It is interesting that today's effective seller attributes include: the ability to demonstrate insight into the customer and their challenges and to do this they must be adept at the skill of questioning (including insight led and disruptive questions). Yet when listing the attributes of today's winning sellers, curiosity is often omitted. How can you discover insight or effectively use questions without the prerequisite attribute of curiosity? It is missing in The Challenger Sale by Dixon and Adamson and also in Richardson's Changing The Sales Conversation. Both of which, I think so highly of, as to have them as texts in my selling class. However curiosity is listed as a key attribute of winning salespeople in the book Insight Selling: Surprising Research on What Sales Winners Do Differently by Mike Schultz and John. E. Doerr. They make the following comment: " Without curiosity: sellers don't have the depth of knowledge to apply insight selling across the 3 levels of connect, convince and collaborate. The sellers often comply with insight selling as a strategy but never commit because they aren't drawn to knowledge itself. Also sellers without curiosity can have difficulty with opportunity and account research, needs discovery and listening."
So being a sales teacher, instructor and coach, how do I coach curiosity? This question led me to a new book by Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman, A Curious Mind, The Secret to a Bigger Life. For those of you who do not immediately recognize Brian Grazer, he is a very successful movie and TV producer. He founded Imagine Productions with Ron Howard and has many successful films (Apollo 13, Parenthood, A Beautiful Mind, to name just a few) as for TV he was the executive producer for the series 24 (one of my personal favorites). Brian Grazer has made curiosity a fundamental of his life and career and the book outlines how he has done it. He talks of curiosity as precursor to innovation and creativity, attributes we value in salespeople. In fact his whole life has been a series of Curiosity Conversations with many of the worlds most interesting people.
As I read on I could not help but realize that Brian Grazer is one of the worlds very best salespeople and curiosity is the key to his success.
Normally at this time of the year I like to make professional recommendations for the salesperson's summer reading list. Topping this years list, you guessed it, is: Grazer's A Curious Mind, The Secret to a Bigger Life. I believe you will get more help for your professional development from this book than a whole host of "sales books."
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Thursday, May 14, 2015
"The Theory of Everything" in B2B, High Tech Major Sales Engagements
After seeing the movie, " The Theory of Everything", and reading Isaacson's biography of Einstein, I wondered if it was possible to have a formula for success in high tech, B2B major sales engagements. While it is not as elegant as Einstein's theory of relativity, E=mc2 I would like to propose:
Let's look at each of the components of the formula:
There are a lot of different types of sales: inside sales, outside sales, transactional, consultative, enterprise, B2B and B2C etc. I believe it is difficult to have a success formula that works for all types. So for our purposes this formula is for Sales that are B2B, high tech and major sales engagements (high value, longer sales cycles team sells).
Created Value. Selling today is not about articulating value. It is about creating value for the customer/prospect. You need to create four types of value to be successful. First is Insight which is a new perspective or way of looking at the business challenge. Second is the specific value to the Business that this solution brings. Increased customer satisfaction, market share etc. The third type of value is Financial value. The specific financial savings/return this solution brings. This is typically expressed in terms of Return on Investment (ROI) and/or Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The fourth type of value, often neglected is the Personal value that this solution brings to each of the buyers. This can be value in terms of quality of life, job satisfaction upward mobility etc.
Once you have totaled the created value you need to multiply it by the number # of Buyers. Today's companies are risk adverse and large sales decisions are more often made by a team of consensus buyers. To be successful the salesperson needs to create value for each of these consensus buyers.
It is not enough to create value for all of the buyers. The salesperson must Emotionally Connect with each of them. Connect the buyers, personally, to the pain of the challenge and the reward of the solution. This creates the personal motivation to buy.
If you do not add the final component, Competitive Differentiation you are in great danger of losing the sale after doing all the work!. So far you have created the value for each of the buyers in such a way so as to get them to commit to acting. In the final step, and all through out this process you need to make sure you are leading/guiding them to your unique solution. Otherwise all you have done is to set the competition up to steal the sale.
S= CV (I+B+F+P) x #B
+ EC + CD.
Where S is for Sales. CV is the Created Value made up of Insight, Business, Financial and Personal components. This Created Value is then multiplied by the number (#) of Buyers. Finally you add Emotional Commitment and Competitive Differentiation.Let's look at each of the components of the formula:
There are a lot of different types of sales: inside sales, outside sales, transactional, consultative, enterprise, B2B and B2C etc. I believe it is difficult to have a success formula that works for all types. So for our purposes this formula is for Sales that are B2B, high tech and major sales engagements (high value, longer sales cycles team sells).
Created Value. Selling today is not about articulating value. It is about creating value for the customer/prospect. You need to create four types of value to be successful. First is Insight which is a new perspective or way of looking at the business challenge. Second is the specific value to the Business that this solution brings. Increased customer satisfaction, market share etc. The third type of value is Financial value. The specific financial savings/return this solution brings. This is typically expressed in terms of Return on Investment (ROI) and/or Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The fourth type of value, often neglected is the Personal value that this solution brings to each of the buyers. This can be value in terms of quality of life, job satisfaction upward mobility etc.
Once you have totaled the created value you need to multiply it by the number # of Buyers. Today's companies are risk adverse and large sales decisions are more often made by a team of consensus buyers. To be successful the salesperson needs to create value for each of these consensus buyers.
It is not enough to create value for all of the buyers. The salesperson must Emotionally Connect with each of them. Connect the buyers, personally, to the pain of the challenge and the reward of the solution. This creates the personal motivation to buy.
If you do not add the final component, Competitive Differentiation you are in great danger of losing the sale after doing all the work!. So far you have created the value for each of the buyers in such a way so as to get them to commit to acting. In the final step, and all through out this process you need to make sure you are leading/guiding them to your unique solution. Otherwise all you have done is to set the competition up to steal the sale.
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