Sales Trends — Page 3

Does Professional Selling Have A Future With or Without Technology?

09.03.2019 by Jonathan Farrington //

“My interest in the future is because I am going to spend the rest of my life there” – Charles Kettering.

There will always be; has to be, on-going, and lively debate – I suspect it even occupied the thoughts of Homer and his peers, after all “selling” is the oldest profession in the world! (You may need to think about that for a few moments)

The reality is that the sales profession has witnessed more changes in the last five years than at any time previously, and there is one single reason …. The internet – but you knew that already. What you may not have done is considered the full ramifications.

“Selling” covers such a wide spectrum of situations and industries: 98% of sales (it might even be 99%) are made in a B2C scenario – business to consumer – and this is where we are witnessing the most fatalities.

It is not just beginning to happen, it has been happening for years. It’s progress. Why employ expensive and non-performing salespeople, when consumers don’t need them?

Has anyone asked consumers if they prefer to buy online or be cajoled and “persuaded” by a salesman or woman? We can find all the information and all the advice we need from the comfort of our armchairs, and make our own informed choices, we are more informed than we ever have been – and often more informed than the so called sales “professionals” who are trying to sell to us.

I do not in any way consider myself to be a sophisticated online shopper, but neither am I a Luddite – something in between possibly – maybe a “sophisticated Luddite.” And there are now hundreds of millions of us.

So logically, if all selling eventually goes online, will we need frontline salespeople at all? It will be PC to PC (iPhone to iPhone?); no human contact or communication; a buyer’s criteria fed into a requirements section, with a solution coming out the other end?

Of course, those rules cannot apply in a B2B environment, but I do believe that marketing is about to claim the high ground in most B2B scenarios. They will take responsibility for not only lead generation, but also “presentation” That is quality of web-site design, functionality, and performance. This is the first point of contact now for all those “crazy, busy buyers” who have already almost made up their minds, and just want to place an order.

After that, new teams will be created to build brick walls around existing customers – pro-active customer care teams. This is what Sales 3.0 is all about.

Technical support functions will also continue to grow in importance, to support the other two areas, because customers want instant fixes and reliable back-up.

Those salespeople who remain, will become genuine “business consultants, strategic orchestrators and long-term allies”

The 2020 sales professional will not only be an industry expert, but also have a solid grasp of commercial issues, and as a consequence, they will speak the language – no selling involved!

At the moment, it is my perception that only 5% of the selling population fall into this category, but within five years, faced with possible extinction, a further 15% will step up, rather than perish.

It’s only a view! But it is a much considered view.

This is a clarion cry to all sales professionals everywhere …

In today’s world of selling, there is less and less room for apprenticeship. Selling is becoming an exclusive club of highly skilled professionals, where product knowledge and time management skills, for instance, are the cost of membership, not leadership.

On-going research demonstrates that today’s ‘average’ salesperson is just as effective as the high performer in explaining features and benefits effectively, relating a service or product to customer needs and closing a sale. But, above this “traditional” plateau of competence, the exceptional salesperson is busy defining the basic skills of tomorrow.

Let me leave you with this thought:

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change” – Charles Darwin

Whatever got you where you are today will not be sufficient to keep you there.

A rapidly changing environment is the regular background, against which organizations must develop, and we can choose to embrace the changes, adapt, and thrive, or we can resist, and risk extinction.

A New Type Of Sales Approach For A New Type Of Customer

08.20.2019 by Jonathan Farrington //

I believe that the traditional customer call once seemed indispensable to the selling process – the time and expense involved were just a basic cost of doing business. In recent years, however, the business community has come to regard the sales call as an expenditure for which there are substitutes. For many companies telemarketing, video conferencing, and direct email have made the sales call a choice, not an inevitability. This is not surprising when various studies suggest that getting one sales person in front of one customer now costs $1500 – this cost has trebled in recent years. As a consequence, professional salespeople have to be more effective than ever to justify the investment in a face to face effort.

In essence, we can draw several conclusions. Taken together, these findings paint a picture of the current state of the sales environment.

The one term that really sets top performers apart – customer focus.

Outstanding sales results depend on:

The ability to think from the customer’s point of view
Understanding the customer’s agenda, buying cycle and best interests
Beyond a superficial reading of immediate customer needs, salespeople must gain a deeper understanding of both the buyer’s long-term goals and the overall business climate
At the heart of customer focus is the art of listening constructively – the best salespeople are masters at capturing information
Customer focus means taking the customer seriously – today, the salesperson who clings to the product orientation of a decade ago is losing ground
As client companies branch into new markets and unfamiliar territories, they are demanding unique, flexible solutions from their vendors – customised to support specific goals
Another myth which can be exploded is that whilst customers value flexibility, being too flexible can undermine the sales relationship. On the whole, salespeople imagine that customers value a vendor’s responsiveness above all. However, recent research shows that their primary concern is reliability.

In summary, in order to maintain customer focus, the best salespeople become facilitators – creating a partnership that extends the selling relationship within the customer’s company. The motivation to achieve this should be strong – it costs fifteen times as much to attract and sell to a new customer as it does to an existing one!

Rather than doggedly asking for the business, the very best sales people work to keep the relationship moving towards a sale. They realise the need to identify how to turn their company’s products into real solutions, which must meet specific needs.

Unfortunately, our surveys confirm that the average salesperson drags the customer over old ground as much as 52% of the time – they are unable to provide continuous stimulation and never know when to treat an existing customer like a new one.

Conversely, exceptional salespeople only make such ‘return calls’ for 10% of the time. Above all, earning the right to proceed requires gaining the customer’s trust – top salespeople work diligently to establish a climate in which the customer is willing to share information and feels comfortable doing so. The key here is integrity.

Customers are persuaded when they are part of the process – and not part of the audience.

Sales success today demands a radical shift from the ‘peddler’ mentality of merely demonstrating products and expanding on their features. It requires treating the customer as a participant. More often than not, a ‘flashy’ sales presentation alone alienates, rather than persuades.

The best salespeople regard the sales call as a two-way conversation – not a one-sided pitch. They have developed active listening skills. Average salespeople score fairly well in their ability to provide customers with facts and figures, but top performers dramatically outscore the rest when it comes to gathering information. In addition, how a salesperson collects information still distinguishes exceptional achievers from the rest of the pack – i.e. Top performers ask better questions and, as a result, gain much better information. Essentially, they aim to engage customers in the buying process with questions that require thoughtful answers, that stimulate curiosity and that reveal the customers underlying needs.

We should never forget that the right to do business has to be continually earned and never assumed!

Is Sales Technology Helping or Hindering Current Sales Achievement Levels?

08.06.2019 by Jonathan Farrington //

Here is the reality: Even companies that enjoy the luxury of clearly superior products realize that those products will not sell themselves. At a minimum, companies need a sales force comprised of skilled professionals who understand the application of the product range, have an in-depth knowledge of their customer base, market sector and, of course, the competition. But even all these elements together are not sufficient to ensure optimum performance levels and profitable sales.

So what exactly is a sales process? Put quite simply, it is a set of procedures which determine how a company wishes its sales team to operate – “The way we do things around here.”

The most successful organizations have implemented a process and an all-encompassing framework for defining performance standards. This involves assessing, appraising, developing, reviewing, providing continual feedback on performance, as well as implementing efficient and relevant process tools.

Over the past few years, we have witnessed huge investment in new sales technology solutions and sales process tools. However, that investment does not guarantee an appropriate return in terms of increased and improved sales performance.

In fact, the results from Sandler Research Center’s inaugural survey confirmed the following …

Whilst 73% of respondents said that they have a formal sales process in place, only 50% said that it has been fully implemented and only 37% reported that the sales team follows that process.

53% told us that they have not received an appropriate return on the investment they have made in sales technology and most alarmingly, only 38% said that their organization was “More Effective” or “A Lot More Effective” as a result of sales technology implementation.

If you would like to read an abbreviated version of the Sandler Research Center report, “THE ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS FOR SUSTAINING OVERACHIEVING SALES PERFORMANCE” please download your copy here