I've long written blogs about splitting up the sales process and making sure that the relevant skill sets in the business OWN their part of the sales process (Lead Gen, Subject Matter experts etc....)

But when I do a review of our clients' closed deals in the previous year (I've just finished this for 2010), it's interesting to note that the best salesmen are the guys who run the business. 

It's not as simple as saying that they own the company so can give deals out / have the gravitas etc.... but rather that in my view they have the best blend of the following attributes:

Honesty - I think that our clients who sell repeatedly to new blue chip clients need to demonstrate their integrity from meeting 1. I know from dealing with them on a daily basis that the more open and direct they are with us, the better they will be in the room with a prospect. This ALWAYS turns out to be true, even if it means walking away from an opportunity that's not right for them.

It goes without saying that some salespeople struggle to communicate this effectively.

Subject Matter expertise - This needs to be demonstrated from meeting 1. We advise clients very often about the fact that the first hour is their opportunity to add value and "consult" - building credibility and appetite in the prospect from the first few moments. The best performers in this area are those who listen well and ask good questions, NOT the ones who talk endlessly. 

It's just as easy to demonstrate expertise by asking good questions - rather than lecturing. PLUS, you get to find out what the prospect needs too. Salespeople can achieve this through great question technique, but too often this goes by the wayside as they search and probe for an opportunity because that's what "solution sales" told them to do.

Strategic input - The best deal-makers need to communicate a sense of strategic understanding. The bigger picture (especially for technology sales) is crucial, and this input often comes in the form of stories told from experience which reassure and impress a prospect, and make them feel that the individual has the bigger picture close to his heart.

Deal-making skills -  This is all about not being greedy. I've never seen in the last 8 years of helping consulting / technology and media companies close deals a situation where the first deal is for big money. In our world, deals start small... even if the big deal has been scoped out and priced up. 

Who does this part best? Well it's always a commercially savvy person - who is often the boss. That's not to say that a salesperson can't do this well, but we nearly always see that the boss steals the negotiations away by getting involved in contracts too early. Similarly the salesperson often goes in too heavy and scares off a client without even knowing why it's been lost. 

 

Our experience tells us that these are the key ingredients for the best possible new business... delivered by a blend of skills. The reality is that the guy running the business nearly always has that blend.

 

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A little politeness goes a long way.

We are executing a couple of campaigns at the moment in the BPO / outsourcing space. Make no mistake - tough campaigns which are made all the tougher by the BAD lead generation guys out there who are really blasting this market.

You know the type of thing.... (and this is not meant in any way as a xenophobic comment)... people with poor language skills who are not from the country that they are calling into... mostly using IP phones which don't give consistent call quality.

The result is that when we call that same prospect - who has been called 10 times already that day with a similar pitch, we get short shrift.

So, how do you get around it?

Make yourself the most polite, most pleasant, least pushy, most charming version of yourself you can - and press on. On the campaigns we're delivering we are about 80% as effective in these sectors as we are normally, which is a pity but not a disaster.

The phone is a very powerful tool. Great communicators can build relationships over the phone that are very strong. Unfortunately not everyone is aware of this - and it gets misused.

 

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It doesn't happen all the time, but occasionally we do some great work which has benefits for all (including is - directly).

Today I received the following email (names removed - apart from John's!)

 

Hi Jamie,

I'd like to talk to someone about telesales options to support our sales lead generation. I got your details from Louise of Social Media Monitoring - I asked who they used for sales after being really impressed by a sales call from John (can't recall his surname). Perhaps we can explore working with John?

 So, the good stuff:

 

1. Our client had a great meeting with this company.
2. The company thought we were great, and directly asked about who we were (they thought John was their MD, he sounded to professional and well-briefed).
3. We got a great new lead from our own good work... loving that.

 

 

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As a sales consulting business ourselves we are pretty well qualified to comment upon the ability of management consultants to plan their service offerings...

Frankly, we've never worked for a consulting business who has a really well worked model to gradually turn consulting into a services-based relationship with a client that "never" ends.

The problem is with the upfront sale.

We work hard to develop propositions for our clients where there is an "annuity" that pokes out of the back of engagements, sustaining the relationship until the next bulk project starts. 

Unfortunately it seems that much of the time our clients gets hired to "fix a problem" and then loses sight of the reason why we worked to get into that account... and cannot turn themselves back into the business that we pitched them as initially.

Our friend Ian Brodie spends a lot of his time helping professional services companies with their propositions... and actually although harder to break in - all of those companies have business models which are annuity-based.

If consultants generally are ever to build businesses that have real commercial value (and can sell for that value) - then they will need to work how they don't leave the relationship to stagnate whilst they deliver - and also how they generate repeat business. 

Otherwise feast & famine will remain how they run their businesses.

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A while ago I blogged about why I don't believe salespeople are the answer any more... I've changed my mind.

Earlier this year we helped a client find the perfect Sales Director. I won't embarrass anyone by naming names, but suffice to say that Leads were not the company's issue - but sales process and good internal resource to qualify and close leads were.

Having found the right person, helped with a sales process, we then engage again, now because in order to grow the client needs larger clients, and they cannot be found through a google adword campaign... unless they are searching for you of course.

Suffice to say, we did what we do well:

• Researched the market.
• Identified 80 companies who fitted the client's criteria of a desirable customer.
• Targeted the CEO of each company.
• Wrote a really great sales letter.
• Mailed the first 20.

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I'm constantly asked how we go about qualifying the appointments that we generate. Do we do it before we pitch the person? Is it a process that takes a good deal of time? How far can one go with qualification (see previous blog entry)? What has become evident 6 years into this business, is that almost everyone expects us to do the qualification the wrong way round. In other words, qualify the prospect and THEN if they are still in the game pitch them. Let's put ourselves in the prospect's position. Someone you do not know has called you and is clearly making a sales call. They start the call by saying..."I'm from Company X, can I ask you what your software development plans are this year?" Let's then imagine what else the prospect was doing when the phone rang, how busy he was, and the fact that he can see this 20 questions phone call spiralling off into the distance... Frankly, the people we pitch are called more than 20 times per day usually (and they have a job to do), and this is the structure people use. I don't know about you, but my natural inclination is to tell the best lie I can think of (I'm in a meeting, I have no budget, I'm not the head of software development, I have lost my voice...) and get off the call a.s.a.p You see the problem is that in the scenario briefly described earlier the prospect was given no reason to answer any questions. He had no idea about how the company was positioned, he hadn't committed to anything as a result, even a few minutes to have a chat. So, easy to bail. We do this stuff the right way round. Be polite, ask the guy for his time (a few minutes), pitch him quickly and ask to meet. If he says yes (even after a few calls where the conversation has flowed and we've sent over collateral etc...) and we are in his diary to meet - ONLY then to we qualify him. And you know what? He tells us the truth (he is seeing our client in a few weeks anyway right so what's to lose?), he offers more information than we asked for, and he beds the meeting in in his own mind as a result. Now that's the way to do it.

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When we start the process of working on a new Lead Generation project, the single biggest issue to gain agreement over is qualification. What represents a lead? Is the contact senior enough to have budget? Does the company have a real need? 

When I speak about this to clients and our own team, I often liken the process of arranging a first meeting to that of asking a girl (or boy) out on a date. 

Now in my dating days in the UK (1980's) we just used to get slightly tipsy and then pluck up the courage to declare undying love ask if we could kiss a girl we'd been smiling blithely at all evening, but I believe that this is now a far more sophisticated process.

In simple terms we are very careful that the people we talk to about our clients services are at the very least contacts that our client wants to do business with - which includes qualification such as Vertical Market, Size of company, Number of staff, Job Title / Function of the person required etc... this tells us enough to know that our client will 'fancy' the prospect (to continue the analogy).

More complex is how we qualify the prospect and make sure they want to meet - without ever having seen our client. Again, to use the dating analogy we are in effect asking a girl out when she has never met us, doesn't really know what our client looks like, but we've give her enough confidence about our background, status and personality for her to agree to a 'blind date'.

Often  we are asked to qualify prospects on their likelihood to purchase... do they have budget? Are they ready to buy? To continue the dating theme to the end, this is equivalent of asking what the likely outcome is a first date? A polite kiss, a second date, heavy petting or something altogether more carnal?

Anyway, the point is that there are some things that are not worth qualifying on before you meet. As soon as you ask whether or not a client is going to buy something from you before you've even met - the expectations from all parties are skewed. The prospect is bound to lie and say 'Not me - I'm a good girl and I don't put out on a first date'... (the client if might expect another result and will go off to the chemist for protection), and in the end neither are satisfied. 

For our part we work for clients who have confidence in their own appeal, can woo a prospect in a meeting, and don't assume anything when they walk in the room. We think that is for the best...  

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In the land of making sales appointments there is one quality that matters above all else - courage. 

At any time in your life, making a phone call to someone you don't know, trying to make a human connection and deliver a business pitch at the same time, is very very scary. You can be Richard Branson making that call, but if you're cold calling the pope it's still scary.

To be frank, I'm not only talking about cold calling here. I remember a recent conversation with a 'grown-up' client, an MD in his middle fifties who was worrying on a friday morning about a deal he was trying to close. 'I've emailed, texted and spoken to his colleagues' he said... trying to find out more information about progress and the final answer. We debated hard but in the end we agreed that he needed to call the guy and find out how it was going to go down, with him or the competition. He just got phone shy.

In recent months I've tried working with a client who has a number of consultants 'on the bench', and who should be working to generate new engagements for the business. I was asked to help 'train' the team to make calls to senior marketeers and strategy heads in bue chip companies... and I spent several half-days working them through our process, the rules of the road in calling people 'cold' who have very important jobs, and how email / letters just won't do it on their own.

After 7 weeks of work, I don't think more than 1 out of 10 people had made a single call. Maybe consultants feel more deeply that their professional pride will be hurt if they are told 'NO' by a prospect that they have called cold, after all they do sell their expertise and talent and they might feel devalued if told 'NO' too often?

Our team don't let themselves get into situations where people are rude to them on the phone. To get into that position you've generally pushed too hard, been impolite, or tried to answer a question you've no business going near. As such we don't get phone shy, and after all it's our job so we're pretty good at it.

So that's the answer. If you're phone shy it's either because you don't have the skills or you don't need the work enough. Most of our clients would say that it's not their skillset so they ask us to help, comfortable in the knowledge that the work is being done to a high quality, and then passed on to them to develop and close.

The moral? Do only what you are good at. 

 

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