Why Change Selling Blog

I was explaining our sales training approach (which is based on improving communication, language and inter-personal skills and applying these skills in selling situations) to a corporate sales training professional recently, who made a comment to which I took exception.

He said, “Yes, well of course that’s soft skills training, and we are not planning on doing any of that. We offer it for our management team, but our sales training is focused on product training, overcoming objections, negotiating and closing the sale and we are currently implementing the TAS methodology and training.” The implication here is that soft skills are touchy-feely and somehow optional or nice to have, or something that sales people are born with....not the hard skills sales people to need to crunch deals and close hard. Needless to say it was a short meeting.

According to Wikipedia: Soft skills is a sociological term relating to a person's "EQ" (Emotional Intelligence Quotient), the cluster of personality traits, social graces, communication, language, personal habits, friendliness, and optimism that characterize relationships with other people.
I continued to consider what the training buyer had said, because it called into question our recent experience and the sales performance improvement methodology we had developed.  I began to analyze the selling process and dissect its elements and offer the following insights.

Selling is a craft or skill that can be entered as a profession at a minimum by anyone with the ability to use a telephone. The craft of selling is innate in some individuals with highly developed interpersonal skills and intellect, - these people (about 5%-10% of the sales population) are known as naturals. For the rest of us, selling is a skill that is learned both by doing it and through training, - and with practice and coaching it can be mastered.

The B2B selling profession is underpinned by process (this resembles a science) where every move and transition in the selling cycle is captured and as such can be analyzed and optimized. Selling methodologies and CRM however will not help salespeople engage buyers, diagnose needs and qualify if capabilities are relevant, which to my mind are the highest order elements in the whole sales cycle.

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Anyone who has been part of a Business-to-Business (B2B)

Last night FC Barcelona,  a “star-team” beat Manchester United, a “team of stars” 2-0 in the final of the European football championship.

It was a disappointment for many English and Man-U fans, but an outcome entirely predictable. Apart from the first 10 minutes of the match, Barca controlled the ball through crisp passing, ball control through mid-field and selfless 100% contribution from every player on the team.
 Man-U’s star strikers were held for most of the game and could not put penetrate the Barca defence; while Barca showed remarkable composure and scored 2 goals from a total of 7 on-target attempts, vs . no goals from 2 on-target attempts for Man-U.
At sport’s highest levels where teams are evenly matched, we see time and time again that “star-teams” almost always beat “teams of stars” in final matches.

Last year I wrote about FC Barcelona in “Training to Win”, after witnessing their summer training camp regime from my office window. Barca brings their whole team, trainers, doctors, coaches, even their own security and some of their grounds-men when they come for summer training; their preparation and training is second to none.

Barca’s 2008-9 performance was exceptional in winning the La Liga championship and EUFA Cup, scoring the most goals in any season, having the least goals scored against them. In just one year as coach, Pep Guardolinos' capacity for leadership, ability to develop and inspire individuals to believe in themselves, combined with disciplined and extreme work-rate and focus on technical excellence, have found him a place in football history.
In business we look at sporting hero's and great teams for lessons and inspiration.

If FC Barcelona was a technology company it would likely have all or some of the following characteristics...and a whole lot more;-

 The Magic Software Case Study has been moved to Sales And Marketing Performance Improvement Case Studies

Over the Christmas holidays I took my daughter to the London Museum of Natural History, and among other exhibits, spent a good deal of time in the Charles Darwin Exhibit. Darwin has been in the news a lot lately as it’s his 200th anniversary and there are all sorts of metaphors and lessons being drawn from Darwin’s works.

I was struck by the exhibit and his genius and thought about my industry, the technology industry, and how this closed system has recently undergone violent upheaval. I asked a partner of ours, Barry Trailer co-owner of CSO Insights, (CSO Insights is a research firm that specializes in measuring the effectiveness of today's sales and marketing organizations), what his thoughts were on surviving in the current market, and they were insightful

Barry suggested, “Most companies will simply jettison people in a knee-jerk reaction to reduce cost, but this is not adapting to the new environment. The companies with formal sales process that mirrors the customer buying process, those who adapt their sales process when conditions change, are favored to be preserved while companies with informal or tribal sales process will find it very difficult and may go the way of the Dodo".

I loved Seth Godin's latest book Linchpin, but Linchpin is not for everyone.  There is a certain percentage of the population that doesn't want change; hates the concept of personal development - especially when it comes to them, is not interested in new ideas and prefers to pretend like Candide in Voltaire's novel by the same name that - "all must really be for the best and that hard work, from day to day is what life is about."

Most sales professionals will be very focused on closing last minute deals in the popular end of year discount-fest enjoyed around this time of year by our customers. Most marketers will be considering how they can improve program performance in 2010 to generate more leads and build mindshare.
It's a bad time to be calling sales and marketing leaders to engage in conversations about improving sales and marketing performance in 2010, but when is a good time?
So instead of calling prospective 2010 clients, I'm posting a blog and sending a link with the top 10 things for sales and marketing leaders to consider in their planning for improved performance in 2010, with a link back to a landing page on our site to register interest in further discussion.

The following is a true story. A few names have been changed to protect the identity of some of the people involved. 

In the first instalment of this story, Scorched Earth, I described the situation leading to my being hired at MicroStrategy into an OEM sales role and the problems in overcoming relationships that my predecessor had soured. This episode is about the events leading up to my being given 30-day's notice of termination and reflects on the changing role of salespeople in B2B selling.