The Hostile Business to Business Sales Person

You may not want your friends to demonstrate hostile behavior, but professionals who are hostile by nature are more likely to succeed in business sales and high level leadership in the long run than those without it.

Why?

…because their hostile nature tends to fuel their fire day in and day out. So what does this mean to possess a hostile behavior trait? Here’s an example, if the hostile person were to leave their wallet at a restaurant, when they get home and realize this, their likely first thought would be, “I left my wallet at the restaurant. Someone has stole it and spent all of the money. I need to cancel my credit cards immediately.” The opposite of the hostile person in this sense is the tolerant person. If the tolerant person leaves their wallet at a restaurant, when they get home they might think something like, “I left my wallet at the restuarant. I’m sure someone turned it in for me. I’ll just call up the restaurant, ask them to hold it for me and when I swing by tomorrow to pick it up, I might make a best new friend in the process.” This may be an exaggeration, but the point is the tolerant person has a buoyant view of the world, “it’s all going to work out.” On the other hand the hostile person has a view that “the world is a nasty place. It’s a jungle out there. If I don’t get up and fight my way through it everyday, it will eat me up alive.” The hostile person is more likely to wake up each day with a fire in their belling thinking, “what do I have to do today to make something good happen.”

Harness the Hostility

Given the choice between the aggressive sales person and the passive sales person for their team of “hunters,” sales managers know they need the aggressive ones to really make things happen in opening up new territories. The sales manager knows there ’s a risk associated with the hostile sales person, but it’s well worth it if sales person can harness this trait. Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson’s new book, The Challenger Sale, describes the most effective sales people as assertive, not aggressive, but assertive. Dixon and Adamson go on to compare the assertive and aggressive sales person in the following ways:

Assertive

• Directly pursues goals in a constructive way
• Defends own personal boundaries
• Uses direct language

Aggressive

• Pursues goals at the expense of  professionalism
• Attacks others’ personal boundaries
• Uses antagonistic language

In summary, the hostile trait tends to fuel the fire of the business sales person and high level leader, but it’s only when they transmute this behavior from aggressiveness to assertiveness that they become most effective. For those who want to become more assertive and deal better with aggressive counterparts, I suggest participating in our Effective Negotiation Skills course.

→ No Comments
Categories: Differentiating You, Executive Selling, Sales Management, Sales Skills, Selling in Difficult Times, Uncategorized, professional development, selling

Know When to Walk Away from the Sale

As a sales person, how hard is it to walk away from a deal?

You’ve worked hard to get as close as possible, but in your heart you know the customer is not a good fit, is unlikely to be a good referral and will probably take an inordinate amount of time along the way. The wise sales organization and sales person knows when to cut their losses and move on to better opportunities.

What steps can you take to improve you ability to better qualify and sell more efficiently? First, define your ideal customer. What do they look like? What are identifiable characteristics you can learn in advance or can quickly uncover through effective questioning. Your list may include topics like:

• culture
• current processes
• other products they use today
• geography
• industry
• competitors
• employee count
• revenue
• profit
• type of organization (i.e. public, private or government)
• types of products they sell (ie. software, hardware, professional services, etc.)
• other (i.e. they love what makes your solution unique)

After you’ve defined your ideal customer, begin to rank your customer’s on a scale of 1-10, “10″ being ideal. As a result, you’ll purposely spend more time with your ideal customers, help some customer’s become or behave more like ideal customers and minimize time with customers who drain your time, energy and resources. In the end you’ll win.

→ No Comments
Categories: Creating Ideal Customers, Executive Selling, Sales Management, Sales Skills, Tactical Selling Skills, Uncategorized, selling

Are You Selling Above the Line?

→ No Comments
Categories: Executive Selling, Major Account Selling, Sales Management, Uncategorized, negotiation skills, selling

Uncovering Critical Success Factors

What are your favorite questions to ask prospects and customers? If you really want to help satisfy your customer’s critical success factors, what questions do you need to ask?

Tom O’Keefe, Chief Revenue Officer at ShopIgniter, and a good friend of mine likes to ask, “What does your business plan demand that you accomplish, that you didn’t accomplish last year?” Michael Gear, VP Sales for GoodData, loves to simply ask, “How our you being measured?”

I’d love to hear the questions that help you uncover your customer’s critical success factors!

→ No Comments
Categories: Differentiating You, Engaging Your Customers, Executive Selling, Questioning Skills, selling

Just the Right Amount of Customer Contact

I’m often asked about the best ways to follow up with prospects and customers. I find most sales people are concerned about following up too much and coming across as aggressive, while sales managers have a fear that their sales people may be too passive and not following up quick enough or on a consistent basis.

Based on a McKinsey Quarterly article, The basics of business-to-business sales success, there is good reason to pay attention to how you do follow up. This article is based on a study that shows the “most destructive” sales activity in the eyes of the decision maker is “too much contact (in person, by phone, or via email)”.

I’ve found the best way to ensure the appropriate amount/timing of follow up is to take the guess work out by asking the prospect. At the end of each conversation, agree together how you can best track with and support the customer’s decision making process and when you should talk next. This simple idea saves sales people a tremendous amount of wondering, grief and head ache as to when to follow up. Some of my clients have tripled their weekly productivity by becoming better at closing each phone call with an agreed upon clear next action step with their customer.

“When” you follow up is important, but perhaps the bigger question is, “are you adding value every time you make contact with your prospect or customer?” Here are some simple common sense ways that may help ensure your conversations are relevant and meaningful to your prospect:

1. be brief and to the point
2. open with a quick summary of relevant info from your previous conversation
3. confirm/establish the objectives, then the agenda of the meeting
4. summarize the key take aways from the conversation
5. confirm next action steps and who is responsible for what, including the date/time/objectives of the next conversation

Running effective meetings or facilitating effective conversations is more science than art. One of my clients, an SVP of a very large technology company, shared with me that the most valuable training he had ever participated in was a week long course on how to run effective meetings.

Please share your approach to ensuring the right timing and ways you facilitate relevant and meaningful conversations with your prospects and customers.

→ No Comments
Categories: Closing Skills, Engaging Your Customers, Executive Selling, Major Account Selling, Prospecting, Sales Management, Sales Skills, Tactical Selling Skills, Uncategorized, sell, selling

Prospecting is Not For Dummies

One of my favorite stories about prospecting happened when AT&T was broken up into the baby bells and their “sales people” experienced their first taste of competition. A vice president of sales was speaking to a large group of sales people. He was going on and on about how they would need to adjust their approach now that they had real competition. They would have to be proactive and go out their and prospect for new business… they couldn’t just wait for the customer’s to call them.  He went on for a few minutes until one of the sales people raised his hand and asked, “What’s prospecting!”

When salespeople struggle to achieve their numbers, the first questions I ask are “How are you prospecting?” and “How are you closing?” Through my experience in talking with, observing others as well as studying my own conscience, prospecting can be a very thrilling, anxiety ridden, stressful and empowering experience. It reminds me of exercising, because it doesn’t always sound like fun, but I’m always better for it afterwards.

What does your prospecting experiences remind you of…?

→ 1 Comment
Categories: Prospecting, Sales Skills, Sales Stories, Selling in Difficult Times, sell, selling

The End of the Never-ending Sales Cycle

Need-Urgency-Money

Often, sales people are adept at confirming need and money within a sales opportunity, but struggle with urgency… Recently, two different corporate clients shared very similar experiences about their prospective customer situations. Both clients were engaged with prospects who were demonstrating a great deal of interest in their products and services and had the resources to make a purchase. While the interest seemed high and the feedback was positive, the prospects weren’t making a final decision. The sales cycle just kept going on and on and on…

Critical Events

When I asked about the critical events in the sales cycle, both clients responded with the usual answers I hear initially from participants in my sales training classes. They suggested the critical events in their sales were things like… the date of their next meeting scheduled with the customer, the date their proposals were due, the date the customer said they would make a decision, and the end of their quarter to achieve their bonuses. The best sales professional I work with are very aware of the “real” critical events in their sales opportunities that make a difference. The critical events I’m suggesting are the ones that are critically important to your customers. These are the critical events that your customer’s really care about. These events are usually independent of anything you are doing. Some examples might be:  the launch of your prospect’s new product, a trade show where the prospect is exhibiting or presenting, your prospect’s board meeting, your prospect’s end or beginning of their fiscal year, an important anniversary date for your prospect, or the launch of your prospect’s new advertising campaign.

Examples

The best sale professionals uncover critical events in their customer’s world that they can tie their sale too or they create a critical event that their customer believes in that they can tie their sale too. For example, one client who builds and maintains websites started asking their prospects when their anniversary date of their business occurs and suggested that date as a date to launch and advertise the redesign of their website. Another example from a company that provides web analytics was to identify any major advertising campaigns where it would be even more important to ensure the accurate tracking of people to their customer’s sites. By tying the sale of their products and services to the customers’ critical events, they increased their success rate shortened the average sales cycle.

What critical events are important in your sales?

→ 2 Comments
Categories: Sales Skills, Sales Stories, Uncategorized, professional development, sell, selling

Sales Calls That Make an IMPACT!

Your ability to help your customers identify their issues and define the IMPACT that unresolved issues have or will have on their business and in their lives has a direct correlation to your success in sales.

The one element I see sales people overlook, ignore and/or avoid during sales calls is the activity of asking questions that uncover impacts. I’ve heard reasons for avoiding asking impact questions like…”Isn’t the impact obvious to the customer,” “It’s like putting salt on the wound” and “It’s uncomfortable to ask impact questions.” A generic example of an impact question could be, “If the issue that you are describing goes unresolved, how will this impact your business or your life?”

One critical observation I’ve made when listening to my client’s sales calls is that when a customer begins to share the impacts that unresolved issues in their business may bring… the tone of the conversation changes. The conversation goes to a different level, it’s becomes more authentic as the customer becomes more vulnerable. If the customer is willing to share impacts it is also a sign that you have done a good job establishing trust and credibility.

How do you make sales calls that make an IMPACT?

→ 3 Comments
Categories: Listening Skills, Questioning Skills, Sales Skills, sell, selling

Negotiating for What You Want

What you don’t negotiate can cost you.

You’ll never know what you can get unless you negotiate for it. The following story is a reminder to me that “negotiation” is a skill that has to be learned, developed, and thoughtfully put into action to work.

Do you ever wonder how much you are paying for your airline seat compared to what the person paid for the seat next to yours? How about what the person at your athletic club is paying to use the same equipment as you each month? And finally, how about the office space next to your office? Well, one of my career development clients just learned the hard way. She was paying $1300/month for a one person interior space with no windows. She was told that the one person office across the hall with the beautiful windows with the forest view was $1800/month. When she asked if their was any room to negotiate, the response was “no.”  A few months go by and she starts to talk with person who ended up leasing the window space across the hall and learned that he was paying $1300/month. After she got over her frustration that she was paying the same as him without the window…, she asked how he got that rate? He replied he asked the management firm to match another (less desirable) space across town or he would walk. He used the “competition” tactic like a pro and it worked!

How do you negotiate for what you want?

→ No Comments
Categories: Sales Skills, Uncategorized, career development, negotiation skills, professional development, sell, selling

Establishing Trust and Credibility

No Trust No Sale.

As animals, we sense things before our minds have a chance to think things through. We can sense if someone is being authentic, vulnerable and real verses hiding behind a mask or being guarded. 

What instantly imbues trust and credibility?

This is a question that is at the very core of my work as an executive coach and trainer. I had the opportunity to witness first hand the rise of a Regional Account Manager to the position of VP of Sales of a very large and successful software company. We hadn’t talked for over 7 years. In the interim, he left the company amid many changes, including several executive team transitions. With a new CEO on board, he was recruited to come back, not as a Regional Account Manager, but as their VP of Sales with an offer he couldn’t refuse. What was it about him? One of the things was the ability to establish instant rapport with others, especially his ability to do this over the phone with his customers with only the use of his voice. He left me a simple voice message about needing to miss a meeting I inviting him to. I was so impressed by it, I saved it to play it back to participants in my sales training courses (Tactical Selling Skills). In addition to being relevant and personalizing the message, what made his message authentic was the tone of his voice, inflection and pace. His thoughtfulness came through, as he used humor, laughter and vulnerability to explain why he hadn’t called earlier because he was at his daughters art class while his wife was traveling.

What establishes trust and credibility with you?

→ 1 Comment
Categories: Differentiating You, Engaging Your Customers, Sales Skills, Sales Stories, Trust and Credibility, selling

The Olsen Group Blog

• Blog Home

Archives

• January 2012
• March 2011
• January 2011
• December 2010
• June 2010
• May 2010
• January 2010
• July 2009
• June 2009
• April 2009
• March 2009
• December 2008
• August 2008
• July 2008

Categories

• branding yourself (1)
• career development (3)
• Closing Skills (2)
• Creating Ideal Customers (3)
• Differentiating You (7)
• Engaging Your Customers (6)
• Executive Selling (8)
• Listening Skills (1)
• Major Account Selling (5)
• Negotiation (4)
• negotiation skills (5)
• Presentation Skills (1)
• professional development (5)
• professional growth (2)
• Prospect database (1)
• Prospecting (4)
• Questioning Skills (4)
• Sales Management (9)
• Sales Proposals (1)
• Sales Skills (15)
• Sales Stories (9)
• Sales Training (1)
• sell (5)
• selling (10)
• Selling in Difficult Times (3)
• Selling Process (2)
• Selling Strategies (1)
• Tactical Selling Skills (8)
• Team Building (1)
• Trust and Credibility (3)
• Uncategorized (10)