You don’t have to discount price to win good business and good customer relationships even in tough markets.

I mentioned earlier this year my team and I are working on a large sales fitness training assignment in the finance sector around Australia.  These guys are hard up against it when it come to ‘price’ being a key target at the moment.  A number of their competitors are trying to buy market share with discounted prices.  The market is being hammered with ‘discounting’ of all sorts – some clear, some not so clear and some very dubious.

Many people have commented ‘Is this the right time to be investing in these people given the state of the market?”.

My reply is ‘This is exactly the right time to be investing in your sales people’.  And here is why.

Despite the doom and gloom and the current ‘price war’ trend this business and its people are winning good business and good customer relationships.  They are really focusing on applying what they have learnt, following a disciplined sales process, focusing on real client issues and needs and delivering real value by way of integrated solutions that are well priced and fair for all.

They have adopted a disciplined sales approach, have clear leadership and a clear, consistent  market message – see http://www.barrett.com.au/blogs/SalesBlog/?p=125

So I thought it would be worthwhile to share some of good news sales coming from the ‘tough’ markets of finance and show you what can be done if you set your mind to it.

Here are some good news sales stories fresh from the field as of last 2 weeks:

Follow A Structured Sales Process:

‘Having a few wins, did an end-to-end solution presentation yesterday with all that wonderful structure. It went pretty well and the “prospect” was very happy with everything. He was absolutely thrilled that we could satisfy all of his concerns and that I could facilitate every need. I was pretty happy with it, went off track a few times but checked myself and went back to the process.’  Business Manager

Determine Priorities

‘Last week, we were invited by an accountant to meet with a company to discuss their business and finance needs.  We were one several companies invited to present. We were informed after all the initial meetings were held that we were one of only two businesses invited back to talk further.  It was stated that we were the only business to really take the time to understand the key priorities of this business and not go into product mode.  They said this was refreshing and what the company was looking for in a partner.  Outcome: Discussions progressed to next stage.”  Business Manager

Offer Choice

‘We were approached by a current client with a pricing challenge i.e. the client said he wanted a cheaper price.  Instead of dropping the price, we chose to put the ‘price’ to one side and actually focus on what the client really needed.  Once we had a thorough understanding of what he needed we then presented him with 3 options – a basic, middle tier and end-to-end solution.  We invited feedback from the customer and he ended up taking the end-to-end solution.  It was also revealed that security was his key priority not price as originally stated.  Outcome: Signed up to new deal not based on a discounted price.’ Senior Manager

Beware the ‘too good to be true deals’

‘One of our clients came in with a deal from a competitor.  The client said it looked good on the surface but that he didn’t really understand it.  Even with all my 30+ years of experience I admitted I couldn’t make sense of it either.   It looked too good to be true and upon further investigation it was.  I asked the client what he wanted to do.  Outcome: Our Client tore up the competitor deal and stayed with us.’  Senior Manager

What can we learn from them?

• Address your customers key priorities first and create a solution that helps them achieve their objectives you can put ‘the price’ in the right perspective.
• Follow a structure sales process that keeps you on track helps you stay focused on your customer.
• Get any competitor deals in writing before quoting so you can compare apples with apples.
• Give your clients choice. Present some options which helps them make an informed decision about moving forward.
• Have a clear message.
• Be confident in your offerings.  Don’t get spooked.
• Be honest, up front, transparent and ethical in your dealings always.

Happy selling.

Welcome to 2009.

Over the summer break I was talking with a number of friends about what 2009 will hold for us, our families, our communities and our businesses.  Without exception, we discussed the current and possible effects of the GFC (global financial crisis) on our markets and especially on our thinking and our actions moving forward.   We discussed the importance of open, clear and honest communication and decisive leadership, clear goals and defining what we stand for.

We discussed the fact that it would be very hard for people to make ‘easy’ money this year  i.e. playing the stock market, etc. No more making money by just moving money around.  And that people now needed do some real work to get real revenue coming in the door.  (not that some of us weren’t doing that already.)

It was mentioned that the current market conditions call for people to draw upon the ‘real’ money making skills of ‘Selling’ and any businesses relying solely on:

• Blanket Advertising, or
• Their technical capability, or
• Passive referrals, or
• Brand or reputation. or
• SEO alone (depending on your market model)

will suffer as a result.

And those people and businesses who haven’t integrated their sales and marketing initiatives and invested in developing their sales people’s prospecting and sales skills will be left wanting this year as well.

We acknowledged that this is the year where leadership and people’s real sales fitness levels and skills will be put to the test and further developing our leadership, sales and business development capabilities skills is critical to not only survive but thrive.

Many of the conversations reminded me of the late 80’s and early 90’s markets when I was working as a recruitment consultant and the lessons I learnt in how to really make the most of tough times.  I wrote about this on 4 February 2008 in Watch who you let near your mind

In my opinion, this year calls for focus on 3 key areas:

• Clear and decisive Leadership
• A clear market message of intent
• A proactive, disciplined, ongoing sales effort

This is the year where people and businesses need to prioritise and focus on these core areas that will help them make 2009 work for them and their customers.

The SmartCompany.com.au webinar (15/01/09, download the audio file here for free) featuring IBIS stated about 65% of a business’ success will depend on leadership effectiveness and how honestly and ethically you face the challenges ahead.

I can’t agree more.

My friends and I discussed our leadership approaches and what messages we are putting out to our staff, our clients and our markets.  How we are communicating our intentions to participate in the business world.

Clear plans, goals, honesty, ethics, values and trusted relationships all featured heavily in how we would and should communicate where we stand and what we stand for and how we wanted to be communicated with ourselves.

We didn’t want more hype and ‘promises’ that can’t be backed up by evidence, transparency and trust.  We want to give our people a reason to step up and be counted.  We want our people to be clear about what we do for our customers and confident and competent to get out there and genuinely connect with our market place, our customers.

Having a clear market message your sales people can communicate to customers in a way they can understand, relate to and action is vital in uncertain times.  To illustrate the point, one of my close friends was in New York and London in October 2008 when the GFC was in one of its first full free falls and said the difference was clear.

In New York the atmosphere was distressed, disturbed and directionless, a real helplessness seemed to prevail.  People were complaining that there were no messages being broadcast or communicated at all by the US President or his Administration.  They bemoaned the lack of leadership.  Where as in London, love him or hate him, Gordon Brown was communicating with the media every day about what he and is Administration they were doing.  While people were rightly concerned about the GFC, the atmosphere was somewhat different.  My friend said people were resigned to the fact they needed to deal with the GFC.  Instead of feeling helpless they were already looking for solutions.

In my experience it is better to know if it is good news or bad news than no news at all.  This way you can take action and keep moving forward.  Therefore in uncertain times it is even more vital that our leadership is evident and our market message is being heard and understood with the best intentions and right outcomes.

Here are some questions you might like to consider regarding your key market message:

• What key message(s) are you giving to your prospective market about how you intend to operate this year?
• How is the message(s) being received and understood by your sales people?
• How is the message(s) being delivered by your sales people and received and understood by market?
• How can your customers take action and work with you?
• Can your customers  trust you to be a valid business partner with them in 2009?

Now take your key message and couple this with a Proactive Sales approach.  If you haven’t already, you need make sure you and your sales people know and understand the message and can then get out there to connect with, listen to and understand your customers and prospects so you are in a position to really understand how they think and feel and what decisions they want to make this year and where you will feature in that relationship.

Unlike advertising, selling is the vehicle that gets you in real and direct personal contact with your market, your customers and your prospects.  This is where you have real conversations about real business, real priorities and possible solutions.

If you are not already talking with your customers, referrals and prospects you need to be NOW.

I encourage you to make sure you call as many customers, referrals sources and prospects as possible because, if my 25 years+ sales career is anything to go by, there are a lot of changes happening out there and it’s not all bad news.

In fact when I returned from leave on 12 January I spent the better part of that week calling as many clients, past clients, referrals sources and leads as possible and will continue to do so this year.  The amount of changes, information, leads and opportunities I unearthed as a result of making these calls in one week alone was fantastic.

And if you not convinced, take a leaf out of one of our larger clients who, despite the GFC and really tough market conditions, have prioritised sales fitness as one of their Top 3 business priorities.  The other two being clear leadership and clear market messages.  They have invested heavily in training and up skilling their regional and rural business sales teams in sales vision, planning, sales prospecting and selling process.

Despite the drought and tough times these sales people are out there selling and communicating that they are there to do business and its working.  Even though it is still early days they are finding viable deals and good clients to do work with despite the challenging markets.  They are being supported by their managers, who in turn are trained to deliver effective sales coaching and provide sales leadership to make sure this in a ‘way of life’ not a fad.  They all know this a vital life skill.

By focusing on:

• Clear and decisive Leadership
• A clear market message of intent
• A proactive, disciplined, ongoing sales effort

They have also found there is greater team unity, better cooperation and collaboration with each other and with customers, greater sales results and better margins.

So don’t hesitate!    Get clear, get focused, get active.

There is business to be done and business to be won.

I wish you happy and prosperous selling in 2009.

I can honestly say I did not enjoy the early years of my sales career. I initially found it hard, relentless and sometimes really distressing. I was asked to do things I didn’t always understand that significance of. I often felt overly scrutinised by the constant monitoring of activity and performance by my managers. I worked in tough markets in tough times and sometimes wondered if it was worth it. I felt under pressure and sometimes wished I didn’t have to sell at all, however I came to realise that this tough introduction to selling was what I really needed to prepare me for the future. In the words of Robert Louis Stevenson “Everyone lives by selling something’.

Over the years as my sales career evolved, I began to learn a lot more about myself and came to really appreciate the lessons I had learned in how to lead an honourable, successful career in sales.

Would I trade my experiences and tough lessons for something easier, more enjoyable? No not at all. I am glad I stuck with it because now I have a range of life skills that are serving me very well under many situations especially right now.

Make no bones about it Selling as a profession is a tough job because it requires self discipline, quick thinking, creativity, persistence, resilience and regular self reflection. As I have often said ‘Selling is not for the faint hearted’.

In pursuing a professional sales career, there is a lot to consider and integrate over time. You cannot learn how to do it well in 5 minutes. That is why I resonated with the article “Properties of the ideal global citizen” by Bernard Salt, which featured in The Australian 20 November 2008. In particular the final paragraphs of the article focused on what I would describe as a test of character.

As Bernard states in his article, an HR Director of a Paris-based financial institution was lamenting the flightiness of Generation Y wishing they would sometimes trust the organisation. This HR director went on to say that “sometimes professional and personal development is best advanced not by doing what individuals want but by doing what the organization wants them to do.”

He continued, “Personal growth isn’t always about doing what you want, or doing what is easy. It’s sometimes about doing what is hard, by enduring, by overcoming, and by persisting. This is how true expertise is gained.”

Like Bernard, I agree completely.

Over the next few years we need ourselves and our people to sell consistently and competently. This may not go down well with everyone in your business, but it is the reality – they all need to help with the sales initiative. Selling is one of the fundamental business functions we need to ensure is not left to chance

Making ‘selling’ a part of your business skill set is critical regardless of your job title in today’s busy and competitive world. I truly believe ethical, trust based selling skills are life skills you can use and apply anywhere in any role – personally or professionally.

While you cannot acquire someone else’s sales experience and use it as your own, you can learn a sales process to accumulate your own experiences. To learn it well requires you to stick at it and persist. The current market conditions present a real opportunity to hone your selling skills and acquire this experience and you can only acquire the experience for yourself and it may be a test of character.

Enjoy it. Happy selling.

The “gender” discussion highlighted by my Sell like a Woman project, articles and other research leads people to believe that women are doing things men cannot because of gender. And this is causing sighing and forelock tugging in some male circles. “Not another feminist on her soap box” or “all men are useless” I hear some say.

As stated previously, my approach is not to denigrate men or idolise women, but to bring you information and findings that give you food for thought to help you make decisions so that you can be more successful at what you choose to do (as long as you don’t hurt yourself or anyone else in the process, as my mother would say).

So let’s put this gender issue into perspective. We all would be mistaken to assume gender is the single distinguishing factor in anything except pregnancy and childbirth. What we are finding is the research is highlighting that women are bringing certain qualities and skills they use in other aspects of their lives to the world of business and, in particular, sales.

And what we are finding is whatever they are doing is working better than previous initiatives, especially now the landscape of sales is changing so markedly. The qualities these women exhibit are not the exclusive domain of women; they can be and are modeled by men as well. It’s just that this has been done at an unconscious level to date, with little if any recognition by management.

What these women and others like them are showing is that they are using higher levels of “emotional Intelligence” (EI).

Research into competencies of highly effective salespeople have generally identified three or four broad categories; Selling skills, General management or Business skills, Technical skills and Interpersonal skills, and more recently, EI.

Interpersonal skills were historically identified as an important category of competencies needed by highly effective salespeople. Their importance reflects the significant contribution of the salesperson’s ability to form and develop a relationship with their client to creating a profitable and productive relationship for both parties. Emotional intelligence is a psychologically more complex process than Interpersonal skills, involving a deeper process of analysing, reasoning and responding.

Our own research, involving over 300 interviews coupled with research findings from Australia and overseas, has found that superior performing salespeople and managers demonstrate greater use of competencies related to the use of EI. They display well developed self-awareness, self regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills.

A recent Australian study conducted by Genos also found that sales performance and EI are positively related. What was even more exciting was that they showed that EI can be learned and developed in people. (An 18% increase in EI for the managers and sales representatives that participated in the learning and development program).

And furthermore, developing the EI of sales professionals and managers results in greater sales returns. The Australian pharmaceutical company who put their sales managers and sales representatives through an EI sales development program found that the program has so far returned $6 for every $1 invested over a six month period.

These EI qualities are being used by high performers despite current management practices in most cases, however if raised to a conscious level and recognised for the value they bring to people, business, customers etc, then they can be selected in and/or trained and developed in people (men and women alike) to use effectively and purposefully in the workplace (and beyond).

If you are still not convinced consider this:

• “Buyers do not buy products, services, or ideas; they buy states. Buyers buy emotion.” – George Ludwig, former National Sales Director for Johnson & Johnson (USA)
• “Emotions are part of the total communications experience, and they must be acknowledged.” – Janelle Barlow & Dianna Maul, Emotional Value: Creating strong bonds with your customers
• “Partnerships will never work if they are forced. It is important to provide ‘friendly’ service; however, organisations pull the legs out from under ‘friendliness’ by too tightly scripting the experience.” - Janelle Barlow & Dianna Maul, Emotional Value: Creating strong bonds with your customers

If you want further information on EI and sales let me know.

Sales is not for the faint hearted, nor is running your own business. For those of us who run our own businesses and/or have careers in sales or sales management, we find we are often faced with stressful situations such as:

• Budgets to achieve in tougher markets.
• Challenging clients, staff, peers, bosses or suppliers.
• Changes that effect your competitive edge with products and services.
• New market competitors, products, ideas and innovations.
• Dealing with unethical people or business tactics.
• New system upgrades or old systems that don’t work well.
• Not to mention our personal lives and the many changes we face on a daily basis.

How do we manage ourselves in times of stress? If you are anything like me, you probably struggle from time to time trying to keep up with all these things and more. Many small business owners are often the main and possibly the best sales person in their business. They also often double as the general manager, HR manager and sales manager. How to fit it all in and keep sales coming in at what cost is the question.

While the topics of stress, depression and other health issues are getting more press today, these problems often remain hidden from view and never spoken about by top sales performers and business owners until it’s too late.

Why should good sales people burnout at all? It’s such as waste to have a sales superstar fall to a sales drop out.

What we know is that good consistent sales performers are usually resilient, focused and determined in nature and, in my experience, usually have a sense of ‘wellness’ about them. Their wellness shines through and is supported by good life habits such as:

1. Undertaking regular exercise.
2. Having a healthy diet.
3. Drinking alcohol in moderation or not at all.
4. Having a variety of other interests in their life.
5. Prioritising very well.
6. Not taking illicit drugs.
7. Continued self development.

However, even healthy sales people sometimes ‘hit the wall’ and ‘burn out’. An accumulation of things can happen and before you know it you’ve hit the wall. With too many things happening too quickly, you often do not stop to deal with them one by one.

If this accumulation of stressful events continues, then they simply roll you over and flatten you. Given a good sales person has the capacity to produce consistently well, we can often miss vital signs of our stressors.

For instance when sales are down, we can take on too much and over compensate for others’ lack of performance. If this happens over and over again it wears you down. I have experienced a major burnout on one occasion (more about that next week). It was not pleasant and very stressful. I am sure I am not alone when it comes to stress as a sales person or as a business owner

Now I am no expert on stress management, however I have been an avid user of many tried and true approaches to help me be at my best and ensure I am ‘sales fit’ and can still juggle my many duties.

Instead of resorting to alcohol, drugs or other harmful actions as others may do, I sort out my support network. That is why I thought it would be useful to provide a list of some of the services people can access before, during or after they find themselves dealing with stressful situations. Please find following a preliminary list of associations you may like to explore:

• Yoga classes and other natural therapies.
• Access to medical or psychological help with stress, depression or other mental health issues go to the government support network www.beyondblue.org.au or the Australian Psychological Society.
• Overcoming sleeping issues the drug free way.
• Qualified massage therapists go to Australian Association of Massage Therapists.
• Australian parenting website.
• For meditation, there are several different places to try.

Prevention in the best cure and hindsight is a wonderful teacher. Never forget nothing is impossible to fix and there is always an option out there to help you deal with any challenging situation. Don’t forget to ask for help there is always someone there.

I hope this helps.

This article is dedicated to the memory of Rona who took her own life recently. She was a beautiful, talented and accomplished mother, swimmer, academic, writer and friend. I will miss you.