The Curious Salesperson

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."

"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:

 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.

ROI and The Salesperson, Don't be a "Fool with a Tool!"

I'm sure you have heard the old adage "a fool with a tool is still a fool."  It is certainly true when we start talking Return On Investment tools.  Today with wireless Ipads and tablets, salespeople are equipped to present mobile, personalized presentations to prospects and clients.  Marketing and Sales Enablement organizations have worked hard to support these efforts.  Often ROI calculators are included as a part of these presentations tools.  Herein lies the danger.  ROI is part of calculations used in the cost analysis by many purchasing departments, Chief Purchasing Officers as well Chief Financial Officers.  ROI used by sales persons is just a part of, not the sum total of  the value assessment process and should be presented in that context. If you try to present ROI outside of the value assessment process you could very well become the fool with the tool.

When speaking about the book ROI Selling,  by Michael J. Nick and Kurt M. Koenig, Brian S. Sommers, Vice President, Research Services, Aberdeen Group said " selling tools to top executives is okay as long as the executive is a mechanic. ROI Selling isn't about having an ROI calculation tool. It's about guiding a buyer to a solution that solves a real business problem and keeping them engaged through the benefits delivery."  Value assessment , of which ROI is a component, is a process in which the customer/prospect is a key participant.  To use ROI successfully, as part of that process, the customer/prospect must buy in and participate in that process.  If you have a tool that calculates ROI without that buy in and participation by the customer/ prospect, good luck! and you are a good candidate for being a fool with a tool.

To help you use ROI as  a part of the value assessment process, I suggest the following resources:
1. ROI Selling, the book by Michael J. Nick and Kurt M. Koenig.
2. Pretium Partners,  Columbus, OH, a consulting firm that provides some of  "the best" sales training in the value assessment process. Go to their website http://www.pretiumpartners.com/ and sign up for their free webinars and the email delivered newsletter "Sharpen Your Edge."
3.Alinean,  http://www.alinean.com/ value messaging , interactive tools and training for today's more skeptical, frugal buyer.

The Evolution of Questions in Selling

One of the most important skills in selling is questioning! With the advent of The Challenger Sale by Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson the importance of questioning seemingly diminished.  They positioned that the questioning, typically used in the needs diagnosis/discovery phase of the typical consultative sale provided little value to the customer and prospect and led to a condition they called "questioning fatigue."  They proposed that successful sales people, like the  challenger profile, shared insight with the prospect.  The discovery was not conducted with questions but rather with what they called "hypotheses." The research of the Challenger was so compelling that many of us in an attempt to change to its insight principles "threw the baby out with the  bath water.".  The subsequent writing of Linda Richardson puts it best in her latest book Changing The Sales Conversation, when she writes: "It is the combination of questions and insights that is one of the distinguishing marks of the new sales conversation." It might be useful to look at the evolution of questions in selling to see how we got to this point.

The earliest sales conversations used closed ended questions or those that could be simply answered by 1 or 2 word answers such as yes or no.  This occurred frequently up until the 1970's because before this time sales conversations were heavily scripted and closed ended questions stayed with the script.  In the 70's sales leaders such as Neil Rackham and and Linda Richardson  introduced SPIN Selling and consultative selling which introduced the use of open ended questions.  Rackham in SPIN Selling introduced a progression of questions: Situation questions, Problem questions, Implication  questions and Need- Payoff questions that helped the client/prospect discover the value of the product/solution.  Richardson's consultative approach also used a variety of questions open as well as closed .  The SPIN, consultative, solution selling was very successful through the 70's, 80's, 90's and the 2000's.  With the world financial crisis, starting in 2008, the world of selling turned upside down.  The techniques that had worked so well for the previous  four decades no longer were effective.  Enter The Challenger Sale research, in 2012, by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), which, as we stated earlier, talked of questioning fatigue and replaced questions with hypotheses and insights.

Also we have now seen a new type of question introduced, the disruptive question.  The disruptive question is just that one that is disruptive.  It is designed to move the prospect out of their comfort zone.  For a prospect to buy they have to be in the proper mindset.  They must believe the problem/challenges introduced in the insight are real and affect them.  You need to emotionally connect with the buyer.  The disruptive question is often the first step in this process. Typical disruptive questions start with why or how.

Since 2012 the subsequent writings of Linda Richardson and the research by the RAIN group in, Insight Selling Selling : Surprising Research on What Winners Do Differently by Mike Schultz and John Doerr, the reactive changes we made as a result of The Challenger have been softened .  Solution selling and questioning are not "dead."  However, they have been modified by what we learned from the Challenger research.  The key point is that we,as sellers in this new age, must show insight, unique ways of looking at situations/problems.  Questioning is fine as long as it is coupled with that insight and creates value for the customer/prospect.

For a more detailed look a The Evolution of Questioning in Selling go to : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rNy5AyQEQQ

The Importance of Teaching and "Clock Speed" in Today's Selling

Since the publishing of The Challenger Sale in 2012, teaching has been highlighted as a key skill of effective salespeople.  The whole insight selling approach focuses on "tell me something that I don't already know about my business. "  How this insight is communicated to the prospect is all about teaching.  Brent Adamson and Matt Dixon talk about teaching as one of the three key attributes of the Challenger Seller (Teach, Tailor and Take Control)  More specifically they talk about "commercial teaching," and they say commercial teaching is more than just teaching the prospect/customer something they did not know about their business (an insight).  It is doing so in a way "that reliably leads to commercial wins."  To do so they say" commercial teaching has four rules:'

1. 'Lead to your unique strengths
2. Challenge customers assumptions
3. Catalyze action
4. Scale across customers"

Subsequent research and writing has reinforced this key concept.  Linda Richardson, in her latest book Changing The Sales Conversation,  actually suggests a balanced teaching approach not a "commercial" one or leading one. She does add that your example insight should be backed up with data, experience and financial return and you must communicate the contrast between the new approach and the status quo.  This is similar to the "reframing" that Adamson and Dixon talk about in "challenge customers assumptions.".

In Insight Selling: Surprising Research on What Sales Winners Do Differently, Schultz and Doerr of the Rain Group talk of Convincing as on of their three qualities of  Insight Seller (Connect, Convince and Collaborate) Convincing is very similar to what Dixon and Adamson refer to as commercial teaching.

So we can now say that the ability to teach is a key attribute of today's effective salesperson.  However before you can teach you must first be able to learn.  The Gartner Group has a term for this very effective skill they call it "clock speed."  Learning is such a key ingredient, in today's information age,that you must not only be able to learn, but you must be able to do it quickly.  

When you are evaluating the skills of your sales force or hiring new salespeople be sure you measure their clock speed and their ability to teach.

Creating a Social Profile for a Salesperson

Why should you, as a salesperson, think about creating a social profile? First of all, whether you have created one or not, you already have one.  Google your name and you might be quite surprised at what you find!  One of the first things you do before calling on a prospect or client is to look them up on social media.  Don't you think they do the same for you?  You want to be sure what they find paints a positive, professional image.

Professional is critical.  You want a professional brand that reflects positively on you.  To do this be sure you keep your private social self limited to your family and friends and the public persona you will create is the professional one.

 Let's look at the typical functions of social media connections:

1. Connecting is the new prospecting.  Your professional connections become the key to prospective clients.So you want to grow your network with quality additions.  More is not always better. People you let in your network have access to others in your network and reflect on you.
2. Sharing key information with your professional  network about your industry, your company, your competitors and with your clients and prospects is a key function of social media.  Sending valuable information to your clients and prospect improves and grows your professional brand.  Make sure you do not overload your prospects and clients with information.  Make sure it is valuable and will be perceived by them as such
3.  Discussing the information you share with valuable comment and insight can also grow your professional brand.  When you share a link to an analyst insight you can highlight, with a comment, what you think is critical to them about the insight.  This grows your brand!
4. Publishing is your opportunity to weigh in on issues, trends happenings etc.  It can be small to start, Twitter- 140 characters but can grow to blogs and then larger content vehicles such as YouTube or iTunes (podcasting) 

How to begin: (a sample professional social profile for a sales professional)

1. Connect with Linkedin, Twitter, YouTube and Blogger
2. Use LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube to Share valuable content with your clients and prospects.
3. Discuss valuable content with your comments though Linkedin and Twitter
4. Publish and Share with  Linkedin, Twitter and if you wish to take deeper dives YouTube and Blogger ( for example Twitter could be your headline, Blogger could post your overview and YouTube or Itunes for content deep dives.

Good Luck and Prepare to Win!

For a deeper dive into this subject please go to YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv9w4vSYDTM

Connecting: Relationship Selling is Alive and Well!

The Challenger Sale, in 2012,  heralded in a new age of selling, not based upon the relationship/solution selling  model that has become the defacto standard for the last two decades, but rather one that is focused on "challenging" the prospect with "disruptive questions" leading to "insight".  An article, in the summer of 2012, in the Harvard Business Review, announced the "end of solution sales." In the succeeding years sales forces shelved relationship selling and abandoned principles of solution selling.  As Lee Corso is so famous for saying on College Gameday, "not so fast, my friend!"

Books by Linda Richardson, Changing The Sales Conversation: Connect, Collaborate and Close and Mike Schultz and John E. Doerr , Insight Selling : Surprising Research on What Winners Do Differently suggest that we may have been premature in "throwing the baby out with the bathwater."  In fact both   say "connecting" as the first step in selling.  Yes, connecting as in relationships, but instead of relationships based on  mundane tasks such as getting donuts or filling out purchasing forms for buyers the relationships/connections, are based upon value.  Specifically the value that the solution delivers to the individual  customer.  That value is quantified and the risks of solution are mitigated.  Doerr and Schultz suggest that the relationships in relationship selling and in insight selling are formed at different times.  In traditional relationship selling the relationship is made at the beginning. You establish the relationship and then you make the sale.  In insight selling the relation comes after you deliver value.  In other words the relationship is based upon the value you deliver.  Until you deliver value there is no relationship.

This brings us back to Connecting.  In sales today Connecting is the new prospecting.  Instead of prospecting we connect with prospects.  This connection is done through social media and again is based upon the value you deliver.   For more detail regarding this subject please go to my YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stK2sgq_Sik

 My next blog will discuss a strategy for sales people to connect through social media.  Until then "Prepare to win!"

Something Old and Something New!, Prospecting with Insight!

I'm sure many of you have heard that: " prospecting is now old fashioned you and should instead be "connecting" through social media."  I don't know about you, but I have a blog, a Twitter account and a presence on LinkedIn and new business is not exactly breaking down my door.  The bottom line is prospecting or if you want "connecting" is still a basic fundamental discipline of effective selling.  I was reminded of this as I listened to the In The Arena podcast of  S.Anthony Iannarino where he interviewed Mike Weinberg  the author of New Sales. Simplified. which was published by AMACOM  in 2013.

Mr. Weinberg is known for being a hunter and he reminded me of some old  truths and simple practices to find new business.  Key among them is Prospecting.  He reminded me of the very simple discipline required of every successful seller.  I had recently fallen into the the trap of blaming a lack of marketing for my lack of new business.  What really was wrong was that I had not blocked time to work on getting the business from the prospects I had prioritized and researched.

So I recommend that you read Mr. Weinberg's book  But then there is the still "something new" that I think you should use to supplement Mr. Weinberg's sage advice.  In your prospecting I recommend you take full advantage of social media.  That you should research your prospects, their industry, their company and their role to discover what insight you can bring to their business, that they did not heretofore know,  and that can help their business.  To assist you I suggest you read Changing the Sales Conversation: Connect, Collaborate and Close 2015  published by McGraw Hill  and authored by Linda Richardson. She does a particularly good job of showing how to create "insight-led' questions that can help you in your discovery without subjecting your prospect to "questioning fatigue."

To whet your appetite, before committing to buy the books you may want to check out S. Anthony Iannarino's podcast In The Arena.  In separate episodes he speaks to both authors.
http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/anthony-iannarino/in-the-arena

Episode 25 Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.
Episode 39 Linda Richardson, Changing The Sales Conversation: Connect, Collaborate, Close

Beyond the Challenger Sale

Just when we thought "solution selling" and "relationship selling" were "dead" new research by the RAIN Group collected in the book Insight Selling: Surprising Research on What sales Winners Do Differently has proved differently: Since 2012 and the publishing of the Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation  and the subsequent article in the Harvard Business Review proclaiming the death of Solution Selling many companies have re-thought their sales development.  For years they practiced solution selling, consultative sales and relationship building and now all of a sudden these techniques and practices were in question?  Many companies, it turns out, rightfully so, did not throw the baby out with the bath water and abandon these practices.  What we did learn from the Challenger is that delivering "Insight" is key for the salesperson and relationships, not based upon value,  no longer worked. We also learned  customer needs identification based upon a dialogue of multiple questions was not working.  Customers were experiencing  "questioning fatigue."   The Challenger also taught us that the client relies upon the salesperson  teach (a special type of teaching the Challenger calls commercial teaching).

Now in 2014 we have learned more, the effective salesperson of the future has continued to evolve. Work by Linda Richardson (Changing The Sales Conversation: Connect, Collaborate,  Close) and Mike Schultz and John E. Doerr (Insight Selling: Surprising  Research on What Sales Winners Do Differently) have shown us how to "create" insight, reassured us of the value of relationships and given some techniques to conduct a needs dialogue without putting the client in "question fatigue" and suggestions for "teaching" or "convincing" the clients.

Both of these books are very practical and provide resources to help you engage in this new type of selling and you should read them!  However, below I have included a link to  Anthony Iannarino's  "In the Arena Podcast"  in Episode 40 he interviews Linda Richardson about her book, Changing The Sales Conversation and in Episode 35 he interviews Mike Schultz in regards to his book Insight Selling.  Both of these are about 30 minutes long and provide a great window into the books.

http://thesalesblog.com/blog/category/in_the_arena_podcast/ 

Is Your Sales Training Holding You Back?

In the last ten years the sales landscape has changed dramatically! Products and solutions have improved in quality and service so there is little competitive differentiation based on these factors alone. Information on the internet is ubiquitous. No longer is the sales person the key to product/solution information. Buyers are becoming risk adverse.  Decisions that were made by one person have now been elevated to the C level  within the corporation and are often made by committee.  All of this has combined to diminish the role of the traditional sales professional.  Sales professionals must now improve their game and rise to a new level.

The question for high tech, B2B companies becomes, will our current sales training take us to the next level?  Sales training is a huge business (2.4 billion dollars in annual revenue) dominated by some very large companies.  These companies have warehouses full of stock training materials and stables full of trainers schooled in their consultative/solution selling techniques.  All of them are very similar and if you take away their branding and their "secret sauce"  you can hardly tell them apart.  Are they using the "science of selling", the performance based research, to move beyond "Selling 101" to the next level where sales professionals will need to get to to survive in the new landscape?

I have some simple observations that you can make to determine if your sales training /sales training company is using the science of selling (the latest performance based research).

Is your training still talking about:
'prospecting" instead of "making connections"?
"needs assessment/collection" as opposed to "providing insight"?
"articulating value" instead of "creating value"?
"negotiating" rather than "collaborating"?
"handling" objections rather than "resolving" them?
"Closing rather than "securing a commitment".

If you are still doing the former as opposed to the later, of 1 or more of the above, maybe it is time to stop "training" your sales people and start "developing" your sales professionals.

The Science of Selling and Sales Training

The sales training industry, globally, for 2013 generated 2.24 billion dollars.  It is big business and is dominated by some large international companies.  Selling is now very much a science.  There is a large body of  established research that can tell us what is effective and what is not.  The question is: are the sales training companies using this research?  When you look at the what the major sales training companies are teaching they are all very similar.  They are all teaching consultative selling, solution selling and spin selling or some variety there of.  But what about the research?  In most cases I don't think they are using it.   Why?  I'm not sure, but I'm confident they have warehouses full of  ready made materials and an army of trainers that would all need to be refreshed, at a considerable cost in time and effort as well as dollars.

As I mentioned, they are all teaching a variety of the same thing.  To differentiate they are not using the research but rather what I refer to as their"secret sauce."  How did this industry get so big? The sales training industry grew to its huge presence in a vacuum.    Sales is a profession that except for recent years was  abandoned by the universities.  So companies started to train their own sales forces.  This training is focused on product/solution and industry.   The methodology and process of selling has fallen, by default,. to the large sales training companies.

Things need to change!  I, for one, would like to see these training companies stop "training" salespeople and start "developing sales professionals".   I would like them to stop selling their "secret sauce" and incorporate the latest research.

How can you tell if the sales training your company is using is incorporating the research? Check back here in the coming weeks and I will give you some hints!

Steve Jobs on Salespeople

Late last year I read Walter Issacson's biography, Steve Jobs.  I loved every page of it!  In fact, I enjoyed it more than any other book I read that year!  I highly recommend it for all salespeople. To me Steve Jobs was a great salesperson and in many ways the preeminent salesperson.  From his "reality distortion field" to his effective product introductions and demos a salesperson can learn a lot from Jobs.  Therefore you can only imagine my incredulity when I reached the end of the book and read this quote from Jobs " I have my own theory about why decline happens at companies like IBM and Microsoft.  The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important.  The company starts valuing the great salesmen, because they're the ones who can move the needle on revenues, not the product engineers or designer. So the salespeople end up running the company, John Akers at IBM was a smart eloquent, fantastic salesperson but he didn't know anything about the product.  The same thing happened at Xerox. When the sales guys run the company, the product guys don't matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off.  It happened at Apple when Sculley came in, which was my fault and it happened when Ballmer took over at Microsoft.  Apple was lucky and it rebounded, but I don't think anything will change at Microsoft as long as Ballmer is running it.."

Wow!  I was shocked. To me salespeople, in general, are real product people.  The better the product the easier it is to sell.  The salespeople I know are real concerned about the product, they fill the front row seats at product road map meetings.  They are staunch supporters of product development and innovation.  To me, it appears that the" bad guys" are the finance guys.  Salespeople want to sell and nothing sells better than a great product.

I still think this book is a must read for salespeople.  Jobs was many things, an inventor/innovator, an engineer, a designer, a marketer and salesperson.  He exemplifies the quality that Daniel Pink identifies in his great book To Sell Is Human: The Art of Moving Others, that he calls "elasticity." The ability to perform many functions.  Today the salesperson must be a "jack of all trades" if he is to create value for the customer.  To me no one mastered the skill of elasticity more than Steve Jobs.  He was the best at so many things!

The Salesperson as a Free Agent

I have always believed salespeople are entrepreneurs.  In name they for  work companies but actually they work for themselves.  Now go one step further and imagine them as true free agents hired on an opportunity by opportunity basis. I just finished reading The Rise of The Naked Economy: How to Benefit fromThe Changing Workplace by Ryan Coonerty and Jeremy Neuner.  It looks at the future workplace and makes some interesting observations. It depicts a world where the trend to outsource has continued and 1/2 of the entire workforce works for themselves (self employed)  Gone is the paternalistic company which provides the employed with a retirement or even healthcare. Workers collaborate to create products and services on a project by project basis.  Once the project is completed they move on finding new projects/opportunities and collaborators.

According to the authors these self employed fall into two categories "generalists and specialists" who come together on a project basis, dissolving when the project is complete and then forming new collaborations as opportunities arise.  In my recollection, they never specifically talk of salespeople as one of these types of specialists but to me it makes great sense.

In the15 years that I have worked with salespeople all over the world,  I have noticed that many times the salespeople who leave the company are the very best ones.  They chafe at the many levels of management with which that have to share their commissions and are unhappy with having to get permission to sell from client executives and software client leads that constrain their access and relationship with key executives and decision makers.  Free agency, to me, sounds like a great alternative.

Large opportunities can have sales cycles six months or longer.  This presents the perfect environment to introduce the sales free agent, who has the industry, solution and competitive expertise to make the sale happen and can do it for a fraction of what it would cost to introduce a big consulting agency to do the same.  Just a thought....

Anyway, this book is a great read and provides many provocative thoughts for the entrepreneur in all of us!

New Years Resolution: Sales Personal Professional Development

Have you chosen professional development as your New Years resolution?  If so, we have some reading suggestions for you.

In Sales:

1. Daniel Pink's, "To Sell Is Human, The Surprising Truth About Moving Others."  This book provides a fresh look at the sales profession, some interesting new research regarding sales and who sells and finally some great insight on how to sell.
2. "The Challenger Sale, Taking Control Of The Customer Conversation," by  Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. Here you will find some interesting insights into the evolution of sales and where we are today. This book is provocative and controversial and most of all will provide some new and interesting techniques, of which every salesperson should be aware.

In Marketing, something old and something new:

1. "Influence: Science and Practice," now in it's fifth edition, by eminent social psychologist, Robert Cialdini provides a classic of  research and insight of getting to YES
2. " Contagious, Why Things Catch On,  by Wharton Marketing Professor, Jonah Berger, who through engaging examples offers research and insight as to why things catch on and even go viral.

In Retail:

1. "The Everything Store," by Brad Stone is a must read for anyone interested in the future of retail.  Stone documents the extraordinary efforts of founder Jeff Bezos and the incredible rise of Amazon.

In Analytics:

1. Nate Silver's,  "The Signal and The Noise," is a great primer, in easy to understand narrative form for those seeking to understand issues in analytics, "Big Data" and statistics.

In General Business:

1. Malcolm Gladwell continues to provide refreshing ,surprising and useful insight into the world around us with his latest book, "David & Goliath, Underdogs, Misfits and The Art of Battling Giants."

For Your Career:

1. "The Start-up Of You: Adapt to The Future, Invest In Yourself And Transform Your Career," by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman with Ben Casnocha provides great advice for all not just entrepreneurs.h

Sales Lessons for Today from the 1890's

They say: "The more things change, the more they stay the same."  I was reminded of this, when I uncovered some "pearls of  sales wisdom"  looking through the NCR Archives in Dayton last week.  I was researching John Patterson's very first sales school in Dayton, which began April 4th 1894 (120 years ago this coming April).  So I was reading "The NCR" an internal company newsletter where I came across the following  quote from Patterson himself in the May 15th issue of 1894; " Our people are teachers rather than salesmen.  It is the teaching of merchants how to do business and how to make money."  I went on reading in the biography of Patterson by Samuel Crowther, first published in 1923, where he points out that Patterson believed; "We are not selling cash registers but rather helping customers with their business."

Does any of this sound familiar?  I'm reminded of the "Challenger Sales" where salespeople are encouraged to be teachers, "commercial teaching" in their lingo and the key is to provide a unique insight to the customers business they had not thought of.  Don't get me wrong.  I believe the Challenger Sale is the next step in the evolving profession of sales but it is more a new technique.  The premise of the salesperson as teachers and discovering the business problems of their customer , however is as old as the profession of modern selling is itself.

 The reason I'm doing this research is that since retiring, after 15 years of sales training, most recently with IBM, I have made it my "mission", to do what I can to improve the sales profession, that I so love. To begin, I have chosen to work with colleges and universities to raise their awareness of sales as a profession and how they can modify their offerings and curriculum to better prepare young sales professionals.  Future entries in this blog will highlight what I have learned and experienced on my "mission."

Turning Buying Signals into Major Sales

Buying signals are typically defined as statements made by the customer that indicate a readiness to buy or to move forward.  In reviewing this topic I always come back to Neil Rackham, the author of SPIN Selling. He used his terminology of implied need and explicit needs when talking of buying signals in major sales.  Both are buying signals, but he points out that implicit needs such as: agreement by the customer  "that they problem" (capacity, speed etc.) or "are not happy" with the quality are buying signals for small sales.

Explicit needs such as: "we planning to buy a new system" are required for a major sale.  What this means to the salesperson in a major sales it is not enough just to identify a problem (implied need).  You need to receive a commitment to action such as: "we are planning to purchase a new system this year."  Then you must create the value in your product so that it is the chosen solution.

In summary: Get the customer to 1. Identify the problem  (implied need) 2. Commit to resolving it (explicit need) 3. Convince the customer that your product should be the chosen solution (create the specific value of your solution for this customer.)

Connecting with Value

Today when we talk about Social Media it is all about connections.  The number of connections you have on Linked In , the number of followers you have on Twitter and the number of friends you have on Facebook.  If you are using your connections for you professional development you need to ask yourself another question.  What is the value my connection brings to a connection, follower or friend?

As a sales trainer, I try to provide those connected to me value.  On Twitter, I follow best sales practices and key sales information related to the products we sell and the industries we sell into.  By following me, those I teach will get information about best sales practices and key product and industry information.

So if you are using social media to connect with your customers and prospects what is the value they receive from your connection, your tweets and re-tweets?

Alternatives to the Traditional Elevator Pitch

Some people think that the "elevator pitch" is "old news."  In today's world of instant communications we need something different.  Daniel Pink in his book "To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others,." has six alternative "pitches."  Try crafting your next "pitch" in one of these formats.

1.The One Word Pitch-   " the ultimate pitch for an era of short attention spans begins with one word and doesn't go any further."   " Define the one characteristic that they most want associated with their brand around the world. That is one word equity."  What technology company do you think of when you  hear the word search? (Google)What credit card company comes to mind when you hear the word "priceless"? ( Mastercard).

2. The Question Pitch- "Interrogative self talk, questions often pack a surprising punch." Think of the Reagan-Carter presidential campaign when Reagan asked, "are you better of now than you were four years ago?"

3.The Rhyming Pitch-  Remember the OJ Simpson trial and the rhyming pitch Johnny Cochran used? "If it doesn't  fit...  you must acquit"  (In reference to the murder glove in the prosecutions evidence.)

4. The Subject Line Pitch-  In email  the subject line often determines whether or not you will open the email. Construct your pitch as a subject line.

5. The Twitter Pitch-  Twitter has taught us to construct our message with 140  characters.  get even more points if you can do it in 120 characters ( leaving room to re-tweet the message)

6. The Pixar Pitch-  some of the best pitches are told as stories.  Try this format for your pitch. (do you remember "Madlibs"?)  Once upon a time______________________.

Every day_____________________ . One day_______________________________________.  Because of that________________________________.

Because of that__________________________________________. Until finally___________________________________________

I highly recommend Daniel Pink's book, "To Sell is Human:The Surprising Truth About Moving Others"  The alternative pitches is just one chapter our of a great deal of valuable material and thought.  In the book he provides additional detail and examples of each of these six alternatives.

Numbers that speak: 5 Gig or 1000 songs in your pocket.

 I work at  IBM, in sales training. Ours is a business of numbers.  How do we make these numbers relevant?  We talk about "Big Data",  gigabytes and terabytes, but what do they mean?  How do we put them in context to tell the stories of our capabilities and show how remarkable our products are?

I have a couple of  examples:  First Steve Jobs when introducing the first iPod said it had 5 gigabytes of storage.  Then he put it in context. That is "1000 songs!  In your pocket!"

Cisco's CEO John Chambers when introducing Cisco's  CRS3 router said it could download 322 terabytes per second but then said:  "that is powerful enough to stream every movie ever made in 4 minutes or download the entire Library of Congress in 1 second"

Those numbers don't just talk they sing! In your next presentation try to make your numbers come alive!

Thinking About How to Gamify Sales Training

We would like to increase the participation in our sales training by making it  social, fun and rewarding.

I  just read, (and highly recommend), Jonah Berger's just released book , "Contagious".  There are many examples of how companies create "social currency."  We ,and I'm sure you, are looking for ways to motivate our salespeople to do the things that will make them successful.  The key areas, we believe, are: 1. connecting with people who can help them in their tasks (this is especially important in a matrix organization such as we have at IBM)  2.  Encourage them to learn about the products and solutions they sell, where we have sold them successfully and who competes with us.  3. Encourage them to learn more about the industries they sell into. So they understand key metrics and challenges of their prospects/customers and. 4. encourage them to learn about the process and tools to help them sell.

To accomplish this we have established an internal social community of all sellers who are in the training or have been in the training at some time.  This is our "Virtual Water Cooler."  This community will form the foundation for our gamification.  Along the lines of "Four Square" we will invite community members to compete to be the Mayors of each of these four aforementioned areas.  They will accumulate points by checking into various activities ( personal networks, online courses, articles recordings, forums wikis) earning one point for each activity. At the end of two weeks the person with the most points will be declared the Mayor of the area.  This person will be recognized with thier sales leader and remain the mayor for two weeks while the process is repeated.

All of this is in the planning stage at the moment. I will let you know how we make out.  I would love to hear about your efforts to gamify your sales training. Please share in the comments.