16 Selling techniques for beating recession and 5 common denials of salespeople

"...sales methods that have proved successful over a period of some 20 years will have to be discarded because new developments give rise to the need for  new working methods."

When do you reckon were those words written ?

They could have been written yesterday but weren't. 

 I have received an email from a Sales Training company only this week talking of 'paradigm shifts in selling'  and  another email the week before where the subject box read " Death of the Salesman stereotype". The changes in selling were summarised as follows

·         Cold calling is dead or on its last legs

·         Permission marketing has come to the fore

·         Old style closing is now seen as a manipulative embarrassment

·         You need to add value at every turn

·         There has been never been a greater time to be a great listener

But the quote was not from those recent emails to my in box.

I have a book on my bookshelf by Marc T Miller and Jason Sinkovitz called "Selling is dead" Copyright 2005 but the words above do not come from that book either

No,  those words come from an earlier incarnation of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management magazine - Winning Edge -back then called  Sales Management and Sales Engineering -The Journal of the Institute of Sales Management.

This issue concerned was  for December 1980 - I was 27 years at the time and the UK was in recession.

I have been clearing out my home over the last couple of weeks and came across the magazine which for some reason I had kept.

 It was from a very different era of course.

The readership and membership of the Institute back then was predominantly male. The selling profession was very much a car centred ministry of road warriors in those days.

These were days before the Internet and even mobile phones let alone smart ones.

Flicking through the yellowing  pages of the magazine, I noticed an article within the old magazine that caught my eye " Sales Techniques for Beating the Recession".

It was interesting to see that much that challenges  today's salespeople  were pretty similar concerns back then.

16 areas were highlighted ( I have written the gist of each topic after each title)

1. Too Expensive - handling the Price objection

2. Negotiate with the boss - advice on selling as high up the customer's organisation  ie 'C' suite / board level.

3. Don't think solely of your commission - selling profitably not just going for turnover sales.

4. Many salesmen just won't believe it... - various myths of selling * see the 5 boxes

5. Small orders are more of a liability for the customer ... -selling the benefits of larger orders / packages

6. Looking for new customers ?   - New Business Development

7. 'I don't know your company' - presenting the benefits of your company beyond product benefits

8. Arithmetic problem - measuring your activity ratios before Salesforce.com you had to do it yourself !

9. Tips for status-conscious salesmen - body language, personal space and presence. 

10. Good customers deserve less frequent visits - better preparation, planning  and communication skills

11. Selling by telephone - choosing the best channel to do a task -back then you visited or phoned now we have many channels e.g. email , LinkedIn, webinar, skype, blogs , twitter, You tube, personal visit etc.....

12. Between visits -  keeping in contact

13. Tactics of a doctor's salesman - although the tips were for pharmaceutical representatives they covered body language, personal space and demonstration  skills

14. The biggest of orders is worthless if the company's margin is negligible -  up selling higher price product, don't just confine the conversation to your favourite product cover the relevant range, strive for long term agreements, bulk contracts. 

15. Organisational shortcomings - an unplanned day is only half a working day- and a source of irritation and nervousness which can be transmitted in your voice. Plan some leeway for time between appointments.

16. After sales service - the customer needs reliable suppliers much more than 'cheap' sources of supply.

I guess it shows we need to embrace our brave new world but not entirely disregard the lessons from the past even as far back as 1980 !

Planning for Success 2012 - Sales challenges and Opportunities of Double Dip

The various economics and business pundits in the media have been reviewing 2011 and tentatively predicting what 2012 holds. References to former tough economic periods are being mentioned such as the 1930s.

So what businesses grew out of the tough 1930s? Perhaps the humble cough drop can inspire us.

In the 1930s Halls invented its Mentho-Lyptus formula, using a combination of menthol and eucalyptus, and began producing its popular cough drops. The brand is currently owned by Cadbury .

Halls products though are sold differently depending where you are.

The northern hemisphere knows them as a cold relief product with licensed medical status in the USA , Canada and the UK. Whilst in hotter drier climates they are sold as mouth refreshment .

(Maybe we can sell our existing products and services to different market segments likewise.)

 Currently Halls menthol lozenges have a series of huge posters on the Cromwell Road / Warwick Road site of Clear Channel, London suggesting whatever 2012 holds we can all take a deep breath to engage with the challenges of the new year by sucking on their cough drops.

A double dip recession is an especially tough business reality check. The shock of the first dip will have been an uncomfortable experience to many who had only known selling in the 18 years of previous uninterrupted growth.

They may have had a few colleagues in their team (quite possibly not their team leader) who sold in the last  double dip recession (1980s), and whose brains they could pick but such experience was quite rare.

The Cost cutting in the first dip has had to be brutal and sometimes businesses have cut through the bone and into the marrow.The low hanging fruit have all been picked. 

The smart salespeople realised that the comforts of account management and relationship selling would not see them through so it was time to adapt or die.

One of the Halls Menthol lyptus cough sweets campaign on posters in UK Jan 2012

The three basic adaptations are:

1.  PROTECT your key clients from attacks from the competition. Don’t rely on client loyalty indeed a recession is a good test of quite how much of a trusted adviser your clients really think you are or whether they just see you as another commodity supplier to be pruned.

The vulnerability of the 80:20 rule is exposed. To lose any of your key clients will require you to replace the significant lost business with more business from less developed accounts to keep on target.

   

2. EXPAND your reach within existing accounts. Seek out and exploit opportunities to up sell, cross sell and plus sell. Having built a momentum within an account, expand your contacts with both the influencers and decision makers. Many purchasing departments will be looking to reduce the number of suppliers in cost saving drives, so make yourself indispensable to many parts of the client’s organisation.

3.  DEVELOP new clients.

 Let's be clear we are talking about PROSPECTING and being genuinely pro-active, digging out your own leads. If prospecting has not been part of your recent routine, begin it now.

It may mean a spot of “cold turkey” from the addictive delusion of being busy processing the self perpetuating round of emails. It’s time to get off your backside pick up that phone, proactively work that PC, work those numbers and attend more networking events .

 Do some scouting on that new Industrial estate.  Take a note of new firms and then "Google" them maybe with a title of your typical contact level. e.g. Operations Director, HR Manager etc. You might even come across sites about your prospect, try "images" and you may even strike lucky with a photograph of them!

The TACK research study “Selling to today’s Corporate Buyer” 2010 revealed that Buyers’ consider the  communication methods above for salespeople to arrange a first appointment with them as acceptable:-

Adapting effectively is about embracing change, learning or re-learning skills suited to the recession. It’s time to sharpen your saw one more time as Stephen Covey might put it. It will give you that motivational push to adapt that bit quicker than your competition to not only survive but thrive in recession.

Whilst soothsaying pundits wonder whether their predictions for 2012 will turn out right, those of us in the proactive realities of selling just have to get on wth it or as the  English idiom goes ' suck it and see'.

 Maybe we can be  helped along by a soothing  Halls cough drop!

Related Link

Event report of Planning for Success 2012

http://fruitsofsuccesswithhugh.blogspot.com/2012/01/planning-for-success-2012-manchester-uk.html

5 hot questions a Buyer can ask to expose unqualified supplier salespeople !

New Business Development
The expression barking up the wrong tree apparently derives from the allusion to hunting dogs barking at the bottom of trees where they mistakenly think their quarry is hiding.

As salespeople on the hunt for the their quarry - new business we can fall into a similar problem. A lot of noise and bluster but no end result!

A story goes that once there was an email sent by a sales manager to his sales team which caused considerable confusion among the hunting pack.

It read “Time will not be wasted visiting small accounts”
The ambiguity caused a split in the sales team. Half interpreted the email as a directive not to visit small accounts whilst the other half interpreted it to mean that visiting small accounts was what was being expected from them by the manager.

Whether you feel your sales effort is worth spending on approaching any accounts whether small, medium or large accounts the key is to know what prepare for, and how to prepare for such interactions.

Elsewhere on this blog site we have considered the importance of developing a "Suspects List" as a pipeline for prospecting. This was in order to qualify accounts and their potential.

Of course using a term like unqualified prospect is language very much from the Sales (Supplier’s) point of view. Old fashioned tell-selling is inappropriate to buyers nowadays.

Let’s consider this issue from the Buyer’s perspective.

Here are five questions that I suggest to new Buyers learning their craft.

How would you respond on a first meeting or contact if your Prospect asked you any of the following questions?

1. “Why did you take the trouble to come and see me/ phone me/ email me?”

2. “Why do you feel your products/services will be of benefit to us?”

3. “Why do you feel that your product/service is better for us than the one we are currently using?”

4. “What will we gain by using/selling this?”

5. “Please, your time as well as my time is very expensive. Can you get to the point?”

If you can’t provide answers of quality and relevance to the above questions you are probably either not sufficiently prepared or you have not qualified the prospect adequately. But it comes to the same result.


Why not take this list questions to read over before most sales calls whether face to face, before group presentation or making telephone calls etc.

Appreciating the Buyers viewpoint is important in selling.

Like Salespeople, Buyers have their professional bodies. Today’s professional salesperson needs to know what’s hot in Professional Buying. Why not take a look at Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply’s website.

By looking round the site you can see what the hot topics are for professional purchasers. Take a look at the topic content of their own training programmes especially.

If you appreciate their role you are also more likely to speak their language rather drown them in conventional sales spiel.

http://www.cips.org/

To take an expression from another country sport - fishing " If you want to fish successfully think as the fish not as the fisherman"

Death by a thousand cuts? Let's keep positive

Soon we will putting back our clocks to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) on 31st October 2010. We have the bonus of lighter mornings but the energy sapping early dark evenings.

The beauty of autumn and its ‘mists and mellow fruitfulness’ are with us for a while but we know this beautiful season is the harbinger of winter to come.



Similarly, it seems our economy acts in a similar seasonal process of change. David Cameron has laid bare his case that the country had no choice but to make savage cuts to its spending as he addressed the Conservative Party Conference this Autumn.

Despite the heralding of certain economic forecasters and pundits of the much ‘hyped ’end of recession in UK it turned out to be a false hope particualrly for the public sector.


Many businesses are still stuck in the mire. Whether the recession is going to turn out to be ‘L’ shaped or a bouncing on the bottom ‘W’ shape, one fact is clear, for most of us in selling, times will be tough for quite a while yet.

Even when the true green shoots of recovery occur according to the financial markets, there will be a lag -possibly year in many markets -before we feel the sap of sales growth rising in our businesses.


(Warwick University Conference Campus,Coventry, England Autumn 2010)

Of course there are tools and technologies to help us in these times. Our CRM if regularly populated directs us how to develop the business by not just acting as a Sales Record or reporting system but directing us to what is the aim of the next call.

Google Analytics give us the macro picture of hits on our website, indicating who’s interested in our website even if they turn out after investigation not to genuine prospects.

However many in selling at the moment are asking themselves

“What is the point of trawling through the same old list of clients who told us genuinely that they don’t have need for our product and services at the moment?”

Nagging such folk is only likely to alienate them.




Sure sales is a ‘numbers game’ but grinding through the same tired prospect lists in the hope of finding a ‘phoenix from the ashes ‘ type prospect is a depressing , de-motivating and often fruitless activity and so it does not take long for SAD ( Sales Apathy Disorder) to get a grip on our sales mindset.

Like its namesake SAD (Seasonal Adjustment Disorder) it has similar symptoms of Drowsiness, Listlessness, Winter Blues, Loss of motivation and an all too quick acceptance of weak performance

So let’s not be seduced into wallowing in every piece of bad and depressing economic news. Don’t get sucked into the ‘swamp of sameness‘and a ‘slough of despond’.
Recessions are seldom uniform across all industries or markets. Business has to go on. Buyers still are buying from somebody.




So let’s start with some Positive Mental Attitude
1. Believe you can do it and stay positive!
2. Get proactive
3. Sharpen up your sales skills
4. Improve your service and focus on relationships
5. Maximise your efforts to the full

Coming shortly in future blog posts I will be sharing an A-Z of sales skills for tough recessionary times. So keep a regular eye on the site.

Thriving in this recession an A-Z (Part 1)

Do you go “A and B the C of D” and integrate your prospecting with digital marketing ?

A while ago in a phrasebook on “modern youth speak” produced by the leading supermarket chain TESCO for its staff understand the younger generation was included “A and B the C of D” which means above and beyond the call of duty



(TESCO store at Warwick Road West London London)

Successful Professional Salespeople are those who serve their clients and employers above and beyond the call of duty.

This is never truer than when digging out new business. Seeking out those ‘suspects’ progressing them into ‘Prospects’ converting them into ‘Active Clients’ a sales process sometimes referred to as The Planned Business Development Cycle. (Not forgetting that once you have an active client to nurture them by protecting and expanding that business.)

Maybe it is some while since you had to do some genuine prospecting. Perhaps such activity has in all honesty been on the back burner of late. It is all very well for those who quote the old adage “repair the roof while the sun shines” (often said by training consultants I confess) however that is little comfort or practical help to those hit by recession in their markets who haven’t been keeping up to date their pipeline of prospects.

Today I am starting a set of Blog Posts on specific skills for selling in tough times such as this recession. I am writing it as an A-Z of selling in a recession responding to a series of requests from course delegates.

Our A and B the C of D has to be going ‘that extra mile’ of prospecting.

A

A ssess your current prospecting process
1. Evaluate your current prospecting efforts.
Like a local weather forecaster you need to measure your environment - dry bulb, wet bulb, Relative humidity, rainfall, barometric pressure there are similarly activities and information we need to measure in the Sales environment.
(Local weather Station in West London)
2. How do you currently prospect? Is it systematic or ad hoc ? What do you currently have in the pipeline? What companies are most likely to buy your products or services and why?
3. If you don’t measure it you can’t manage it. It is good practice to quantify and record your results of website hits, direct mail, telemarketing campaigns, face-to-face calls, referrals and networking. You may care to do this by a best bets list or a ‘probables’ versus ‘possibles’ of projects list .

Developing a ‘ Suspects list’ will help you progress them to that Planned business development goal of an active client. Your CRM system can help you greatly with this but if you do not have access to such a system you can use Microsoft’s Outlook programme that has lots of flagging and Priority reminders to help on the to do and 'Task' areas.

It may be worthwhile though by deciding whether your primary sales challenge is managing Projects or Clients/Customers. (It can of course be both). Nonetheless remember there is some truth in the saying that ‘you want to chase the business not the customer.’

For Projects record Name of Project, what stage the project is at, who is involved, some roadmap or set of milestones for the project and have a next action column to prompt you to advance the project

For Clients you may wish to record Company name, Address ( + Web Address), Type of Business, Turnover, No of employees, Products/services of yours they could, would or have in the past used, who your competition is, who the prospect/client's competition is, Contact Names, titles, phone number, mobile number, email address and best time to contact.

In these recessionary times headcount reductions have meant many contacts are multi-tasking and may only be doing their ‘buying role’ on certain days or at certain times. Also there has been an increase in part time work or people who may only be in the office for say three days a week. It is important to find out this information, record it so that you work best with them.
(Rainfall Measuremt - Rain Guage at Pembroke Square Weather Station, London)
Customer Records and data base management ensure that you record date of calls, who you contacted, note what happened and most importantly note what the aim of the next call is.
It may also be helpful to make a note of what business was lost, to whom and why when the circumstances are such

4. Decide which of the methods you want to pursue and improve. It is of course lots of work but we are working here - above and beyond the call of duty.

5. Be sure to put your prospecting objectives in writing because “when all is said and done, more is said than done!” Committing your objectives to a list on your pc or to paper will help you focus

6. Remember to review, evaluate and improve your prospecting pipeline.

B

Bulk-rate metered post pulls through as well as first class mail. In the UK at the present we are suffering a National Postal Strike. So you may wish to try other postal suppliers. TESCO cuurently mail out to their Clubcard members mailings by DHL Global Mail.I guess there might deals out there whilst this dispute continues. Once the Royal Mail has sorted itself out the current dispute they will need to claw back lost revenue so keep your eyes posted.

(Notice of Current Industrial Action ( Strike) at the Royal Mail)
• Why not save money without sacrificing results? Many find that second class post renders pretty much the same results as first class.
• Use a mailing house, unless you have a special in-house mailing department. There is a strong argument for using specialists or outsourcing as we call it nowadays.
• If you try to do bulk mail in-house, chances are, you will not mail again soon. It is a lot of work and soaks up resources which could be working more profitably for your business in other activities.
(Red Post Box (Victorian) Is snail mail a Sunset Selling medium ?)


C

Customer analysis helps create your road map for the future
• Use primary and secondary research data to identify prospects with similar profiles to your current clients is useful.
• Market segmentation is not only useful to marketers but also Sales people.
• Do not overlook this critical step even if you sell to "everyone." .

D

Direct marketing yields results
• Advertising revenues are down in conventional media but there has been quite a transfer to digital marketing.
• There are specialist software systems who can measure return on investment of direct marketing by linking the direct mail piece to a special landing site on your web. Google Analytics can help with the Macro picture on hits on your web sites.

I recently attended a seminar in central London hosted by the specialist Trovus. They hold regular seminars called "Trovus Tuesdays". These are occasions where there is an opportunity for both users and providers of the Trovus Revelations system can discuss and decide how best to grow and develop the product.

http://www.trovus.co.uk/


There was a most interesting and provocative presentation given by user Richard Brenkley of Coast Digital on the power of on line digital marketing, and web design

http://www.coastdigital.co.uk/services/online-marketing/

Richard said he was not a bit surprised about the rise of digital marketing over conventional media because clients increasingly want to have measurable return on investment in their direct marketing activities.

If your resources don’t stretch to digital marketing put a reference number on direct marketing piece it will help you track effectiveness.

• Some argue that there is no known limit to the number of times you should contact your target market. I am not so sure but I accept that one seldom alienate customers with over attentiveness, I guess it is the way one keeps in touch as much as the number of times one keeps in touch.

• Continue to reach your prospects by mail (snail or email ) or phone until your pound return vs. pound invested no longer shows a profit. However you won’t be able to do this if you don’t measure and record your activity.
(Autumn leaves in West London)
Professional salespeople realise that seeing the market as just a series of body blows and windfalls means you have lost control and are merely reacting . - Surviving the recession rather than thriving in the recession.- Windfalls are pretty but they are not around for long. It is best to be more systematic and integrating with digital marketing is the future.

Next post E , F, G and H. Thanks for reading this blog Keep following the blog for more skills on successful selling skills for this recession