Successful Business Leadership

By John Boyens

President of the Boyens Group

At some point in time in your career, regardless of your position, you will be selling something - from a business plan to an idea to a product or service. Going into sales is a great career and an opportunity to learn business development. Whatever path you take, there are critical skills to develop to significantly better your chances of achieving professional and sales success.

A sales career is a rewarding career (professionally, personally and monetarily) - if you like challenges, meeting new people, travel, and are an enthusiastic go-getter. Just having these characteristics, though, will not ensure your success. The purpose of this article is to provide you with an overview of sales skills and develop an initial understanding of key terms in a sales environment. Peter Drucker says: “The purpose of a business is to get and keep customers”. It is the salesperson who is on the frontline in fulfilling the purpose of a business. This article summarizes key principles to be an effective salesperson:

Research has found that there are nine specific skills critically important to productive selling:

1. The ability to properly target prospects. Don’t waste time trying to sell to people who will never buy. Productive selling requires that you have an understanding of the profile of the ideal customer, the ability to segment markets based upon opportunity, and a thorough knowledge of a unique value proposition for the products and/or services offered. Look for market research information and join business associations.

2. Knowledge of challenges. Industry change, marketplace adjustments, technology and competition are all outside influences that impact sales success. The most productive people stay abreast of these influences and understand the potential changes that present themselves as a result. They know how to leverage these influences to positively impact the three stages of buying: the need stage, the proof stage, and the risk stage.

3. Knowing how to get buy-in on the initial call. Productive salespeople are able to open a credibility window to generate interest in the initial 20 seconds of a call. They use peer-to-peer customer success stories and problem positioning and solution targeting grids to help generate interest and get buy-in on the very first call to a new prospect.

4. The ability to find the real business issues. Every business has critical needs that are frequently unidentified or undisclosed. These critical needs yield buying decisions when they can be discovered and linked to products or services. Seek to understand a customer’s business plan, market position, cash flow patterns, product quality, etc.

5. An understanding of power and influence. Productive salespeople know how to weave powerful webs of influence in their customers’ organizations. They understand the pyramid of power and how to maximize opportunities within customer and prospect organizations. In a business the Pyramid of Power is made up of three levels - the office of the “CxO”, the line of business executive and staff executives. The top level is comprised of anyone with a “C” in their title as well as the President, General Manager and/or Owner. The line of business executives are comprised of all the heads of all of the functional lines of business (i.e., sales, marketing, finance, operations, customer service, etc.). The staff executives are the people responsible for carrying out the strategy. What salespeople need to know is that staff executives “buy” to only one thing, budget! If they don’t have the budget…they can’t buy no matter how good your product is, how much they need it or how “sweet” a deal you offer. “C-Level” executives are usually compensated on an annual basis (not including base salary) so their decision making is normally focused longer term than short term. Line of Business executives are usually compensated on monthly or quarterly (not including base salary) so if you can show them how your product or service will help them make their monthly or quarterly goals they’re more likely to buy and buy quicker. Both the “C-Level” executive and the Line of Business executive can “buy” without a budget. Salespeople have to sell at all three levels but I’ve found that the Line of Business executive is the best one to target.

6. The ability to empower decision makers. Productive selling requires a decision-maker action plan. Getting to the people who have the “power of the pen” is the key. By helping them understand how to cost-justify their decision, a salesperson actually empowers them to buy.

7. An understanding of how people buy. Productive selling teams understand that there are four reasons why people don’t buy: no need, no vision, no value, and no power. Successful sellers help prospects to identify need and are able to help create a vision with a bias toward your capabilities.

8. The ability to create a sense of urgency with the buyer. Productive selling professionals know how to use time in their favor. They can articulate the cost of delay and identify the benefits of the successes that can become reality. In short, they can create a sense of urgency that makes the consequences for not taking action very real and imminent.

9. The ability to stand firm in final negotiations. Sales professionals do not forfeit the fruits of their hard work in the final moments of negotiation. They understand the principles and traits of master negotiators and can create gives and gets. Most importantly, they never let negotiations get down to one item, but keep the discussion at the “big picture” of overall values and benefits to the customer.

It costs a lot less to keep an existing customer than to get a new customer. Research shows that it costs nine times more to get a customer than it does to retain a customer. It can take 18 to 24 months before a customer becomes profitable. Given marketing costs, sales costs, training costs and ramp up time most companies need 18 to 24 months of purchases (revenue) to “break-even.” So retention of current customers is very important.

Customer Retention focuses on keeping the current number of customers as it is easier to sell more to an existing customer (versus selling new ones) which lowers your cost of sale and at the same time grows your revenue stream.

High retention levels require customers to be satisfied with the service, the product and the experience. The top ten common mistakes made by sales people and organizations at serving customers well are:

1. Staff is not well trained in the product and services

2. Trying to win the argument

3. Not being accessible to your customer

4. Defaulting to your “policy”

5. Not living up to your promises

6. Not remembering your customer’s name

7. Giving customers the runaround

8. Not listening to your customer

9. Forgetting to say “please” and “thank you”

10. Failure to manage expectations

The best practices for you to improve customer satisfaction are:

• Know your customer’s business: What makes them unique? What products/services do they sell? What markets do they cover? Who are their competitors?

• Deliver flawless results: To establish long-term customers’ relationships it is critical that you flawlessly deliver every benefit and value you promise

• Develop a proactive plan: Understanding your customers business and doing first-rate work are essential for creating a loyal clientele. But there’s more. You must also develop a proactive, customer-specific plan that articulates how you will retain and grow your customer base. Without a plan, you’ll drift from project to project, relying mostly on luck.

• Uncover “needs:” To retain customers, you must focus on customer satisfaction. Rather than just making a sale and then moving on to the next customer, savvy sales people are constantly asking existing and new customers questions about their business, then seeking advice and counsel to understand more about what they’ve learned.

• Manage expectations: You need to manage expectations. This means from both a positive (proactive communication) and negative perspective. Customers with unrealistic expectations of what they want and/or what you can deliver will never be satisfied.

• Keep your name in front of your customer: Maintain communications. Reach out to the customer four times a year at a minimum. Call them, drop by, take them to lunch, etc. Make sure you use technology (i.e., email, video email, etc.) to proactively manage your customer contact.

• Assume nothing: No matter how good you are, never assume you’ve got a loyal client. Complacency is the enemy of loyalty. A client’s trust and loyalty can be swept away if a salesperson gets arrogant or lets performance slip, even on just one interaction.

Finally, develop a strong, positive relationship with people by finding things in common with them and genuinely care about them. Establish rapport with your customers and prospects. The purpose is to get a person (your prospect) to trust you and your company enough to do business in the first place and, even more important, continuing to buy from your company in the future.

So what’s rapport? Rapport is defined as either a relation of trust between people, a feeling of sympathetic understanding, in accord/harmony with others or having a mutual understanding. In business, rapport is the presence of agreement or alignment. No one is born with powerful rapport building skills. These are learned. The good news is that you can master them, which leads to extraordinary results personally and professionally. Existing clients need to feel that the rapport established when they first bought is still there and, in fact, growing. New prospects need to feel comfortable before they make a decision to buy. It’s been said many times: “People buy from people like them and people they like.” Remember you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.

So how does one actually build rapport? Here are some suggestions:

• It’s important that the salesperson takes a genuine interest in getting to know what’s important to the prospect. You can only do so by asking “open-ended” questions. Let’s say that you’re a copier salesperson. Some examples of “open-ended” questions could include: Why are you looking to purchase a new copier? How do you see yourself using the copier? What information do you need from me to be certain that you’ve purchased the right copier?

• The salesperson should look for things that they have in common with the prospect to build trust in the salesperson and his/her recommendations. Things in common could include where they went to high school or college, what sports they like to play or watch, favorite authors and movies, etc.

• Sales people should pick up on key words, favorite phrases and how their prospects speak. For instance listen to their volume, inflection, tone. Salespeople should attempt to mirror their prospect’s volume or inflection to make their prospect feel at ease. Most experts agree the ideal rate of speech is between 180 and 190 words per minute. At this rate, people will be able to hear and comprehend what you are saying. There are different patterns and rates of speech and regional accents that are the product of geographic areas. In the Northeast, people tend to speak faster, while people from the South tend to speak slower than the 180-word rate, so salespeople need to adjust accordingly.

• Salespeople should notice how their prospects like to handle information. Do they like lots of details or just the big picture? This awareness will enable the salesperson to give prospects the right amount of information to make the decision to buy.

Selling is exciting when you achieve a satisfied customer. Whether or not you pursue a career in sales, at some point in time, all of us are selling something. Learn to master value-added selling skills as part of achieving a satisfied customer.

John Boyens has dedicated his business life to maximizing the productivity of sales processes for over 30 years. During his career in corporate America, John led national sales, service and marketing organizations to consistently increase sales productivity, improve market share, accelerate revenue performance and deliver bottom-line profit results. John’s expertise in sales, sales management and business strategy keeps him in demand as a guest speaker, facilitator, workshop leader and business consultant. Visit John at www.boyens.com.