Jonathan Farrington's Blog

JF Guest Author Post

Kendra Lee

When you approach a new prospect, what do you have to offer? Whether you’re sending an email or cold calling, you need to grab the attention of your contact and make them want to talk with you. But too often sellers spew on about their product or lead off with a trap question that screams sales person.

The solution to this prospecting dilemma used to be to start your discussion as a business conversation rather than a traditional semi-scripted cold call. You based it on needs you uncovered in research before ever approaching your prospect.

But even that isn’t enough any more.

Business owners and executives are busy people, with too many responsibilities, too little time, and too few staff to pick up the slack. They don’t have time for a conversation unless it will help them do their job more efficiently and effectively.

Too often the prospecting business discussion is one designed to gather a prospect’s needs and covertly qualify if an opportunity exists. While you begin the conversation discussing the business issue you uncovered in your research, it quickly deteriorates into a series of questions that feel much like a sales call.

Your contact ends the conversation without agreeing to a first appointment and you don’t know why.

You never mentioned your product and you were only talking about them. So what happened? It used to work. What changed?

If you want to catch your prospects’ attention, you must go beyond even the business discussion. You have to have something important to talk with them about, something that feels almost life changing for them.

Here’s how it works.

1. Know your purpose. In your first call or email, your purpose isn’t to close for an appointment. I know you’re shocked, but it isn’t. Rather, it’s simply to have a conversation to get to know each other, begin building a relationship, and see if you should have a meeting.

While you’re feeling the pressure to fill your pipeline this moment, many of the people you’ll speak with won’t be ready to make any immediate changes. But if you leave a positive impression as a thoughtful, intelligent person who may be able to help their business in the future, they’ll want to stay in touch. That gives you a lead for 3, 6 or 9 months from now.

Better still, they’ll probably call you because they’ll remember your discussion.

2. Offer to share your expertise freely. Research is important but it’s how you apply it that is truly distinguishes you. Determine the business issue you could assist with, then offer your expertise on what they should be thinking about to address that point.

Don’t hold back because you think a prospect should pay for your advice.

Few companies you speak with will be able to implement your suggestions without your company’s help. Let go of that concern and open up. Share the great knowledge you have.

If you have ideas about how a company could better control their IT costs, tell them. Some will be recommendations that directly connect to your offerings, but others should not. If, for example, during your discussion you believe that some basic training would help their office manager to administer better system back-ups, tell them. You can sell them a full-scale business recovery solution later.

Guide them with ideas they can implement right now while positioning what you can assist with in the future.

3. Make them think about the possibilities. As you share, discuss what you’ve seen other companies do to address a similar problem. Think about your clients, the challenges they’re facing and what they’re doing about those problems.

Show prospects the possibilities of what they could be doing to improve productivity, cut costs, or address that need you uncovered in your research.

Share one or two simple-to-implement ideas, as well as one or two more complex, suggestions. Base your ideas on how you’ve observed your clients address those matters in their organizations, or how they have implemented your solutions to change their businesses.

The executives you’re calling are so busy they haven’t had time to consider other possibilities. They’re surviving with the issues when they may not have to.

4. Help them re-examine their status quo. By not pushing prospects into a change with your first call, you’re freeing them up to rethink their status quo. Your conversation of suggestions and possibilities allows them to take time out and think for a moment about what could be.

Suddenly training the office manager may not be enough. They may want your recommendation on how they can protect their business during hurricane season, or secure their data, or better manage their whole IT infrastructure.

They won’t want to wait 3 or 6 months to talk again. They’ll want to pick your brain some more and consider ways to eliminate the issues they’ve been living with now that they know they don’t have to.

I know, you’re thinking that this sounds like a deeper conversation than you usually conduct in a cold call. And, you’re concerned that you interrupted the person. They’d never stay on the phone for this type of discussion.

But, it works.

It works because you’ve grabbed your prospect’s attention and made them want to talk with you. After a conversation like this, they either want to schedule time for a deeper conversation, or they want to hear from you again sometime soon.

You can solve your prospecting dilemma but elevating your conversation to one based on your expertise and ideas. Before you know it, not only will your pipeline increase, but your relationship database of potential new prospects will be overflowing, too.

Kendra Lee is a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert and author of the award winning book “Selling Against the Goal” and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group works with companies to break in and exceed revenue objectives in the Small and Midmarket Business (SMB) segment. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or to subscribe to her newsletter visit www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.773.1285.

When was the last time you put your hand up and said “I screwed up” or “Why on earth did I take that decision?” Not just privately, but publicly? 

You see, every action we take creates a reaction that is based on the formula of cause and effect.

Everything that happens is the effect of an underlying cause.

Most people spend their lives operating at effect….

“It’s not my fault I always end up in bad relationships.”

 “Life’s so unfair, things always happen to me.”

“We’re in a recession, that’s why I haven’t achieved target.”

“If I could only match our competitor’s prices, I’d win more deals.”

True personal power can only be achieved when an individual accepts 100% responsibility for what they create in their lives.

To put it another way, you get one of two things; the result or outcome you want or the reasons why you did not (you may recognize these as ‘excuses’!)

The more we focus on the reasons (excuses) and blame circumstances beyond our control we push away our personal power.

Therefore, if we believe that we are in control of the situations that life ‘appears’ to throw at us, then we are in control of our thinking and emotions, and therefore in control of our own life.

This belief has given thousands of salespeople the determination to breakthrough so many barriers and overcome countless challenges when at times it was tempting to wallow in self-pity. If something good or bad happens, we must ask ourself, “How did I create that?” This question enables us to tap into our brain’s infinite potential and it will give us all the answers we need.

If we are prepared to commit 100% to taking responsibility, the results really can be extraordinary. This has been my mantra for as long as I can remember – it is something my mother taught me very early in life, and it was a particularly important lesson for someone who has spent most of his commercial life evangelising and crusading: That route may well be cathartic, but it is fraught with risks – the “online sycophantic crew” try to come down very heavily quite often - trust me.

However, I remain wedded to my convictions, and I sleep very well at night – because I accept 100% responsibility!

News: Two absolutely superb guest posts this w/e – do please try and join me?

The dichotomy facing Sales Directors is how they reconcile the fact that most corporations today provide less upfront training for their sales staff than in years past, yet attach increasing importance to staff development?

This should not come as a surprise, because current stock market thinking provides a powerful disincentive for firms to invest in their people on an ongoing basis. An organisation’s investment in their human capital, in the form of training and other forms of education, is not separable from general expenditure. It therefore appears as a cost on the corporate balance sheet.

Tough Choices:
Unfortunately, as a consequence, many Sales Directors have concluded that their only realistic option is to cut back on training and instead look to recruit sales professionals who, in theory anyway, already possess the necessary skills needed to do the job. They then send them out to win business armed with what they know. However, most of those same Sales Directors are discovering just how difficult it is to find skilled salespeople, who have all of the essential skills and personal traits. And anyway it is not possible to equate experience or seniority with success.

In skills development, there are many similarities to sport i.e. does an athletic champion stop training as soon as they win their first medal? In music, does a concert pianist stop rehearsing as soon as they have given their first recital? In art, does the artist stop improving after they have enjoyed the first exhibition of their work? The answer in all cases is obvious and we should apply the same common sense principals to the ongoing development of our sales teams.

The reality is that selling in today’s climate is both an art and a science. Selling is a profession that demands a far wider range of skills than ever before, skills that require continual fine-tuning and constant practice.

In Summary – Ongoing Reinforcement and Development Is Essential:
The operative word here is “ongoing”. Even if salespeople have undergone progressive sales training, there’s no guarantee that they will be successful. It is common knowledge that skills grow rusty over time and salespeople are prone to pick-up bad habits along the way or to simply skip steps and take shortcuts that can lead to long-term trouble.

Perhaps even more important these days, is the fact that markets, competition, technologies, and customer preferences are all in a constant and accelerating state of change. This fact requires that sales people are able and willing to rethink their sales strategy and approach frequently and receive a regular top-up of skills and motivational coaching.

Salespeople often are not clear about how to identify the prospects most likely to have a genuine need for their product or service. Without an objective way to prioritise which prospects to contact first and/or an efficient strategy for contacting them, salespeople are doomed to waste a large percentage of their time. Another huge dilemma for many salespeople is how to divide their time between servicing existing clients and generating new business from new prospects.

Existing clients frequently make requests for service that could be dealt with by support staff. But salespeople who lack a disciplined, future-orientated plan for generating new contacts and sales often find themselves spending more time attending to “urgent” tasks for existing accounts instead. A common approach among salespeople can be summarised in the saying “If you throw enough mud against the wall, some of it is bound to stick“. This approach is exhausting, demoralising, extremely unproductive, and very expensive in the long term.

Far too frequently, competent salespeople are expected to channel their own activities into the areas that will produce the quickest wins. Unfortunately, left to their own devices, they don’t develop and pursue a formal strategy for moving a sale tangibly forward during each prospect interaction, neither do they have a clearly defined set of goals against which to measure the progress they are making Typically, their judgment is based on gut reaction and is purely subjective i.e., “Oh yes, I’ll get that order, he likes me,” because salespeople have to be optimistic by nature. They end up “dancing around” with prospects, in the hope that eventually they will get to their chosen point on the dance-floor i.e. -the sale. In this scenario, the customer has complete control.

Finally, Let Us Not Forget Good Old Villfredo Pareto And His 80/20 Rule:

The sales that a salesperson completes today were made possible only by activities performed in the past. Equally, it’s what they do today that will create their future sales results. Because there is a time delay between activities and results, salespeople have an opportunity to improve their sales results by undertaking sales productivity planning and implementing an effective prospecting system. Generally, since 80% of sales are generated from 20% of customers, 80% of salespeople’s time should be focused on 20% of their most important customers/prospects.

Most companies are looking for ways to manage their most important business relationships more effectively and more efficiently. It is not easy to do and it is not always enjoyable to do, but when a key account strategy works well it is extremely satisfying.

Key account management is a broad subject and this post, plus accompanying free eBook is designed to help make the management of major accounts:

• Easier
• More enjoyable
• More effective

Starting Point:

There are many definitions of key account management but my favourite and one I have used throughout my work is from The Financial Times:

“The art of developing long-term relationships with selected customers”

It is simple, clear, and it shows us what is important.

This summary looks at each part of this definition i.e.
• Key account management is an art not a formula.
• It is a process of development, not a single action.
• It is a long-term process. It takes time.
• It involves relationships, not just a mechanical approach.
• It can only be done with selected customers.

Key Account Management Is An Art Not A Formula:

One can often see two ways of managing key accounts that are certain to fail. The first is management by chance. There is no control. There is no plan. No one can explain why we are winning the business or forecast how long our success will last. We do not learn from our mistakes or from our successes. This is at one extreme.

At the other extreme is management by formula. Here everything is documented, controlled and decided. I have seen one account planning process which demands that for every account the team must hold a one day orientation meeting, then gather information for twenty-one working days and then hold a two day planning session. The timescale cannot be changed. The people who must be present never change. The documents that must be prepared are described in detail. The process is a good one but it leaves no room for flexibility, common sense or the differences that exist both between accounts and departments. We need a way of managing major accounts that is effective, consistent and flexible. We need a way of working that is simple but strong. We need discipline and we need creativity.

So, how is key account management like an art?

Discipline: Artists need discipline. Think of the discipline of a dancer or a singer, they know that they work best if they create inside disciplines of their art. A poet follows certain rules of rhyme and structure and a painter knows the disciplines of colour and line.

Practice: Every artist  expects to practice. The painter sketches, trying different compositions, actors rehearse until the words are coming perfectly; the dancer works at the bar to keep fit and to perfect every movement and musicians play the piece over and over again. The performance often looks easy but we know that it took a great amount of work.

Creativity: Discipline and practice alone will not make an outstanding artist. There needs to be a spark – something special that allows the artist to see what many others miss and to communicate their understanding powerfully and clearly. The artist allows us to see and hear things differently.

Managing a key account needs all three parts. Discipline helps us follow the plan, to be self-controlled. Practice means that we do not expect to be perfect overnight, we think and plan and prepare for every important “performance”. Creativity allows us to change the past, to find new ways to solve problems and to win opportunities. If we think of Key Account Management as an art then we will avoid the two dangers of working randomly and working rigidly.

You can download my FREE Ebook, “Key Account Management – A Fresh Approach” - HERE

Those five are:

• Strategy
• Lean operations
• Balanced culture
• Customer responsiveness
• Leadership

Strategy sets direction and gives focus to improvement. It must however be deployed throughout the organization to be effective.

Processes need to be mapped and analyzed in a methodical way; projects must be managed; problem symptoms traced to root causes; data must be collected before decisions are taken; trends in customer preferences detached and fed back; improvement activity of any kind reported on and coordinated; improvement action measured. Just about everything should be done to a discipline.

A balanced culture means effective, creative management of people. Customers are served by people; processes are managed by people. Only people can deliver quality improvement. For them to work well they must be empowered, given direction, measured, and reviewed and success recognised.

Customer responsiveness keeps the organization focused on customer needs, reactions and changing requirements.

Finally, leadership ensures that everyone is enthused and supported to work on the strategy, improve processes, serve customers and become active team players.

So immediately we can recognize that the most important factor, which ultimately determines an organization’s potential for success, is leadership

JF Uncut

“Lies, damned lies, and statistics” is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments, and the tendency of people to disparage statistics that do not support their positions. It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent’s point.

The term was popularised in the United States by Mark Twain (pictured above), who attributed it to the 19th Century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881): “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

However, the phrase is not found in any of Disraeli’s works and the earliest known appearances were years after his death. Other coiners have therefore been proposed. The most plausible, given current evidence, is Englishman Charles Wentworth Dilke (1843–1911). (Wikipedia)

So, yet another instance of misrepresentation at worst, or misunderstanding at best?

I genuinely am a real “stato” – which may surprise you? I have purchased several software packages to ensure that I have the latest  and most accurate data relating to my sites constantly at my fingertips. For example, I can tell you that during the first six months of this year, this blog attracted visitors from 142 countries; 40% came from the USA; another 20% from the UK. Of those from the USA, the top three visiting states were; California, New York and Texas, in that order. I am least popular in Wyoming - whatever did I do to those folks?

But I do not intend to bore you any further with my own statistics, although you will have gathered I am a bit of a stickler for accuracy, particularly when statistics are published which are not only inaccurate, but equally misleading.

Let me introduce you to Invesp – or rather Invesp’s “Top 50 Blog Tables”

They first came to my attention a few months ago, thanks to a good chum’s blog post, in which he proudly shared his latest ranking with his readers. Since then, I have checked back periodically to discover if my own ranking was improving in-line with my data, which was telling me that all of my stats were continuing to get better and better. However, a short while ago, I noticed that they were not picking up some of my data, so I alerted them. I didn’t receive a reply, so I decided to dig a little deeper – here are the results of my investigations last week.

The results that I am describing were extracted on Tuesday July 20th.

You will notice, that according to Invesp’s latest Top 50 Sales Blogs league, I am currently laying in 17th position overall, which they describe as the “Ultimate Rank”

You may also notice that they claim to have no data for the first two categories – RSS Membership & Compete Rank – which is surprising, as both these sets of stats are very easy to obtain. I actually have 159 RSS Subscribers (Yes, I know it is quite low, I really must do a little more bullying!) and my current Compete Rank is 522,919 (Which I am quite pleased with) They also claim not to be able to access my monthly visitor numbers, which again, I obtained from Compete very easily.

Next, I decided to compare my stats with those of someone much higher up Invesp’s league – I just picked somebody at random, in this case the person who was exactly ten places higher than me, and it happened to be highly respected sales thought leader, Sharon-Drew Morgen.

So, here is how our statistics compared:

By Feedburner RSS membership

SDM: 590  JF: 159

By unique monthly visitors

SDM: 1123  JF: 2921

By Yahoo indexed pages

SDM: 135  JF: 1000 

By Google indexed pages

SDM: 215  JF: 492 (Although Invesp report SDM: 299  JF: 274)

By number of incoming links (via Yahoo)

SDM: 822  JF: 25,900 (Although Invesp report SDM: 45,209  JF: 43,916 – My Source – http://www.submitexpress.com/linkpop/

By number of incoming links (via Google)

SDM: 127  JF: 253

By the ratio of incoming links to numbers of pages

Impossible to calculate from data available, in my experience.

By Google PR (Page Rank – the higher the better)

SDM: 4  JF: 5

By Alexa rank (The lower the better)

SDM: 661,326  JF: 431,634

By Compete rank (Again, the lower, the better)

SDM: 1,230,292  JF: 522,919

And just for good measure:

Technorati Authority (The higher the better)

SDM: 123  JF: 130

Summary:

In all Invesp’s key measurement areas, except one, my statistics were (are) better than Sharon-Drews’ – so why such poor reporting. It is, as I suggested earlier, totally misleading, and actually, a complete waste of time.

I asked Invesp, very politely, for an explanation/investigation – that was almost a week ago, but I’ll certainly pass on any reply I do receive.

I also want to make it very, very clear, that this post is in no way meant to involve/implicate Sharon-Drew. It is not her fault that her numbers have been grossly distorted and mis-represented. She possibly does not even know of the existence of the league table – not many people do.

Finally, let’s end with some good news, and some guaranteed, genuine stats: Yesterday was my 950th post here – yes, amazing! So, we are planning a celebration on September 13th – when I make my 1000th post – including a very special commemoration ebook containing 100 favourite posts from the last four years – not just mine, but also from my huge number of guests – more soon.

The JF Guest Author Spot

Dave Stein

Yesterday I received an email from a Sandler franchisee inviting me to attend a live “Buyers Are Liars Workshop.” I’ve seen and heard this statement before, but only now feel compelled to voice my opinion.

I don’t know about you, but that phrase and the combative attitude it represents concerns me. Do buyers lie? Sure, some of them do. Do sellers lie?  Same story.

The sales profession has enough to overcome without a sales training industry leader conveying this negative, fatalistic view of selling.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not attacking the Sandler organization or any of their franchisees. ESR covers Sandler and we know they certainly have their share of satisfied, loyal customers in the markets they serve.

But many of us, including Howard Stevens and the University Sales Education Foundation, are working hard to elevate the profession of selling in the U.S. and other parts of the world.  With that in mind, it would certainly help this and future generations of sales professionals for us  to tone down the rhetoric and spend our creative energies helping salespeople better understand how to establish mutually beneficial, trusting relationships with their customers.  If someone doesn’t believe that can be accomplished, they should consider another profession.

Dave Stein, ES Research Group, Inc.
After a career as a sales consultant, trainer, and author, Dave Stein is now founder/CEO of ES Research Group, Inc., which publishes independent evaluations and comparisons of sales training companies and their programs and services. ESR is recognized as the leading authority on sales training programs and sales performance improvement. For the past twenty years Dave has focused on sales performance improvement, sales effectiveness and especially sales training.

JF Comment: The most telling comment within this revealing post is “The sales profession has enough to overcome without a sales training industry leader conveying this negative, fatalistic view of selling.”

Why?

Quite simply because so many of us are truly committed to the highest standards in advancing this profession and maintaining its integrity. Elevating the status of professional selling is a passion for me, and I find it depressing to continually discover organizations who seem hell bent on wanting to take us back to the “dark ages” 

This is an extract from an excellent article written by my colleague Dr. Tony Alessandra

“Traditional selling has another Achilles’ heel. It creates tension and could be construed as adversarial. Traditional salespeople often perceive their prospects as people with whom they must go to battle to win business. This power-struggle mind set is supported by sales trainers who teach manipulative sales technique and by books with combative titles such as Hard Ball Selling, Guerrilla Marketing, and The Sale Begins When The Customer Says No.

It does not take a genius to realize that the focus in traditional selling is misplaced and myopic. The commando approach to selling is obsolete. It does not foster referrals, references, repeat business, word-of-mouth advertising, customer satisfaction, or good will.”

You can read the entire article “Collaborative Selling” here

Tomorrow: It’s JF Uncut, and I will be revealing just how unreliable and misleading statistics can be – particularly when they are provided by Invesp – “Lies, More Lies & Statistics“

Communication is successful, only if it achieves your desired results.

It doesn’t matter if you think you’ve communicated well or if you think you’ve been crystal clear, what matters is that your communication is received and acted upon in the manner you wanted.

How many times have you said something to another person who has totally misinterpreted what you meant? Equally, sometimes we are on the receiving end of communication that makes us feel confused. If we can look beyond the communication and try to see a positive intention behind another person’s behaviour, then our relationships and interactions with people become more constructive and empowering.

When we communicate with people and if they are ‘not getting’ our point, then the responsibility is ours to adapt our approach until they do.

For example, if we have communicated a price increase and the reasons for that price increase, and our customers have not understood those reasons, the responsibility for this mis-communication lies entirely with us. Therefore, we can only judge the success of what we have communicated based on the reactions we get from other people.

In the same way, resistance from another person usually signals a lack of rapport.

Rapport is a vital ingredient when developing relationships because it builds trust and allows communication to flow. When that state of rapport is there, communication is a lot easier even if you do not agree with the other person. When we do not feel that rapport or connection, we have a tendency to ‘nit-pick’ or find fault.

Customers respond to people they perceive understand their position and are on the same wavelength. If we are encountering lots of resistance from a prospect or a customer, then it helps us to notice that we have not built sufficient rapport. Even if our prospect does not agree with what we are saying, rapport enables us to have an open discussion where we can get an honest reason for their reaction rather than a ‘prickly’ brick wall.

News: Great guest post tomorrow for you, and then on Sunday, “Lies, More Lies & Statistics!” – do join me if you can

Well actually, of course there is failure. If you take a driving test or exam you either pass or fail.

Salespeople will either succeed in achieving their monthly sales targets or fail to meet them. The key is how you perceive ‘failure’.

Every failure can be looked at as a learning opportunity that is beautifully epitomised by Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb. Despite more than 10,000 failures, he stood by his dream until he made it a physical reality. He said that every discarded idea took him one-step closer towards finding the idea that would work.

One of the most powerful self-coaching questions salespeople can ask is, “What will I do differently next time?” or “What can I learn from this?”

Salespeople who make mistakes and learn from those mistakes have a tendency to do better than salespeople who are scared to fail.

Therefore if you can see that when you don’t achieve your targets you have an opportunity to learn, because you have been given great feedback on what not to do next month.

I would also suggest that is still not common for salespeople or their managers to conduct post-mortems when they fail to win an opportunity – why?

This is a critical part of the sales/buying cycle – the learning phase. And unsurprisingly, it is even less common to find companies conducting post-mortems when they win business. Too busy celebrating and mentally spending that additional commission, I suspect!

News:

Consistency Is Key to Successful Selling

Meet the latest AllBusiness Sales AllStar, Joby Pearson, vice president of sales for Channel Services Group, who explains the importance of having a consistent process.

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