How important is listening as a skill for sales and support people? I would rate it as the #1 skill and an essential development area for salespeople to achieve their potential.
In our Selling in the Internet Age sales training courses, I ask individuals to rate their listening skills at the outset of the program. Typically salespeople rate their listening skill as above average. We then videotape a listening exercise to calibrate actual skill level. Having trained thousands of salespeople we have observed that most salespeople’s listening skills are average at the start of the program. Naturally the top performers stand out with highly developed skills, but for the core group, this is a priority area for development.
I rate my own listening skills as an area for development and I am aware of this problem as my wife reminds of it often, which is why I tuned into a recent McKinsey video excerpt of AMGEN’s CEO Kevin Sharer talking about his own epiphany when it came to listening and how he became a good listener.
3 min read
Learning to Listen - the most Important Sales Skill - (video)
Topics: consultative selling soft skills selling in the interent age
3 min read
The Challenger Sale - Who paid for your last sales call?
What Price or Value was your last Sales Call?
Would your prospect have paid you for the value they received from meeting with you or one of your sales executives on your last call with them?
This is a vexing question and it's one of many vexing questions that have been on my mind since I read the "Challenger Sale". It's a question that should be keeping B2B sales enablement professionals, sales managers and sales professionals up at night.
This question is vital in a World where buyers can find everything they need to know about your products and services without having to speak to you.
On your last call, did you bring the gift of knowledge and insight? Did you educate the buyer on an industry issue or sub-optimal condition that you are aware of because of your domain expertise, view of the market, knowledge of their company and your unique understanding of how your capabilities can create value?
Alternatively, would the buyer have invoiced you for 40 minutes of their time that they felt you robbed from them on your last sales call because you occupied their time, but failed to bring any value?
I will introduce a couple of related concepts to begin to address the value of the sales call question.
Challenger Selling is not new to Top Tier Consultants
The Challenger Sales type has been identified as the most effective in selling complex B2B products and services. When we examine the
Topics: consultative selling value proposition challenger selling value created selling whiteboarding
2 min read
A Marketing Messaging Guide to Effective Sales Conversations
The marketing messaging used in Websites and Blogs to drive Inbound Marketing leads, must be used to drive sales conversations with the gamut of prospects and customers, without salespeople having to translate it or figure it out themselves.
Rules for Inbound Marketing Messaging:
For a B2B Internet Site to be effective, there is more work required than simply selecting and optimizing keywords. Effective Website messaging and blogposts have the following characteristics
Topics: killer products consultative selling value creation
6 min read
The Lost Art of Closing - A Modern Sales Classic
This post is a review of Anthony's excellent second book, The Lost Art of Closing.
Topics: consultative selling anthony iannarino the lost art
7 min read
Qualification Confirmation - A Key Consultative Selling Process Tool
CSO Insights publishes an annual Sales Performance Optimization Survey (SPO) of Chief Sales Officers (CSO), which provides detailed information on several hundred sales and marketing performance metrics.
These metrics serve as benchmarks for sales leaders to evaluate their own performance. In CSO Insights SPO 2012 survey, there was an interesting chart on the outcomes of forecast deals.....nearly 1 in 4 deals was lost to no-decision with a further 28% lost to competition.
Anything we can do to reduce the impact of going the distance in a deal and ending in a lost or no-decision outcome is worthwhile and an imperative for sales leaders.
As a sales consultant I am a reader of sales blogs and books for new ideas and insights and when I came across Mike Bosworth and John Hollands's book Customer Centric Selling in 2004, I read it with interest and recommend it for B2B sales professionals.
The Meeting Summary Letter, or Qualification Confirmation as it is referred to in the book, is one of the most valuable process steps in the toolbag for sales professionals selling in the B2B technology space.
Like many sales tools, this isn't rocket science, just better process. One small addition to my follow-up letters has made a huge difference forecasting and eliminated most deals, where a no-decision or loss is a likely outcome.
What the authors realised is that without getting the buyers confirmation of what you understood was discussed and agreed in the meeting and confirming buyer commitment to next steps, a deal is not qualified and effectively the sales person has no control without it.
Regardless of the qualification system you use, if you add this simple technique to your system, it will give you the evidence you need to know that buyer is engaged and interested in next steps. An interested buyer will confirm in writing in an email reply or on the phone, their agreement to your letter, or negotiate variance to your summary or next steps within a few days of the meeting.
I have been using meeting summaries since I first started selling - (a long time ago) and adding this simple statement has made them much more powerful.
These metrics serve as benchmarks for sales leaders to evaluate their own performance. In CSO Insights SPO 2012 survey, there was an interesting chart on the outcomes of forecast deals.....nearly 1 in 4 deals was lost to no-decision with a further 28% lost to competition.
Anything we can do to reduce the impact of going the distance in a deal and ending in a lost or no-decision outcome is worthwhile and an imperative for sales leaders.
As a sales consultant I am a reader of sales blogs and books for new ideas and insights and when I came across Mike Bosworth and John Hollands's book Customer Centric Selling in 2004, I read it with interest and recommend it for B2B sales professionals.
Strong Qualification
There is one technique in the book that I have used and integrated into our strong qualification process that I think is very powerful in improving qualification and its called Qualification Confirmation and I recommend it.The Meeting Summary Letter, or Qualification Confirmation as it is referred to in the book, is one of the most valuable process steps in the toolbag for sales professionals selling in the B2B technology space.
Like many sales tools, this isn't rocket science, just better process. One small addition to my follow-up letters has made a huge difference forecasting and eliminated most deals, where a no-decision or loss is a likely outcome.
What the authors realised is that without getting the buyers confirmation of what you understood was discussed and agreed in the meeting and confirming buyer commitment to next steps, a deal is not qualified and effectively the sales person has no control without it.
Regardless of the qualification system you use, if you add this simple technique to your system, it will give you the evidence you need to know that buyer is engaged and interested in next steps. An interested buyer will confirm in writing in an email reply or on the phone, their agreement to your letter, or negotiate variance to your summary or next steps within a few days of the meeting.
When the Buyer goes Radio Silent
When the buyer does not make the meeting you set up to review the letter and goes radio-silent and does not respond to email or phone calls, there is little chance of an outcome and the deal should not be forecast or qualified until this occurs....but don't hold your breathe.I have been using meeting summaries since I first started selling - (a long time ago) and adding this simple statement has made them much more powerful.
Meeting Summary Structure
The structure of the Meeting Summary letter I use is as follows;
Current Situation - an intro summary of the buyers current environment and frames the issues you want to discuss. (Current state)
Desired Results - (Future State)
Impact - (The value to the organization of changing)
Decision Process, Criteria, Budget and Timeframe - (Sets out criteria for evaluation and decision, how they make decisions, how they will fund and buy your solution and a timeframe you can both work toward)
Next Steps - (This is where you nail down who's doing what and ask for introductions to key decision makers involved). The following phrase is the key " please confirm you are in agreement with my summary of our meeting"
The letter should close the buyer with a commitment to a phone-call or in-person meeting to review the letter and discuss any variance or next steps within 7 days. If the buyer does not confirm or correct your understanding in the letter, you don't have a deal. No interest = no deal and you have to go back and find out what you missed.
Desired Results - (Future State)
Impact - (The value to the organization of changing)
Decision Process, Criteria, Budget and Timeframe - (Sets out criteria for evaluation and decision, how they make decisions, how they will fund and buy your solution and a timeframe you can both work toward)
Next Steps - (This is where you nail down who's doing what and ask for introductions to key decision makers involved). The following phrase is the key " please confirm you are in agreement with my summary of our meeting"
The letter should close the buyer with a commitment to a phone-call or in-person meeting to review the letter and discuss any variance or next steps within 7 days. If the buyer does not confirm or correct your understanding in the letter, you don't have a deal. No interest = no deal and you have to go back and find out what you missed.
Summary and Take-aways
- Read Customer Centric Selling, you can order it here.
- Use a Meeting Summary after every meaningful meeting with a buyer to confirm qualification and next steps...this could mean you write quite a few letters in a large transaction, so you need well written proformas loaded in your CRM tool that you can quickly customize.
- The meeting summary, if well written can serve as a selling vehicle for you inside the buying organization.
- The meeting summary is particularly useful in overcoming weak mentors in the MENTOR phase of the IMPACT buying process and gaining access to a champion or decision makers. Understanding the buying process and how to help your mentor position your idea is discussed in the the book Why Killer Products Don't Sell....if you don't want to buy the book, you can download the ebook below.
- Death and taxes are the only certainties in life, and this method is not fool-proof, but if you implement Qualification Confirmation in addition to your current process, it will improve your qualification and close ratio. Effective qualification will give you more time to work on deals that will close and that will improve your sales results as well as improving forecasting accuracy.
Topics: consultative selling diagnosis and qualification
2 min read
6 Simple Steps to Consultative Selling Success
Many people believe that great sales-people are born, not made. It's a popular chestnut for discussions on sales blogs as well, but this point of view does not stand-up under scrutiny.
Topics: consultative selling
2 min read
Restoring Balance in the Buyer-Seller Relationship
Those of us
selling in the internet age, will know that the behaviour of buyers has radically changed over the past 5 years, unfortunately marketing programs and selling behaviour have been slow to adapt and buyers have the upper-hand. This imbalance produces consequences. A recent CSO Insights survey* found that sales quota performance worldwide is 50% and declining...WHY?
