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Networking

February 14, 2008 in Sales Relationships, Value Creation

Although technology has become increasingly important in recent years, the importance of relationships in business has not changed. Upon reflection, it appears that we have taken the following path.

Technological Era ——> Industrial Era

In fact, it has been predicted that over the next ten to fifteen years, we will see a new era emerge; that being the era of the relationship in doing business. It is estimated that the relationships we have in business with our customers and within organisations will be the key differentiator for businesses worldwide.

Technological Era ——> Industrial Era ——> Relationship Era

What this demonstrates is that the role of networking is going to be increasingly important in order for businesses to achieve their goals. In addition, given that networking and relationship will be a key differentiator in times to come, individuals will need to take a much more structured and professional approach to network as opposed to leaving it to chance.

What is Networking?
Networking is the process of establishing and developing business relationships with other business people or customers that are mutually beneficial to both parties.

Networking is different from selling. Think of what it feels like for you when a stranger comes up and sells at you and pushes their business card in your face. More often that not, you will feel repelled. This does nothing to foster or build a relationship.

Remember, in networking, if one party is chasing, the other is retreating.
The key to true networking is the word mutually. Although the intention is to increase revenue, effective networking must centre around how you can help the person you are networking with rather than focusing on how they can be of assistance to you. As such, developing and fostering a relationship over time becomes extremely important in the networking process.
By far, the most important factors in networking are listening, having excellent communication skills and being focused on how you can assist the other party.

Feelings about networking
Many people feel uncomfortable when it comes to networking. However, a lot of the time, this discomfort is unnecessary when you consider the following:

  • Most people have an altruistic streak where their natural tendency is to want to assist others
  • Most people will be able to identify with your situation, particularly if the network alliance has the potentially to be mutually beneficial

Some people enjoy being seen as networkers and being considered an excellent referral source for others in business circles

I must confess I find networking at events a challenge. I don’t like small talk. My style can be too serious at times when I meet new people. I find it much easier to start a sales conversation than a networking conversation. It takes me a while to warm up.

Others, on the other hand, love talking to anyone and never seem to tire if it. They are warm, friendly and engaging. Don’t get me wrong I can do it but it takes more work from my side.

So how do I get around this and make the best use of my time networking? I interview people. I find that I feel comfortable asking people the following: Why do you like coming to networking events? What brought you to this event? What do you hope to gain from being at this event? And then I take it from there – wherever the conversation goes. I am careful not to interrogate them though. The benefit is that I learn lots about them and find it easier for me to be present at these events. For the other person they feel important as I paid attention to them.

When at a networking event, it is easier to gain the attention and time of individuals as there is an agreed reason for being there that centres around networking. However, when you are networking and promoting yourself directly to individuals (either within your organisation or as follow up from networking events), it is more important to manage the dynamics of the discussion as here, you are drawing on the relationship and what it has to offer you.

Online networks
With the advent of Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn and the like, the networking opportunities abound. However there is inherent danger in falling into the trap of just collecting names for the sake of wanting to ‘appear’ to have a large network. Ask yourself the following questions:

How long since you actually spoke to any of those people on your online network? Are some people on your connection list people you have never spoken with? Have you understood why they want to be connected to you? Do you know why you want to be connected with them? If you don’t why then you may want not think about why their name is on your list in the first place.

Taking the farming approach to Networking
Many people are under the misconception that with regard to networking, you must focus on spreading the net far and wide. Whilst this is important, for your networking efforts to be truly effective, you must also approach some networking relationships as a farmer would approach yielding his crops.

Consider the way a farmer works. He takes the time to prepare his soil so that it is ready for his seeds to be planted and he does this long before he plants his seeds. Once the seeds are planted, he nurtures them with water, fertilising and tending to them regularly.

He does not pull the seeds out of the ground before they are ready but rather, waits until his plants are strong and the roots have grown deep before he expects to yield anything from his plants. The farmer understands that there is a process to follow and that gains will not come from expecting a quick return, but rather, by putting in what is required of the process and waiting for the appropriate time to yield results.

Approaching networking with a farming mentality will ensure that you will yield quality results from your networking process. While the tendency may be to approach as many contacts as possible as quickly as possible and expect fast results, in reality, taking a more diligent approach will mean that you form relationships that can prove beneficial and bear fruit for you for years to come.

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A Car Sales Story with a difference

January 12, 2008 in Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Relationships, Value Creation

Is there such as thing as a ‘good’ car sales story?

My husband and I recently bought two new cars over the Christmas break. We initially went in to buy one car. It wasn’t a Christmas splurge if that’s what you’re thinking – nor was anything it like the recent press on luxury cars and their owners. We wanted to go smaller and greener for all sorts of reasons I am sure you can image and one of our cars was at the end of its lease. Having done our research, the ‘make’ of our last four cars wasn’t doing enough, in our opinion, to be ‘greener’ so we decided to look elsewhere and try something different instead.

Big decision: New brand, new car, new experience.

Now I must say having bought a few cars in my time, as has my husband, and never being impressed with my car buying experiences, I did enter this car buying process with somewhat of a cynical and wary attitude at first. My husband is also and engineer, so big buying decisions do not move quickly – they must be properly analysed. I knew I was in it for the long haul.

However this time I was very pleasantly surprised – it was positive. It was very easy. It was no fuss. And it went pretty quickly. Why?

New make, new dealer, new experience. Was it the company? Was it the sales person? Was it their strategy? Was it conscious or not? I don’t know. Maybe it was one or all of those things. Whatever it was, it worked.

It was different because we were listened to, heard and understood. I was not patronised or treated like an idiot. The sales person and the business didn’t seem desperate, overbearing or too ‘features’ oriented. We weren’t rushed or pressured in any way.

And Joseph, our sales guy, just loved cars and loved selling cars. It was a joy to meet someone who clearly loved what he was doing. He shared with us that he used to be a chef and also worked in IT but his first love was cars. So he figured why not work with what he loves. So he now sells cars for a living. He had been there two years and we found out later that was one of their best sales people (no surprise to me). He was very open, friendly, real, passionate (about cars) and trustworthy. He knew that both of us where clearly involved as joint decision makers and so he set the scene accordingly. He didn’t pressure us. He gave us time to make a decision. He could see we liked to think things through and weigh everything up. He understood, consciously or not, how we liked to buy.

And he treated our children with respect, even though they were getting bored from time to time waiting for us to finish. He was funny, down to earth and real. We felt very comfortable working with him. He helped us in every way to make an informed decision. The atmosphere was relaxed. The other sales people seemed happy and engaged in their work too.

And after we bought the first car I was so grateful we didn’t have thrust upon us the ‘after sale girl’ as is so often the case with other car places. Men may find them enticing but as a woman I find the process a complete turnoff – especially if I have just made a buying decision with someone else. I am not blaming the women themselves, it’s the strategy that’s irks me. In my experience and opinion this model is not how to up- sell and cross-sell effectively (as you would have seen by my recent article on this topic in Dec 07). In most cases up selling and cross selling should be part of the actual sales process conducted by the sales person, not an after the sale is made. This was our experience with Joseph. I noticed that this car dealership didn’t have this type of ‘after sales’ approach.

After taking our new car home and reflecting on the car itself and our car buying experience, we did our numbers and worked out that we would be better off financially and environmentally if we traded in our other car as well. As it was not long off being turned over too we decided to buy a second car from Joseph and the company he represented.

Now that’s what I call good selling. So instead of catching people doing something wrong let’s catch them doing something RIGHT.

So with that I would like to thank Joseph Haddad and Brighton Mazda very much for their help. No, I am not on their pay role I just thought it was a good sales story, especially a good car sales story, worth telling.

And if you see Joseph tell him I say ‘hi’ and thanks again.

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Making the most of Up Selling & Cross Selling

December 11, 2007 in Sales Skills, Value Creation

Do you sell one thing and one thing only? Probably not. I suspect your business has a range of things it can offer. And I suspect that many of these things can be integrated together to make an end-to-end solution or various combinations that lead to much larger sales.

If this is the case, then how well are you selling in the size and scope of your business offerings?

Too many times sales people get fixated on the immediate sale in front of them not really seeing the potential of that sale now or into the future. If they would only ask the right questions and get a bigger perspective to work from they might get more and bigger sales for less effort.

If you do not ask the questions you will never know. I learned that if you ask, at best, you can get a lot more back in return and, at worst; they can just say ‘no’. At least if you ask you never die wondering.

So I thought I would share a personal story about one of my up selling and cross selling experiences and what I learned from it. I share this story because it continues to remind me not to settle for second best.

A while back I made a presentation to a large group of people from large Australian corporation. My topic was about the ‘Huge Cost of Hesitation’. This was my first entrée into this business and I really wanted to do a great job for all the obvious reasons. Whilst the topic was challenging, the presentation was well received and my sponsoring client was very happy. I knew this could lead to great things.

Well within three days, I received a phone call from one of the senior managers who attended the presentation. He wanted to know if he could use an assessment tool I referred to in my presentation for the recruitment of new sales staff. I replied ‘yes of course you can’. He then said ‘OK so how do I go about using it?’

Now at this point, I could have set him up to use the tool and only sold in that tool, instead, however, I asked him to tell be more about what he was trying to achieve. To which he replied that he was setting up a whole new business area and wanted to hire a different type of sales person than they had traditionally employed in the past. He thought the assessment could help him do that. I asked him if I could ask him more questions to which he replied ‘yes’.

I wanted to see how open minded he was so I asked him had he defined what this new type of person would look like. He said ‘no’. I suggested there were a number of ways he could approach this and I proposed two options to him:

  1. At best we could develop and map the ideal sales person profile for his business model, build a recruitment kit he and his managers could use to properly assess the candidates, supply the right assessment tools and then provide feedback.
  2. At worst he could just use the tool and we provide feedback as originally requested.

He was very happy to explore this further. I committed to getting him a detailed proposal that day. Which I did. Besides everything mentioned previously, I also included 2 bullet points outlining sales and sales management training which could form part of their induction training. (you just never know)
After I sent the proposal, I received a call the next day asking me to elaborate on the 2 bullets points around the sales and sales management training piece as well. Which I did.

They then rang back the following day and asked me what my best price was. I said what they had was my best price. They said they were used to working in markets that always bargained on price. I said that was fine but that I didn’t do that in my market. My price was my price. It was transparent and they knew what they were getting piece by piece. They said ‘OK, that was fair’ and then asked when could we get started on the project. We agreed a date and that was the beginning of a very fruitful relationship.

So what did I learn? If you take things at face value that is all you are likely to get. By asking a few more questions, getting an understanding of their bigger picture and knowing how my products and services worked in concert and separately I was able to turn a $1,000 sale into a $90,000 sale.

Did I do anything special? No not at all. All I did was ask more questions and tried to understand their whole issue. Oh and I knew how my products and services all worked together.

By the way, whilst they paid more, it was worth it to them because their new ‘breed’ of sales people achieved:

  • Achieved a sales closing ratio of 4:3 within 2 months ·
  • Sold the annual sales budget within 5 months.

My client was very happy and said he and his team had learned a lot about how to select in and develop sales people; skills they hadn’t had before and could now take with them anywhere they went. In turn, he referred me on to other areas within the business and so the journey and sales continue.

Here are some handy hints to help you up sell and cross sell:

  1. Product Knowledge: know all your products well
  2. Product Associations & Combinations: Know how your products integrate with each other and how they form a bigger picture. This goes with this goes with that, etc.
  3. New topics: know how to introduce relevant new topics and products into the conversation.
  4. Education: Don’t underestimate your value in terms of the education you bring to clients
  5. Pricing structure: know how your pricing works: the structures, bundling, unbundling, volume pricing, various product pricing combinations, etc


For more information try this research site: www.findarticles.com.

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Don’t tell me it’s out of your control

December 6, 2007 in Attitudes & Behaviours, Value Creation

‘It’s out of my control.’ ‘I can’t do anything about it.’ ‘I’m just the sales person.’

Sales people who sell in equipment and service contracts take note. This story is about you and your responsibility to the customer for the life of the sale not just the initial sale of the machine and the signing of the contract.

The quotes above are what I heard this week from a sales person from a well-known equipment manufacture who sold us a complete equipment and service package 18 months ago. It certainly wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Without going into too much detail we have had the ‘printer from hell’.

This piece of machinery has never lived up to the expectations promised by the afore mentioned salesperson and has been in repair, on and off, for nearly 18 months. Service person after service person came and went, only bandaiding this issue as it turns out.

Over time after various discussions with the nice service people we found we had been sold a specific product type, which had had issues from day one with many people. We looked at getting out of our contract on several occasions. We asked other people in the know and they said we were probably going to be stuck with this contract.  For a while we lived in hope that this was just a glitch and we would be ok.  And for a few months is was, however, whenever we did any big print jobs it just kept getting worse. We spoke to the service people and the customer service people who could do nothing.  Our issue was never escalated to management. The service people where coming out, on average nearly every three weeks. It had to be costing them big time too.

Well we finally lost patience. So we recontacted the sales person and told him of our issues. We told him that we had been clearly put under incredible pressure with lost productivity and wasted materials. But did he care? NO.

He had no concern or desire to understand our situation or the cost to our business. His first attempt to ‘help us’ was farcical. He told us there were two ways we could solve the problem:

1. We could get out the contract by paying $9,000, or

2. We could upgrade to a new machine and sign a new contract with him.

Great! Just great!

When I told him that his suggestions where clearly unacceptable and that we did not trust him he came up with this:

‘It’s out of my control.’ ‘I can’t do anything about it.’ ‘I’m just the sales person.’

That finally took the biscuit.

I told him that he was ‘holding our business hostage’ and if he was unprepared to help us I would go to the top. Which I did. And guess what? Action occurred that day and our issue is in the process of being resolved. We have a replacement printer and we are in discussion with management as to where to go from here. ·

Did that sales person have the authority to do something about this but couldn’t be bothered?
Was it out fo his power to make any decision?

I don’t know but what I do know is that it was in his power was to take it to management which he didn’t do.

There are clearly many questions still to be answered and it is not my place to go into that company’s business (well not yet anyway) to assess why this occurred. However, being treated like that by the sales person who did not care one bit about our plight makes me sick.

When you enter into contracts with companies you are engaged with them over a period of time. This type of arrangement usually happens when a business leases equipment i.e. a printer for instance. These companies not only want you to get their machine they also want to you to buy the ‘servicing’ of that machine.

In this case what I think the sales person failed to grasp was that this type of relationship is a long-term customer relationship. The sale doesn’t end at the signing of the contract and delivery of the machine. You cannot abdicate your responsibility as a sales person. And sadly I am sure this not an isolated incident.

That sales person and others like him need to recognise they have a duty of care to that customer and their duty of care only ends when that customer ceases to be a customer.

And by the way saying ‘Sorry’ would have helped too.

Here is an acronym I got from a neat website www.customerservicepoint.com which this sales person could have benefited from applying:

L.E.A.R.N. is an acronym, with 5 easy steps to follow: ·

LISTEN – Listen carefully to your customer. Don’t interrupt or tell the customer to calm down, this will only ignite the anger. ·
EMPATHIZE – Feel the pain of the customer, and tell her that you can understand how they feel.
APOLOGIZE – Apologize to the customer, even if you feel that you have no part in the problem. Do not blame the customer, but there is no need to take the blame yourself! ·
REACT – Decide what you will do to resolve the problem, and tell this to the customer.
NOW! – Do not delay. Take immediate action! The longer you wait, the harder it is to produce outstanding customer service.

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Broken Promises & Bagging the Competition

November 23, 2007 in Attitudes & Behaviours, Value Creation

Watching the antics of all the parties in the Federal Election, especially the two major parties, and how they go about trying to convince the electorate to vote for them, has reminded me about what NOT to do in sales:

  • Make promises you cannot keep
  • Bag the competition

Nothing irks customers more than sales people overstating their capabilities and making claims and promises they cannot keep or live up to. It’s the fastest way to break trust and leave customers doubting you and your business. Making grand claims with little or no substance is foolish at best. In today’s networked world, many people have access to information and can check pretty quickly whether what you claim is true or not.

So can you do what you claim you do?

The other thing that can drive customers away from you is making derogatory comments about your competition. If your prospective customer has been using your competitor before you came along and was really happy with them and you start bagging the competition what you are essentially doing is bagging the customer’s decision to use them in the first place. Not a good strategy to set up a basis for an ongoing relationship. Find out whom they have used first before you open your mouth and watch what you say. No one likes to feel pathetic because they made a poor decision or haven’t kept up with the latest trend, or have their decision laughed at by an arrogant “I know better than you” smarty-pants sales person. Be very careful in how you position yourself and your offerings.

My advice:

  • Know your competitive advantage and how legitimately it compares to your competitors
  • Know how to present it in a manner that is respectful and non judgemental
  • Know how you can help people genuinely, with real substance and how you can demonstrate that to your customers.

That is why it is sadly amusing to watch the political parties trying to convince us of their merit and bribe us with their promises just so we will vote for them. All the while they behave like bullies beating each other up in the process. It all seems so primitive really. I had hoped we had come farther than this. I do live in hope though.

So maybe one day we will be pleasantly surprised that they will speak to us like adults, behave like adults and make decision like adults with the interest of all of us at heart. Good sales people do this everyday.

All this reminds me of a saying: A Politician thinks of only the next election. A Statesman thinks of the next generation.

Some food for thought.

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