I have been feeling overwhelmed by too much information and instead found myself opting for a ‘less is more’ approach to life.

As I always do, I have been sifting through a lot of information and finding that I am beginning to distill some fundamental truths that hold true whatever the fad or trend of the day.

On my most  recent distillation process I have found that I was able to identify four valuable life skills that work very well for me in every situation I have found myself in.  You will recognise that these skills are essential to effective selling, and I am sure you won’t miss their relevance to all other roles we play, personally and professionally.

So in the spirit of ‘less is more’ here are my 4 valuable life skills which continue to serve me very well:

1. The ability to ask good questions
2. The ability to actively listen
3. The ability to receive and give honest feedback
4. The ability to reflect on my actions

I hope they serve you well too. Enjoy your sales week.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

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.

The term ‘Relationship Selling’ is often bandied about by sales managers and sales people without properly defining what it really means.I often hear “We are in relationship selling” or “We need relationship sales people” however what I do not hear being asked is:

• What type of relationship are we talking about?
• What type of relationship are we looking for?
• What do we mean by relationship selling anyway?

Relationship selling happens in any place where relationships are important. Thus when a husband and wife are negotiating about something, they will be more successful if they both consider the relationship as well as whatever it is they each want.

Most people’s intentions are to have healthy viable business relationships, but this does not always happen, just like in our personal lives.

And I see many businesses and sales people in trouble because they have set up the wrong types of relationships with their clients to begin with.

If you do not clearly define what you mean by Relationship Selling then you may end up with client relationships like these:

• Abusive relationships
• aggressive clients who bully and intimidate sales people/ suppliers, or the other way round
• Professional Visitor relationships
• Calling in for a chat, coffee, etc. In short being paid to have a social life.
• Master/servant  relationships
• ‘You are here to serve my every need.’ I see this all too often in business banking where some clients take advantage of the ‘over servicing’ of some business bankers using them a free accounting service.  I am sure the accountants won’t be happy with this loss of revenue.  I know the client is happy but is it a healthy relationship in the long run?
• Big brother relationships
• ‘You’ll do as I say or else…”
• Win:lose or lose:win relationships (someone has to lose out)
• Friendships at the expense of profitable business partnerships (see professional visitor)
• Broken promises relationships
• “I’ll get you in here if you give me this…” but it never comes through despite all those promises
• Exploitative or Deceitful relationships
• double dipping or tricking people into something they were not aware of. For instance a course participant on one of our recent sales training programs told of a telco sales person who sold the handset separate to the call plan when in fact the handset was already part of the plan, so the customer paid twice of the handset.  This is fraud and can easily ruin your business’ brand and reputation over night.
• ‘I work for you instead of my company’ relationship
• sales people siding with the client by giving away excessive margins, products, etc. at the expense of the company.  This is actually theft.
• Hostage or Handcuff relationships
• ‘I have to deal with but you really add no value to me or my business and I really resent that.’
• ‘I have to deal with you because my parent company says so.’
• Your payment terms are disregarded by bigger businesses because they only pay at 60+ days (not the 14 or 30 days you agreed to)
• Relationships under pressure
• Sales people having to meet monthly quotas hence they may use more pressured methods than perhaps they would like. This is a hazardous practice, as it may seriously damage an ongoing relationship, putting additional pressure on the hapless sales person who falls into the dangerous chasm.  It amounts to selling stuff to make a quota not build a viable relationship.

And so on.

• Do you have any of these types of relationships in your business?
• What types of relationships are you attracting to your business?
• Are they healthy or not?
• What are they making or costing you?

Some of the relationships mentioned can be particularly relevant for SME’s when dealing with big business where, for instance, your size can be used against you.  I also see sales people in relationship sales roles for big businesses as well as SME’s who over service existing client at the expense of selling and winning in new business thinking this is good relationship selling.  It is not, as it sets up unrealistic expectations and costs too much.

So Relationship Selling needs to be clearly defined or else we are at risk of creating unhealthy, unprofitable relationships.

All relationships change and are continually evolving over time for better or for worse.

I recall a great saying I heard and often refer to which I think gets to the heart of this:

You have friends for a reason, a season, or a life time.

The same is true for business / client relationships too.

First of all consider this:

Buying is a value judgment made in the mind of a person who has the ability to purchase, a genuine need/ want and the capacity to pay.

Selling is understanding that mind set and the accompanying values and priorities, and delivering on expectations through effective communication (such as questioning and listening), ideas generation and collaboration, creative problem solving and relevant solution generation, and gaining commitment to move forward together.

Whether it is business to business or retail to consumer selling, this definition holds true.

Therefore Relationship Selling is an extension of this where the primary objective is the building of long-term viable business relationships with customers from which repeat and/or additional business will flow and a win:win outcome is achieved for both parties whether it is for a for a reason, a season or a life time.

In my research for this piece I also came across an article ‘How to have a healthy relationship’ which, while referring to personal relationships, was quite pertinent to business relationships and in particular Relationship Selling.  It referred to the following steps:

1. Do not expect anyone to be responsible for your happiness
2. Make and keep clear agreements
3. Use communication
4. Approach your relationship as a learning experience
5. Tell the unarguable truth.
6. Do not do anything for your partner if it comes with an expectation of reciprocation.
7. Forgive one another
8. Review your expectations especially attitudes towards money
9. Be Responsible
10. Appreciate yourself and your partner.
11. Admit your mistakes and say sorry.
12. Spend some quality time together

You can find the full article at http://www.wikihow.com/Have-a-Healthy-Relationship

In addition I would like to add the following tips for sales people and their respective businesses.

Make sure you:

• Clearly define your level of service/products offerings and pricing.
• Know what you are good at and clearly communicate and deliver that.
• Create a network of businesses who are experts in allied fields to you so you can refer your clients to them when a needs arises you cannot fill.
• Learn to say ‘No’.
• Stand up for yourself, just because you are small doesn’t mean you can’t be a professional, well regarded business in your market.
• Don’t take it personally.
• Know the line between friendship and professional business relationships

So in closing I wish you all the very best with all your relationships both personal and professional.  May they be healthy, happy and prosperous for all.

Happy selling.