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Solution Selling

Why understanding empathy is the key to your future sales success

by Paul Sparks on September 5, 2010

What if the key to sales success was NOT greed, self-focus and a relentless push for decisions which are often not in the buyer’s best interest?

What if uncompromising competition was NOT the way to build quality and add value?

What if salespeople could do what many feel an innate desire to do – create genuine connections with other humans – and build a new business frame for our society?

A dream?  Perhaps not.

Jeremy Rifkin is president of the Foundation on Economic Trends and the author of seventeen bestselling books on the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment.  His books have been translated into more than thirty languages and are used in thousands of universities, corporations and government agencies around the world. His most recent books include The Hydrogen Economy, The European Dream, The End of Work, The Age of Access, The Biotech Century, and his most recent – The Empathic Civilization.

In this short animated presentation, Rifkin runs through a few thousand years of human history, highlighting how recent research in the fields of neurology and genetics reveals surprising connections between all of us.

Have a look and then think about how this changes they way you sell and connect with your clients and prospects.

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Find out more about Rifkin and The Foundation on Economic Trends here:

http://www.foet.org/JeremyRifkin.htm

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 Thanks for reading this post – Paul Sparks, Sales Effectiveness Australasia.

“Taking you beyond sales training and keeping you informed about the latest ideas, trends, innovation, research & best practice in professional selling and sales management”

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Lessons for selling in good – and bad – times

by Paul Sparks on August 25, 2010

Neil Rackham has built a strong international reputation in the global business community as a speaker, writer, and seminal thinker on sales force effectiveness.

Three of his books have appeared on the New York Times best-seller list, and his works are translated into over 50 languages.  Recently he has been named by the Speaker’s Bureau as one of 2009’s ‘9 Business Speakers you need to know’, and was included in The Speakers Group list of ‘8 High-impact Speakers’.He is Visiting Professor of Sales and Marketing at Portsmouth University and a Visiting Professor at Cranfield University.

I’ve had a number of conversations with Neil recently, and one of the topics which I know many have asked to hear about is “lessons from past recessions”.  In this discussion, Neil outlines 3 things that salespeople and sales managers should focus on – in good times as well as bad.

Neil, could you please give us some background about recessions of the past – and things we should focus on in more difficult times?

Let me start by just talking about the specifics of the selling in the economy we’re in, because that’s a good starting point.  It so happens if you look at people selling today, less than 20% of them had ever before sold in a real recession.  It’s a sign of how long that prosperous boom went on.

And now, we’ve got to the point where, frankly, people are making a lot of mistakes.  And I’ve gone into my research files.  In the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s even, I did a lot of foundation research into what makes people successful in selling.  As it turns out, a big piece of that was done in a fairly bad recession, particularly the recession of the 1980s.  And I’ve gone back into those research files and looked at the mistakes people made.  And I’m just going to raise those as an opener here.  Because I think exactly those same mistakes are being made by sales people, sales managers, and by sales forces all across the world today.  And I’d like to in particular raise three of them and talk about why they’re such problems and what to do about it.

So let me being with number one.  In hard times, sales people try harder.  Now, that doesn’t sound as though that’s a particular sin.  That sounds like it’s a sensible thing to do.  They try to be more active, to make more calls, to knock on a few more doors, to try to open up more opportunities, because that seems the best way of dealing with hard times.  We haven’t got enough business going in, so let’s go out and beat the streets for a bit more. 

Well, the issue is – what’s wrong with that?  Because you might think that’s actually the smartest strategy you could adopt.  In fact, in certain cases, it is.  We did studies in the recession of the ‘80s, where, for example, we had one company in New York that was selling office supplies. They had a new Vice President of Sales who said – I want you to make twice as many calls a day.  And in fact, sales went up by 40%.  So, in that case, the strategy of let’s go out and make more calls, let’s work that bit harder, turned out to be very, very successful.

But, now let’s look at some other cases.  What we found is that if you’re in a very large sale – the kind of sale which usually can’t be completed in one call, and in fact may make two, three, or five calls to complete – things are different.  When you make more calls, you actually reduce your sales.  We did studies of this in Motorola and found that happening there.  We looked at it in a dozen other companies.  The same thing happened.  Continue Reading…

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Strategies for selling successfully in a down economy

by Paul Sparks on August 4, 2009

CameronWilsonFor the last 20 years, SPI has been a leader in helping global companies successfully transition from selling products to marketing and selling high-value solutions.

Cameron Wilson and the team at Sales Performance International (SPI) have been great supporters of the upcoming Sales E-Conference – “selling from recession to recovery”.  Cameron has organised for one of the senior directors from SPI in the US, Tim Sullivan, to share his experience working with sales leaders in large US organisations as they have come to grips with the changes in sales strategies that have been part of the fallout from the GFC.  Tim is also co-author of the best selling sales classic – “The Solution Selling Fieldbook”.

To complement the session in the Sales E-Conference that Tim Sullivan is presenting, I’ve asked Cameron Wilson to share some insights from a recent SPI white paper on strategies that successful companies have been employing to achieve sales success in a down economy.

 Thanks Cameron – over to you.

We know that the GFC has caused a shift in selling – what do you see as the challenge that the GFC has highlighted?

 Selling is never easy, but in periods of slowing economic growth, there are some key areas of the sales process which become more difficult for salespeople to navigate.

Let me explain what I mean by firstly looking at the typical buying process.

The main concerns that buyers consider in the buying process usually follow this cycle:

  • Before entering into a buying process, customers initially need to recognise that there is a problem of some sort which will necessitate change to remedy
  • In the first phase, price and cost considerations relate to the importance of the solution
  • Then, as the buying process continues, cost becomes less important and risk becomes a more important consideration

In difficult times the customer’s perception of risk is often heightened.

Here’s where we see the challenge.  A common response by sellers in times when buyer’s budgets are cut and their risk is exaggerated, is to discount – often aggressively.

Continue Reading…

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Provocative selling or provocative management?

by Paul Sparks 5 May 2009

In the March 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review, three members of a strategic consulting firm in California (Philip Lay, Geoffrey Moore and Todd Hewlin), put forward an approach to selling during a downturn, where they advocate achieving sales by “provoking” customers to action.

Read the full article...