Research… just one word… just one action… just a little bit of time… and it may well be the difference that makes the difference between winning and losing. For all that know my views on sales management and pipeline management in particular… will know there are only two outcomes in sales… win or lose. If you don’t win then you’ve lost. It’s that simple.

The last thing you need to do and it’s the very last thing you need to do in this current economic climate… is to kid yourself that you are better placed with your deals then you really are… and percentage forecasting… factored pipelines… and blindly following the sales process… are all designed to kid you… to fool you… to lull you into a false sense of security. Percentage forecasting is like building your house on a foundation of sand… it can come down collapsing all around you at any point in time.

And speaking of foundations… the foundation of a solid deal is the research you put in at the very beginning and the continued research you do during the whole sales process. I am always amazed at how little research many so called sales professionals put in… they turn up and do a product pitch hoping they strike lucky. Well, there’s not much luck around at the moment and so all your deals need a solid foundation.

So where do you start? The prospect’s web site is always a good place. The larger the company, the larger the organisation, the more information you will find on the web site. If it is a listed company then you will find lots of information. If it’s a private company then there will still be information around. Public Sector organisations… particularly public facing ones will also publish lots of information on their webs sites. I have even found complete board minutes for some of the hospitals that I have researched… these minutes tell everything you need to know.

Another useful place to look is services such as LinkedIn. Not only will you be able to find people on LinkedIn who currently work for the organisation, but they now also have information about the company as well. You are selling to people, not organisations, so getting some background on who you are dealing with is very useful. Some people almost put their full CV up on LinkedIn!

Google Alerts… how many of you use this free service. Set it up and anything that is in the news, on a blog, press release, etc for your chosen subject could be sent to your email… which means it does the research for you and delivers it on plate! All you have to do is read, take note and if necessary act!

So what do you want to do with your new found hoard of information? Well, you need to use it to find ways of getting hold of the one thing every single CEO in the world is trying to keep hold of at this moment in time… cash. Cash is the one thing hard to come by at the moment. Companies used to be able to go to the banks and borrow some to fund their capital expenditure and working capital requirements, but no longer… it seems the banks also want to hold on to their own cash and are not lending… and it has just come to light, in the UK at least, why they are doing it… to pay themselves massive bonuses… which they truly deserve for doing such a fine job in killing the economy.

Meanwhile, Mr or Mrs CEO has to conserve their cash and therefore if you want some you need to link it to something on the CEO’s agenda and most notably that will be to do with some business issue or other… and that’s where the research comes in.

When doing your research there are 3 little words to that are most important to remember and apply… behaviour follows intention… and I may well post about exactly what I mean and how to apply it another day… meanwhile start the research.

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The old adage is alive and well… people buy from people… it has to ‘feel’ right in order for them to buy… and this means all buying is based on emotion. The job of sales is to get it to ‘feel’ right for the customer… and that is where the skill comes in… identifying what its going to take to make it ‘feel’ right and then achieving it.

However, it seems my grand theory of selling does not apply to public sector buying… or so I’ve been told… again… and it seems all that can be done is for sales to follow due process and act as the proverbial ‘walking talking brochure’… what else can they do?… they can’t influence the decision… there is a process that the public sector people have to follow… it’s structured… it has to be transparent… it can be audited by the audit committee… and the people in the process can’t favour any one supplier… the right choice has to be made due to a set of criteria.

The public sector buys differently to the commercial world… I know this because I’ve been told… again. The process has been designed to eliminate the human bit… follow the process and the right answer will be found… the public sector will have value for money…. um… sounds a little like the corporate world…. can’t do, public sector is different.

I have to admit I started writing a comparison of how the public sector buys versus the corporate world… just to show they are not that different. Well, they are different in that the public sector seems to have lots of rules, regulations and laws to make sure the procurement process is open and can’t be abused. I’ve just done some research and have been reading a number of official documents and to be quite honest I got bored… and so I’ve decided to scrap all that comparison stuff from this post and get straight to the point…

At the end of the day there is a tender document sent out… suppliers respond and the public sector employees take the responses and mark the responses… award points for the answers. These points are then multiplied against the predetermined weightings (notice they are predetermined, once set, can’t be changed… clever) and then scores totalled up to give an overall score for the tender. Best and final prices are then submitted by the hopeful suppliers and the decision is given to the supplier who demonstrates the best value… Best and Final Price / Total Points… the supplier with the lowest value score is awarded the contract.

It’s a fool proof system that is fair to all those that participate and it can’t be manipulated because it’s open for scrutiny… however, there is a flaw… the scoring is done by humans… and humans have emotions… even public sector ones. Most questions have answers that are open to interpretation and are therefore subjective… it’s up to the humans to interpret the answer and give it a score… sound familiar?

I want you to think about this… have you ever read an email and taken it badly… and then the person standing next to you who reads over you shoulder says… “oh, it’s not that bad, what they probably meant to say is this…” The person helping you interpret the email has put a positive spin on it, but if they did not like the person who sent it, then they would have probably put a negative spin on it… compounding your already negative thoughts. So what do you think happens with those public sector folks who read your responses… will they put a positive or negative interpretation on your response?… depends on how well they know you… how much they trust you… and if they want you to win or not… um… sounds a little like the corporate world…. and on that point I rest my case… all… and I mean all… buying is based on emotion.

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In my experience the title of this post often causes a lot of confusion particularly with organisations that look to transform themselves from selling products to selling solutions. I have come across various companies in my time that have stated they need to do Solution Selling without really defining what they mean or what they need. Saying you need Solution Selling is in many cases is akin to saying you need a Hoover, when in fact you mean a vacuum cleaner.

Solution Selling
The words Solution Selling dates back to the end of the eighties when Michael Bosworth registered the words ‘Solution Selling’ as a trademark. He had a sales training company that specialised in a certain methodology and he wrote and published a book called, would you believe, Solution Selling. Subsequent to that Michael sold his business and Sales Performance Internal took over the mantle of Solution Selling and I would like to recognise that they have the trademark.

Selling Solutions
Now that we are over the confusion and we are not really talking about a methodology we still have to deal with the idea of selling solutions. Many product focused organisations want to move their people away from selling… products… to selling solutions without really understanding what it takes. Many product businesses start adding services and other products to extend their offering so that instead of one thing they can sell many things… a complete solution… which should not be confused in any way with a partial solution.

A solution can be defined as… a method of successfully dealing with a problem or difficulty… which is a definition I gleaned from the Encarta Dictionary and as such I hope I’m not breaking any Microsoft licence agreement in using this definition…. and therefore following this definition a pencil can be a solution to the problem of needing to write a note. Or perhaps the pencil is a partial solution as a full solution would include the paper… however, the problem was not the lack of paper, but the lack of something to use to write on the paper and therefore the pencil is a full solution after all… confused?… I am and I’m writing this!

Solutions need Problems
In some ways this solution dilemma is very nicely summed up by Bertrand Russell the English Logician & Philosopher (1872 – 1970) who apparently once said…

“The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.”

Or indeed, the other problem with selling solutions is also nicely summed up by G K Chesterton the Novelist & Poet (1874 – 1936) who also apparently said…

“It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It’s that they can’t see the problem.”

So, if you are selling solutions then you need to link them to problems. Solutions resolve problems. However, in today’s environment linking to just problems is not enough.

Problems need Business Issues
Budgets are getting tighter… justification for expenditure more rigorous… and therefore deals less frequent. If you are in sales and you want to prosper you need to evolve your skills from the ‘walking talking brochure’ to addressing business issues. A business issue is something the CEO and his / her team will spend personal time resolving. For example, the green issue. Many organisations and in particular the large corporates will have a stated green policy. The want to and must be seen to be reducing their carbon footprint. It’s a business issue that leads to many problems, such as the need to reduce power consumption, and each problem can have more than one solution.

In summary… selling solutions… you can start by defining the business issue, then understanding the problems and finding solutions. Or, alternatively you can start with a solution, then understand the problems it is addressing and then link these to the business issue. Whatever way you go you will either start or finish up with addressing the business issue and if you do that you are more likely get the attention of the people who ultimately hold the budget… which can’t be bad… can it?

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I have a confession to make… because my job is all about helping others improve their sales performance I can’t help myself analyse other sales people when I come across them… and the confession is… that I can go from disappointed to downright angry when I come across poor performance.

A few years ago my wife had decided… notice she decided… that we were going to have solar heating installed. We invited a few suppliers around to discuss what we wanted. All of them made the big mistake of doing a product pitch… they had a deck of slides and they were going to go through them no matter what!

I had done my homework, I knew what I wanted. I did not want a product pitch. In the end I had to say to one poor guy whoc kept ignoring my pleas to stop turning the slides… “if you turn over one more slide you are out of here”… he got the message, but was then completely lost as what to do next!

I recently came across a good article on the web by Ian Brodie of Sales Excellence that covers this subject very well… Selling Without Slides… he mentions what he calls the ‘pencil selling’ approach… it’s well worth a read. It’s what my solar powered friend should have done.

Equally, I also came across another article that ties in to this subject of basic selling skills. Chris Whyatt put up a post on his blog entitled… The Gap between What a Potential Customer Wants and What They Can Afford… again, well worth a read. It made me think of the solar powered friends… although they weren’t solar powered you understand, they were just selling solar power… because each of them were trying to sell us a Rolls Royce solution because that’s what my wife said we wanted… but it was not what we could afford!

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For many, selling is getting tougher… decisions are taking longer or being postponed… basic salaries look the norm, big fat commissions a thing of the past… and it’s going to get worse… not overnight, but over months. This may look bad, but it’s good news, there’s still time to adjust. People and companies will still spend, they will spend less and when they do they will be more careful, more considered and will want to make sure they will be getting even greater value for money than ever before… and they will give their cash to the most deserving of sales professionals… those that add personal value… therefore time to differentiate yourself from the rest.

Those that will find it difficult
The walking talking brochures will not do well… order takers will wonder why they have lost their magic touch… spreadsheet jockeys will not finish the race… and internal pen pushing managers will wonder why everyone is leaving to pastures new. However, those that do well are the ones who will be differentiating themselves.

Figuring the differential
So, you, as an individual sales professional… how do you believe you add the greatest value to your customer?

What skill do you have that most customer’s will value above all other skills?

What simple thing can you do that will differentiate you from all of the sales journeymen?

The differential
If you haven’t figured it yet, the last three paragraphs demonstrate what I believe will differentiate you from the rest… questions… you need to be skilled at asking questions… not any questions, but great questions… ask great questions and you will get invited back.

As a rule of thumb a great question should require the answerer to think for about 30 seconds before they answer. Yep, 30 seconds is a long time, but during that time the answerer is firing electrical currents along neurological pathways in their brain and so they will find it easier to remember the conversation, the topic is real and they need to make sense of it. The questions are so great they are thinking through their problems and arriving at some answers. You haven’t told them the answer, just facilitated it and because they have come up with the answers then the ownership is there.

As I have mentioned before in a previous post or two, it is a quote from an old friend of mine that best sums up this process… Ben Franklin apparently said… “Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I might remember. Involve me and I will understand”… a great quote, but slight exaggeration on my part about Ben being an old friend… he was a little before my time!

Great questions
If you want to be able to ask great questions that gets your prospect thinking, then you will have no choice but to do some great research. You have to be knowledgeable about your products, their benefits, your competitors, your customer, their industry, the economic trends, political trends, etc, etc. You have to keep abreast of these things. You have to do your research. You will have to craft your questions. There is work to be done, but who said selling in difficult times is going to be easy!

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I thought I would put up another post about words and their impact on communication. I’ll start by reciting an old saying…

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

It’s just one of those school day sayings that has been used, certainly in my day, to help alleviate the problems of verbal bullying. The sentiment is right, but unfortunately it does not really work. Words influences feelings which evokes emotion and emotion is at the root of our well being. It is often easier to recover from a broken bone or two, than recover from an emotional trauma and therefore verbal bullying is often more harmful than physical bullying!

So what’s bullying got to do with selling… probably not a lot, but emotion has everything to do with selling, because as I’ve said before… all buying is based on emotion.

Therefore let me explain how words can easily change feelings. The example I’ll use is about how changing a single word has a different impact on the feeling. Read the series of sentences below and as you read each sentence just check how you feel …

I wish to take Monday off
I like to take Monday off
I want to take Monday off
I need to take Monday off
I have to take Monday off
I must take Monday off
I can take Monday off
I’m going to take Monday off

The only word that is really different in each sentence is the highlighted word, yet the feeling aroused in you by each sentence should be different… either stronger or weaker… different people will have different feelings towards each sentence.

So, a change to a single word in the same sentence will elicit a different emotion… and as all buying is based on emotion… be careful of the words you use!

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Following on in my series of words to be careful about using I am now looking at another 3 letter word… ‘but’. If you are not careful you can contradict yourself by using the ‘but’word. Let me give you an example…

“Yes Mr customer I agree with what you have told me, but in addition…”

There we go, an innocent looking sentence with the ‘but’ word halfway along it. The first part of the sentence is agreement and then enter the ‘but’ which is the contradiction. I agree with you, but… The ‘but’ has just negated the agreement. By using the ‘but’ word what you are in fact saying is I don’t agree with you because I have a better point of view. This is what the other person will pick up either consciously or subconsciously… the agreement could be considerded to be insincere.

Now, if you want to be sincere about the agreement and want to add to it, then avoid using the ‘but’ word and instead use the all powerful ‘and’ word.

“Yes Mr customer I agree with what you have told me, and in addition…”

If you use ‘But‘ you could be contridicting what the customer is saying, whereas if you use ‘And‘ you could be adding to what the customer is saying… I’ll leave it to you to decide which is the better option!

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If you have young kids, or remember when your kids were young, then I’m sure you must have experienced the ‘why’ phase of their development… during this time the word ‘why’ was the most overused word in their vocabulary… it’s the inquisitive stage of their development and the word is used to gain information… to help put context and understanding to different situations. The overuse of the ‘why’ word comes about because the child would follow your answer to the ‘why’ with another “why?” and keeping going with this drilling down to the point of mental annoyance for the parent!

As we grow older we will still use the ‘why’ word but not as frequently as we did during those development years. If we take a career in sales then we will need to bring back those inquisitive times in order to gain information… to help put context and understanding to different customer situations… as sales professionals we need to understand why certain things are done they way they are… we therefore need to ask the customer… “why?”

However, asking the customer why they do things in a certain way is not good. The ‘why’ word is not very good at all, unless of course you wish to interrogate someone and put them under pressure. Asking someone… “Why do you do it that way?”… can come across as a form of interrogation, a form of criticism, a personal attack and all things considered… it’s not a friendly approach.

The problem is the word ‘why’. Using the child analogy again… if you have kids then you should know that you should never ever criticise your child… no matter what they have done wrong… no matter how bad it is… never criticise them, because if you do you will be helping destroy their self esteem, helping destroy their self confidence. Instead of asking why they did this or that… ask them “what was the reason for doing this or that?” Replace the word ‘why’ with ‘what was the reason’ and you no longer attack the child, but instead question their behaviour and you leave their self esteem intact!

It’s the same with your customer, never ask ‘why they do this or that’ only ever ask ‘what is the reason for doing this or that?’ It’s a much friendlier approach, it’s a safe approach and you will get a better answer rather than a defensive answer and you will leave their self esteem intact… which can only be good!

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It’s a phrase that I often hear sales people utter to their customer… I think it’s meant to help alleviate any concerns that the customer may have…

those soothing two words… don’t worry… will always do the job!

However, unfortunately if you utter the word “don’t worry” you may have committed the biggest faux pas of the sales campaign. Let me explain by using some examples…

Take The Test

First, I want you to be comfortable… sit back and relax a little and while relaxing, whatever you do, don’t think of an elephant… in fact don’t think of a grey elephant with a yellow monkey on its back… clear it from your mind!

Many people can’t resist thinking of the grey elephant with the yellow monkey on its back.

Things You May Have Said

Perhaps you have helped a friend at the top of a ladder who is a little shaky by uttering the immortal words… “don’t look down”… and what did they do?

…or the boy who was running along the wall who you tried to help by shouting… “don’t fall off”… and what did he do?

…or your partner who you wanted to go to the bank and tried to help them remember by telling them “don’t forget to go to the bank today”… as you rushed out of the door in the morning only to come home in the evening to find out?

This Is What You Told Them

Your friend up the ladder… you told them to look down.

The boy on the wall… you told him to fall off.

Your partner… you told them to forget to go to the bank.

And your customer… you told them they need to worry.

This is What You Should Have Said

Say what you want, not what you don’t want…

Your friend up the ladder… “Keep looking up.”

The boy on the wall… “Be careful.”

Your partner… “Remember to go to the bank.”

And your customer… “We have everything under control.”

So, now you know a little about the word ‘don’t’… how about the word ‘why’ ?… but I’ll leave that for another day.

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I’m working on a full post for this series, but this recession theory of mine seems to be gathering pace… bit like the storm that is hitting the UK at this very moment! Well, it was this very moment when I started writing this post yesterday, but today is today and the storm is dying down… shame the same can’t be said about the recession.

I have been writing about the coming recession since, probably this time last year. I have put posts up on this blog, I’ve added to other people’s blogs, I’ve posted and answered questions on LinkedIn. Some people have agreed with me and others haven’t, however, it seems I’m right as a number of people who know about this stuff seem to be saying that the US economy is now in recession and even those who are optimistic say they US is all but in recession. Unfortunately, even though I’m writing from the UK we are not immune… the old saying… when America sneezes, Europe catches a cold… is so true!

The Evidence
There’s lots of it around and here is a little that I picked up over the weekend…

The US Economist, Paul Ashworth, at Capital Economics says… “the debate is over… the 63,000 decline in non-farm pat rolls in February is near conclusive proof the economy is now in recession”

Apparently, the end of last week, Larry Summers, the former US Treasury secretary said the economy is… “currently in recession”

The chief economist at JP Morgan, Bruce Kasman, has said… “we now think the economy can be described as having entered a recession in early 2008”

However, still, not everyone agrees that America is in recession… other headlines over the weekend…from the BBC…‘Bush insists US not in recession’… well, that’s cleared that up then!

Why you should be concerned
You don’t need me to tell you that you need to be concerned… but I will because it’s my blog and I need to write about something!

It’s simple, a slowing economy means consumers don’t spend and if consumers don’t spend, no one spends. There will be timing differences across the economy, but eventually, in a recession money stops flowing between people & shops, between shops & suppliers, between suppliers & manufacturers and between manufacturers & raw material suppliers. Now, if you are in sales that’s not good.

Selling is going to get tougher, there will still be deals to be won, but companies are going to be much more prudent about splashing their cash… there’s going to be no splashing and there’s not going to be much cash… so you are going to need to win more from less… which has been my key message in this series.

Why Part 3.6
I’m now seeing companies beginning to be affected by the recessionary economy. Last year I saw consumers starting to cut back, and now I’m seeing large corporates cutting back. There is going to be more pressure on the sales pipeline than ever before and irrespective of what your company’s approach to pipeline management is… you need to be prepared. Making your number is going to recession proof your own part of the business. Your management may be doing other things to recession proof the business, such as reducing spending, reducing head count and other equally unpleasant things. So, make sure you are seen as a revenue generator and not a cost contributor.

Pipeline management is going to be the most important discipline in recession proofing you own part of the business and in my experience this is the least understood discipline. Many people think they have it covered, they think this is the prerogative of the company, but it’s not. Give the company what they want in terms of their corporate pipeline and make sure you manage your own… Personal Pipelines have come of age!

I therefore thought I would add this post as part of the recession proofing series – to make you aware that Personal Pipeline Management is going to be the most important discipline in the coming economic downturn… there… avoided the ‘R’ word!

Tomorrow I’ll post my Pipeline Management Guidelines… complete with full colour diagram… something for you to look forward to!

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