Four Facts to Help You Win More Business Today

The amount of bad advice, mixed messaging and downright lies being told is mind-boggling.  None is worse than the messaging around masks!  “You don’t need a mask” turned into “a mask may help,” which became “wear a mask,” which morphed into “wear two masks,” which is now “even after you are vaccinated, you’ll need to wear a mask and socially distance into 2022.”  If ever there was a case of the left-hand not knowing what the right-hand was doing, pandemic predictions, precautions and preparations are a prime example.

The sales space isn’t exempt from bad advice, mixed messaging and lies.  All you need to do is read my personal Twitter feed and/or LinkedIn feed and in a single 10-minute scrolling session you can see it clearly.

Cold-calling is either still dead, deader than before, or permanently dead because of content-marketing, drip-marketing, social selling, LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator, Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, or a bevy of other aids created and promoted by Marketing and Web folks.  Note that it’s not veteran sales experts who are scaring you with all this death; it’s people who have something to gain by convincing you that their widget is better than picking up the phone.  Mixed in with these misleading tweets are the promo tweets for the killer webinars that will teach you how to make your cold calls more effective by improving your messaging.

I’m also seeing posts and tweets from sales “experts” I’ve never heard of regurgitating the very sales advice I received when I was young.  I’ve been selling since 1973 so that “advice” is nearly fifty years old.  While the basics of selling don’t change, selling changed more between 2009 and 2019 then it had in the prior forty years and in the last 12 months the changes have been profound.

Before we can discuss what has and hasn’t changed, it would be helpful if we could agree on what the basics of selling are.  Let’s discuss the basics on three levels: 

1. Level 1 is quite simple.  Identify an issue, schedule a meeting, have a friendly two-way conversation, and help them buy from you.
2. Level 2 goes deeper.  The two-way conversation must include both Discovery and Qualification.
3. Level 3 goes even deeper.  During Discovery, you must uncover a compelling reason to buy what you sell and buy it from you.

At some point there may also be presentations, demonstrations, proposals, quotes, trials, pilots, competitive comparisons, technical conversations, logistics, financials, and contracts.

That pretty much summarizes what hasn’t changed in the past twenty years.

Beyond those basics are sales processes, sales methodologies and technology.

Sales processes are finally being embraced – perhaps out of necessity – but those that I’m seeing are still awful.  They’re backwards, missing stages and milestones, aren’t optimized and aren’t predictive.  Some of these poorly designed sales processes are being promoted by “experts.”

Sales methodologies are growing in number and I’m embarrassed by what companies do to them.  I hear things like, “We based our approach around…” and you can fill in the blank with SPIN, Challenger, Baseline Selling (the one I created and wrote a book about), Solution Selling, Customer-Focused Selling, Value Selling, Sandler Training and more.  Companies are keeping what they like, throwing out what they dislike, and adding back in the things they’ve always done, regardless of whether it is effective. It’s a total cluster f*ck.

Technology allows companies to leverage their sales process, sales methodology and pipeline by integrating all three into a CRM with the top CRM application (Membrain) supporting powerful built-in playbooks so that salespeople don’t need to leave the application.  Technology took center stage in 2020 as we leaned heavily on video/training platforms to sell virtually, train virtually and facilitate virtual managing and coaching.

Other than technology, what else changed?

Let’s begin with several facts:

1. Only one company can have the lowest price and it’s probably not your company.
2. There is more competition than ever since virtual selling makes everyone just as close or just as far away as everyone else
3. Unless you want to compete in a race to the bottom, the only way to consistently win business is by selling value.
4. Only 41% of all salespeople have the Selling Value competency as a strength according to Objective Management Group’s assessments of more than 2.1 million salespeople.

Selling value has always been measured by OMG. My sales & sales leadership training firm, Kurlan & Associates, has always trained and coached sales teams on the power, strategy and tactics of selling value and today it is front and center.  Selling value is not about explaining your value, you must BE the value.

To sell value you must be able to effectively differentiate and that isn’t about making comparisons to the competition or explaining how you are different.  You must BE different.

To help create differentiation and value you must be customer-focused which isn’t about being a facilitator or bending to their wishes.  You must help them get what they really need, which is often different from what they think they need.

Customers no longer make relationships the number one criteria but being likeable and having a good relationship is still a requirement.

All transactional selling has moved online but not all transactional sellers have moved with it and that’s the biggest issue.  Most of the bad advice is being dished out by those who still sell transactionally and don’t know it!

Be selective about whose advice you take, whether it’s practical, and whether it can get you to the next level.