General Sales

All Business is Good Business – Oh No it Isn’t!

04.17.2019 by Jonathan Farrington //

It would be very easy to be seduced into believing that in today’s selling environment the need to rigorously qualify every opportunity at the front end of the sales/buying cycle is becoming irrelevant: Competition is tougher than ever before; customers are choosing us, rather than the other way round; quotas are being missed by a country mile; the playing field has never been flatter … all compelling reasons to conclude that all business is good business, right? No, very, very wrong!

Seasoned professionals fully understand both the value and importance of thorough objective qualification – not just at the front end, but right the way through the sales cycle. Qualification is a process, not a single event, and even internal and reactive salespeople should be fully skilled in asking a small number of basic questions regarding precise requirements, time scales, budget, competition, etc. before they are prepared to reveal their price and delivery.

As the value of the product, service or solution increases, the depth of the qualification should increase proportionally.

External salespeople have the opportunity to meet with prospective customers and it is far easier to extract information face to face than it is via the telephone. However, it is vital that some initial answers are elicited prior to that first exploratory meeting in order to ensure that the meeting will be worthwhile to both parties. With sales costs spiralling upwards and sales time becoming limited, considerable prudence is required on the part of the salesperson.

What we do now have at our fingertips, is a host of excellent software solutions that allow us access to so much valuable information, but in “big-ticket selling” nothing replaces a face to face first meeting.

During that first meeting, a considerable amount of detail can and should be confirmed – e.g. background and history of the company, the key individuals, the composition of the DMU (Decision Making Unit) if there is one, timescales, budget, competition, current suppliers, and most important of all, buying criteria, etc.

Only by rigorous questioning will the salesperson be able to answer the following questions when they get back to the office:

Is there a requirement/need that my company can satisfy?
Is it winnable at an appropriate profit level?
Do I want to win it?

The very best sales professionals will not pursue the opportunity, after proper objective analysis, if the answer to any of those questions is ‘No’. They will rather invest their precious selling time seeking out and closing opportunities that will provide a profitable return on that investment.

At the very highest selling levels – i.e. strategic “big-ticket” selling and marketing, clearly the sales cycle is much more protracted, complex and typically moves through four stages:

Rigorous opportunity assessment
Develop a strategy
Present the solution and re-assess the opportunity
Gain formal commitment, sign the order and develop

In Summary

Having a tilt at every windmill, in Quixotic fashion, that presents itself is neither practical nor profitable.

Qualification is a core competency that every professional salesperson should take on board as quickly as possible. Working to the maxim that “All business is good business” is unrealistic and totally erroneous. It takes just as long to work an unprofitable opportunity through the pipeline, only to lose it at the death, as it does a profitable one. The ability to determine which is which can have a huge impact on your ultimate success in a front-line sales role.

Are You Really Up to the Challenge of Change Required to Become a Top 5% Player?

03.25.2019 by Jonathan Farrington //

Becoming a Top 5% sales performer requires significant changes in your “world view” – how you think about yourself, and how you think about your relationships with key stakeholders. You are faced with new ways of thinking, many of which directly challenge what you have been taught and believe.

When faced with significant innovations in thinking, we tend initially to find ourselves in one of the following three characterizations:

The “Authoritative Critic”

The “Authoritative Expert”

The “Enthusiastic Apprentice”

We can think about these three characters as being on a spectrum that runs from outright rejection to eager acceptance.

As we take a brief look at each of these, allow yourself to wonder where on the spectrum you fall.

The Authoritative Critic

This individual quickly dismisses new ways of thinking, rejecting them as ridiculous, foolish and unwise.

What is this individual’s motivation? Fear of change, of loss.

The Authoritative Expert

This individual is one who typically responds to the introduction of innovative ideas by rejecting the reality that the ideas are indeed innovative. This individual is typically thinking “What’s the big deal? I’ve always done it this way.”

What is this individual’s motivation? Fear of losing face, of appearing inadequate.

The Enthusiastic Apprentice

This individual is excited by innovative thinking and is eager to learn. He/she may not understand or totally embrace the innovative concepts, but they are excited about the possibilities that well-informed change may bring about.

What is this individual’s motivation? It is hunger for knowledge and excitement about the possibilities that may come with that new knowledge.

The nature of change is dynamic. As much as we might like to believe that change is linear, the truth is that deep transformative change develops in a spiral pattern.

As you reviewed the above characteristics, you may have seen parts of yourself in each description.

Knowledge is the power. The more aware you can become of your own process of “spiralling” through the cycle of change, the more conscious and intentional you can be about choosing change, choosing growth, and choosing to become a genuine Top 5% player in the game of sales.

Using Pareto’s Principle to Highlight the Current Malaise Within the Sales Space

02.19.2019 by Jonathan Farrington //

I have to confess that I was 25 years old before I discovered Vilfredo Pareto and whilst I cannot claim that I experienced an epiphany of “Damascus Highway” proportions, it did cause me to make fundamental changes to the way I organized myself. I think even at that young age, I knew precisely what I wanted to achieve both in my commercial life and, indeed, my personal life – it was simply a question of re-adjusting my 80/20 balance.

Vilfredo who?

In 1906, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto created a mathematical formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his country, observing that 20% of the people owned 80% of the wealth.

Where It Came From

After Pareto made his discovery and created his formula, many others observed similar phenomena in their own areas of expertise. Quality Management pioneer, Dr. Joseph Juran, working in the US in the 1930s and 40s, recognized a universal principle he called the “vital few and trivial many” and put it down in writing.

As a result, Dr Juran’s observation of the “vital few and trivial many”, the principle that 20% of something always are responsible for 80% of the results, became known as Pareto’s Principle or the 80/20 Rule.

What It Means

At a very basic level, you know that 80% of sales will come from 20% of the sales team. 20% of staff will cause 80% of the problems, but another 20% of staff will provide 80% of the production – it works both ways.

How It Can Help Us?

The value of the Pareto Principle for all of us is that it reminds us to focus on the 20 % that matters. Of the things we do during our day, only 20% really matter. Those 20% produce 80% of our results and we should identify and focus on those things. If something in the schedule has to slip, if something isn’t going to get done – we should make sure it’s not part of that 20%.

Digging a Little Deeper

When thinking about the overall annual performance of a sales team, the harsh reality is that only 20% typically smash their targets – these are the “sales superstars”. Of the remaining 80%, 30% just scrape through – rather like a high jumper just grazes the bar but gets over. That leaves a significant 50% who fail, often quite miserably, year after year. The reasons are numerous but right now, much of my work is focusing on sales leadership because, not only are these people critical to the overall success of the company’s engine room – the sales team – most are in a very precarious position. They are relying on their “super achievers” to over-perform in order to make up the deficit of the rest of the team. But what if a few of the best left? Total vulnerability!

In fact, there is a management theory floating around at the moment that proposes to interpret Pareto’s Principle in such a way as to produce what is called ‘Superstar Management’. The theory’s supporters claim that, since 20% of your people produce 80% of your results, you should focus your limited time on managing only that 20% – the ‘superstars’.

The theory is flawed because it overlooks the fact that 80% of your time should be spent doing what is really important. Helping the good become better has to be more effective – in the medium and long-term – than helping the great become terrific.

Thinking About the Wider Sales Space

You will know that 80% of what you read, hear or witness is dedicated to lead generation, winning new business, prospect attraction, etc. It is all about cold calling, social selling, email marketing, inbound, outbound – in other words, hunting. It has become an obsession.

That logically means only 20% of a company’s efforts (here 20% is probably very generous) is dedicated to managing, developing, consolidating existing customers. And yet we know that 80% of a typical commercial organization’s revenue, every year, will arrive from those same existing customers. Total madness!

Unfortunately, there is no consolation for any sales leader reading this – 80% of your sales teams are incapable of sustaining long-term relationships because they are commercially promiscuous. They would much prefer to close the deal and then move on to the next shiny, bright new opportunity, leaving that newly acquired customer to fend for themselves – after all, they will call us if they need to buy anything else, won’t they?

Actually, no! At any given time, almost 80% of buyers would be receptive to changing suppliers. They don’t necessarily want a better deal, more discount, greater value – although all of that helps. They want to feel valued, respected and loved. They want to do business with a company that is prepared to work hard to earn the right to their custom.

In summary, I would say this: You can apply the Pareto Principle to all that you do, but my advice is to use it wisely. It should serve as a daily reminder to focus 80% of your time and energy on the 20% of your work that is really important. Don’t just “work smart” – work smart on the right things.