The Six Common Sales Myths

Posted on March 13, 2014June 21, 2018 by Jerry Vieira

Over our 20+ years of working with sales teams in a wide diversity of industries, we have seen and noted Six Common Sales Myths, each of which hinders success. They are explained in a series of articles published in our QMP Insights Blog. The article titles and links are listed below. Simply click the title link to open and read each.

Dispelling these myths can quickly improve the productivity of your sales team.

Be forewarned, however. Some of these concepts might be controversial or run counter to the established sales culture within your firm. So, handle them with care.

Myth #1 – “A Sales Person’s Job is Just to Sell, Sell, Sell“

Myth #2 – “You’ve Lost to an Inferior Offering“

Myth #3 – “Sales is all About Relationships”

Myth #4 – “It’s a Price-Driven Market“

Myth #5 – “Closing Techniques are Effective“

Myth #6 – “The Biggest Accounts are the Best Targets

Click here to read the complete Six Common Sales Myths Series.

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For information on the QMP Sales Process Improvements and Sales Training Programs call us at 503.318.2696, email to qmp1@qmpassociates.com or visit our Contact Us page and tell us of your challenges. We’re here to help.

The 8 Client Personality Types

Posted on June 4, 2013August 25, 2014 by Jerry Vieira

Aristotle, (though some attribute it to Mary Poppins), is purported to have said, “Well begun, is half done”. We’ll stipulate that neither Ari or Mary were talking to a group of consultants, or consultative sales folks, but consultant types quickly learn that early preparation can make a big difference in their ability to achieve a client success.

Beginning well requires quickly determining whether all the key ingredients of a “complete” success even exist. These ingredients include; 1) a client executive that has the personality to affect organizational change, 2) the potential of a major economic benefit for the client, 3) a style match of the consultant to the culture of the client organization and 4) solid gains beyond just your fee, for you, the consultant.

The Executive Personality Factor:

Early in their careers consultants learn that project success is rarely generated solely from their own catalytic, outside-in efforts. Every success needs internal collaboration with a client executive to affect change, assure execution and sustain the economic benefit of a project beyond the engagement.

Recognizing the critical role the lead executive plays in client success, we conducted an analysis of the last ten years of QMP engagements. We wanted to discover the earliest predictors of success from personality-reads on the lead executive. Why did we do this? Because, not all engagements are “complete” successes, and we recognized that achieving a complete success significantly multiplied the economic benefits for both us and our clients.

That analysis brought us to this conclusion:

“The personality type of the highest client executive involved in a specific consulting engagement, not simply his title or position, is the best predictor of an engagement’s ultimate success and the longevity of economic benefit received by both the client and the consultancy practice”

In your career, you may have participated in any of the myriad of commonly practiced personality profiling exercises. Myers-Briggs may have awarded you the distinction of an ENTJ or ISFP. Another test may have designated you a color personality, such as an Orange, or in the DISC profiling system, labeled you an “S”.

While self-knowledge is valuable, it’s not likely you will be able to ask your clients to subject themselves to a battery of personality tests before you provide them a proposal or start an assignment. So the problem remains. How can one identify client types and predict success from the earliest discussions? How can one know when to stay and when to run?

Sorting through hundreds of transactions resulted in our Approach-to-Business (ATB) scale for classifying executives. Admittedly, it wasn’t the most scientific of studies. We don’t have a research psychologist on staff. We simply sorted and grouped like-client individuals, named the groups and then regrouped by project success.

The grouping resulted in eight categories. Only three of the types seemed to have the key success gene, which we identified as the ability and courage to drive change.

So that this last point is not lost, it deserves mentioning again. The key factor in the successful types is their ability to manage and execute organizational change. In our experience, all types will say they are prepared to affect change but only three types actually do.

It’s Not the Title, It’s the Type

It is common to hear among consultants that “executive buy-in” is essential for engagement success. Our data refuted the generality of that claim. We restate it this way, “buy-in from executives at the right level and of the right ATB types is essential for success”. To truly be valuable in generating success, executives must be both the right ATB type and high enough in the organization to marshal resources and get attention when needed.

We have tested our ATB classification with consultants from around the country. They almost universally and immediately, recognize their own current and prospective clients among the types – as well as their project and proposal successes and failures. Once the patterns of these ATB personality types are recognized, one can adjust tactics, refocus resources appropriately and save an enormous amount of time while increasing the probability of “complete” success.

The 8 Client ATB Personality Types:

STUMPs: STUck in the Mud People will never change, they will never buy. They have a limited point of view and don’t move very far from it. Even if you are convinced, beyond any doubt, that they need your help and could reap enormous benefit, it is irrelevant. They are simply disinclined to buy professional services. Don’t try to convince or educate them, because they really don’t care. Politely walk away. Don’t persist. Unsolicited proposals will simply frustrate you, while bemusing them. It’s futile.

Takers: Takers know how to take. They take great notes, your time, your materials, your ideas, your concepts, and turn them into their own. They use your materials surreptitiously, under the radar. Credit or compensation for your ideas? What ideas?

Imagine having your third meeting with a client who appears to be interested, has taken a lot of notes but little or no action. Now, imagine the time and frustration you could have saved had you known from the outset that this potential client was a Taker. These prospects are experts at appropriating concepts and ideas, often asking during preliminary discussions if they can have copies of some of your key documents “to review with their people”. Don’t go there.

Opportunists: Opportunists want to purchase the minimum, bare bones package of services. Their hope is that purchasing the minimum will generate great results. Their expectation is first class results for the “economy” investment. Follow-through to success is rare, since they don’t have the expertise required to execute. Quite often the Opportunist will start many small projects. They will lose interest quickly if results are not immediate or if it seems like too much effort.

Boss-Made-Me-Do-Its: BMMDI’s (pronounced “Bim-Me-Dees”) are the political hangers-on of the corporate world. They provide lip service and public support for an improvement initiative but usually have little sincere enthusiasm—particularly if the consulting assignment has the likelihood of revealing and correcting weaknesses in their own department or function. They will engage, but only long enough to satisfy the boss. If the boss’ attention goes elsewhere, the engagement will die on the vine – as will success.

BMMDI’s have no personal commitment or belief. They may even engage in “lipotage” – public lip service, followed by indifference, or worse, sabotage. (The word “lipotage” was coined by my colleague Bob Phillips and co-author Larry Johnson in their book “Absolute Honesty” published by AMACOM Press).

A particularly hopeless combination is a BMMDI with an Opportunist boss.

Terribly Troubled: TT’s really need help and are willing to invest in serious solutions. Their level of pain is high, as is their motivation to fix the problem. They may research alternatives, but will make a decision quickly. They are typically in a rush to get started and consequently may miss some alternatives – but they will move forward. Spend quality time with these prospects to ensure they understand what will be done (deliverables), what’s required for success (commitment) and how you will fix the problem (approach).

Frustrated Drivers: FD’s can be very intense and quick in studying alternatives. Many times these are executives that inherited a family business or took over after a long oppressive or “old-fashioned” leader – perhaps a StuMP.

They have been waiting a long time for the opportunity to straighten things out. Their drive and motivation is high. They usually understand the weak points, the resources and commitment needed and, upon decision, will drive for quick, visible results.

Establishing well-defined goals, benchmarks, checkpoints and progress measurements will help FDs satiate their sense of urgency. Communicate frequently, clearly and succinctly. Emphasize speed, drive for quick traction and show results.

Sincerely Growth-Oriented (SGO): SGOs are there for the long term. These are clients that readily recognize they have issues and challenges, and demonstrate a sincere and strong desire to improve. An ideal type of client, they understand performance excellence and are motivated by it. They thrive on achieving goals and are constantly improving basic business processes. They are the best-of-the-best clients, intellectually, emotionally and financially. If you consistently provide high value to them in your engagements, SGOs will remain loyal for a long time and continue to award you new projects and referrals.

Dreamers: Imagine Don Quixote, the idealist and self-imagined white-knight savior. Dreamers are lofty in their vision and motivation, perhaps even charismatic, yet impulsive and occasionally misdirected. They are typically challenged at getting organizational buy-in and support, based on a history of failed past initiatives. Their grandiose visions of the corporate future are rarely realized. They talk enthusiastically but show little interest in getting deeply involved in the details of execution .

According to our research, Terribly Troubled (TT’s), Frustrated Drivers (FD’s) and Sincerely Growth Oriented (SGO’s) generate the most meaningful successes by an order of magnitude, in terms of the highest long-term value for all concerned.

But wait! Good ATB genes are required, but not sufficient.

ATB considerations create opportunities for complete success only if the three other raw ingredients exist as well.

Ingredient #1: Strong Economic Benefit:

Business-to-business executives buy consulting services because of a basic belief that the money invested in those services will return significantly greater economic value than the cost. If there isn’t a meaningful economic benefit to be achieved for the client, com “complete” success may end up a ‘Pyrrhic” success.

Ingredient #2: Consultant Style, Capabilities and Personality

These ingredients must Blend with the Client’s Culture: Clients want a consultant whose expertise is well-matched to their specific needs. Furthermore, the ideal client relationship must be based on mutual trust and open communication. But even with these factors covered, execution remains the biggest challenge, because the people in the organization must change the way they do things.

The ability to affect change is enhanced with good communication – and communication is most effective when the consultant’s personality and style match the personality, style and culture of the client organization.

Ingredient #3: Wins for the consultant:

Beyond the economic payoff, other rewards await a complete success: case studies, new tools and techniques, raw material for articles, referrals, follow-on business and new networking connections. If you are going to invest the next six months in a major client engagement, it’s better to find one of that holds the promise of the multiple rewards of a “complete” success.

Personality to Profit

A consistent challenge in selling consulting services to a new client is getting an audience at the right executive level. It is a coup. But when the actual discussion starts, it is common to get so focused on the problem at hand that one can easily forget to look for all the key ingredients of success.

We started this article with a quote from Aristotle, so it’s only fitting to end with a quote from the great American philosopher, Yogi Berra. Berra is purported to have said, “You can observe a lot, just by watching”. Let me add this, “..but you must remember to observe.”

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Learn more about the QMP process for reading people and creating winning sales strategies in our one-day Sales Skills and Process Training Workshop, 60/90 minute on-line Sales Webinars or, for consultants, our Consultancy Navigator program. If you have special need let us know of them through our Contact Us page, or call us at 503.318.2696.

Networking from the front of the room

Posted on April 10, 2013August 25, 2014 by Jerry Vieira

There are two statements I hear repeatedly when speaking with professional services firms. The first is, “It’s a relationship business.” The second is, “We generate the majority of our new business through networking and referrals.”

In fact, service professionals (attorneys, bankers, financial advisors, IT service providers, consultants, brokers and accountants), tell me that they are encouraged (if not by their bosses, by everything they read) to attend a lot of networking events, engage in conversation, not drink too much and hand out business cards.

They are, in effect, being encouraged to play a numbers game. The more events attended and the more cards handed out, the more new clients. Why this approach? Because, it has worked in the past – and if it is not done, new client opportunities dry up. With all the hype in recent years about branding, eMarketing and social media – networking still ranks as a top priority for generating new clients for professional services firms.

But, think about this kind of networking for a moment. In the 30 minutes or so before an event speaker is introduced on the dais, you are supposed to: a) meet as many new people as possible, b) demonstrate sincere interest in who they are and what they do, c) identify their key challenges, d) empathize and e) build up enough mutual trust to get them to remember you well enough to agree to an appointment in the the next, oh let’s say, 3 months. There must be a better way.

The professional services marketplace is much more competitive these days. A lot more people are handing out a lot more business cards at a lot more events. In addition, a swarm of unemployed executives, and there are many, are buzzing the networking circuit. The bottom line is that professional services firms need a better way than traditional networking to stand out and find new opportunities in this market. They need a more effective way than traditional networking to generate the essential credibility and trust that precedes all new client opportunities.

Front of the Room Networking

Front of the room networking is the act of being the headline speaker at networking and other business events. It has incredible power to attract new prospects and many advantages over crowd surfing. The following list of advatntages illustrates the power of this approach:

1. An intriguing title will attract the right kinds of prospects with the right kinds of problems

Picking a title which addresses and offers approaches to problems commonly faced by your clients is a way to garner interest in your talk. In fact, if done well, the people attending will self-pre-qualify simply by demonstrating enough interest in the topic to attend and listen.

I recently offered a topic to an organization of management accountants for their October monthly meeting entitled, “How to Judge the Reality of your Marketing and Sales Team’s 2012 Forecast”. October, being coincident with most firms’ annual planning efforts, was perfect timing, and the topic being relevant attracted a good amount of attention.

2. Offer to speak at a venue that attracts, by function and title, the key decision makers or influencers for the service you provide

While it may be flattering to be asked to address the local Boy Scout troop, and you may get a feeling of civic and professional pride in doing so, if your professional services are bought or recommended by B2B CFOs, you may want to reserve some energy and your best jokes for the latter crowd.

3. Insight is Essential

Assuming you are addressing the right crowd, with the right topic, with an intriguing catchy title, your talk must provide insight. To be effective it must have the effect of causing people to tilt their head, look up toward the ceiling and say to themselves, “I never thought of it that way.”

“ Wow! That’s a clever approach.”

“Wish I had thinkers like that in my organization.”

or, best of all …

“I MUST to talk to this guy/gal after he/she finishes.”

4. The hosting / sponsoring organization typically does all the logistics work

They invite the people, promote the event, reserve the venue, arrange and pay for the breakfast, lunch, snacks, coffee, beer or wine (depending on the time of day), provide you a flattering introduction and assure that the place is cleaned up afterwards.

5. You speak (and consequently network) to the whole room at once

Being the featured speaker at a monthly meeting typically permits you to address 25 to 100 people simultaneously, instead of engaging in chit-chat one-on-one for 10 minutes with each of 3 people. As mentioned above, typically networking and association get-togethers allow 30 minutes for that kind of chatting before the speaker starts. That allows time for meeting 3 new people – if you don’t waste time catching up with your buddies first and talking sports, books or politics

6. You have their uninterrupted attention for 45 minutes

For this networking approach to work, you must be an engaging speaker and deliver value. You cannot take advantage of the opportunity and try to sell. You must be willing to share.

Many people feel they will be giving too much away if they do this. As a consultant, my experience is that you can give someone your complete process binder and they will not be able to deploy it without your help. The caution is that you can really only share so much. You must protect your Intellectual Property – but do not fear to share a lot. It builds your credibility, demonstrates your expertise, illustrates your commitment to help and provides more opportunity for your listeners to want to talk with you afterwards.

7. It helps you continue the development of your ideas, products and intellectual property

The compelling need to think and develop your talk after you have committed to it, has the added benefit of forcing you to take thinking time. This thinking time always generates new ideas that you can test with the new audience.

And here are some tips for giving a great talk and getting great results:

1. Assure you have an audience of decision makers or highly placed (by title) recommenders

As a colleague of mine said, “Pick your talks by who you want to listen to you, not by who accepted your talk”. Before i recognized this, I wasted more than one evening giving great talks to very interested attendees who weren;t anywhere near the decision to decide on using my services

2. Make your presentations interactive

Another key point is the need to engage interactively with your audience versus lecturing. Small exercises that illustrate key concepts are very helpful. One of the most effective tools is some sort of self-assessment which illustrates key gaps in the current situation of the attendees.

3. Make frequent eye contact with individual people in the room.

It gives listeners a feeling of a personal conversation and intimacy with you even though there may be 100 people in the room.

5. Don’t forget to smile

If people see you are enjoying yourself, and excited about talking with them, they will enjoy themselves and be excited about talking with you.

6. Exchange business cards after your talk

If the sponsoring organization does not provide for it, offer to make (and personally deliver) copies of your presentation to the attendees if they provide you a business card. Also ask if they would mind being on your mailing list when you get their card. At the accountant meeting mentioned in Point 1 above, out of 50+ attendees, I collected 12 business cards after the talk by people coming up to me, expressing their appreciation for what I had to say and requesting the presentation. Within the next few days, I had scheduled four appointments.

7. Follow up quickly, when they ask you to

A final point is worth repeating: Remember, you are never selling when you give one of these talks. You are providing information and insight. The sense the audience feels of you as an expert is what creates the magnetic attraction for you to come and solve their problems.

Summary:

Speaking in front of crowds is an integral part of Thought Leadership and an active Thought Leadership effort is essential for a professional service providers’ business development efforts. A well constructed Thought Leadership effort builds brand, reinforces your individual and firm’s reputation as experts, piques client interest, builds web traffic and provides opportunity for price premiums.

For a good book on the pillars of Thought Leadership, grab a copy of “The Expert’s Edge” by Ken Lizotte (McGraw Hill)

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Networking from the front of the room and other Sales and Consulting business development practices are part both the QMP Sales Skills and Process Workshop and the QMP Consutlancy Navigator Program offered by The QMP Group. Click on their titles to learn more.

The Basics of Foundational Marketing

Posted on April 2, 2013August 25, 2014 by Jerry Vieira

“You can’t build a durable building on a weak foundation.”

We’d like to share an insight that has helped executives and business owners sort through all the hype and claims over the last several years about an ever growing list of “gotta-do” new marketing and sales techniques.

If you’re a General Manager, business owner or C-level executive, your marketing team probably approaches you annually with a laundry list of funding requests to support their critical marketing and sales programs for the coming year. Those requests may include any or all of; a website upgrade, a branding program, a social media expansion program, a blog, a publicity and PR program or maybe even a new six-figure trade show booth – not to mention the additional staff to help manage it all. How do you decide what to approve? How do you sort through all the hype and enthusiasm about each program and decide what will truly give you the best return for your investment?

The graphic below illustrates an alternative approach to selecting marketing initiatives.

Most people think of marketing as one or more of the items listed on the right side of the graphic — in the grey, typical-marketing circle. Stop a moment and consider the list. Is this what you think of when you think of marketing? If yes, join the majority club. If not, join the other group. It has fewer members – but they are the ones who have found the secret to getting greater return on their marketing buck.

Before those of you in the smaller, enlightened group get smug, remember “typical marketing” programs aren’t completely useless. Let’s be realistic. These days, unless you operate a lemonade stand that will only be open for two weeks in August, everyone needs a website. So let’s agree that, to some degree, typical-marketing expenditures are necessary – and in fact, required, once the foundational marketing base is laid.

But, back to the point – the hidden secret about marketing and what the people in the smaller group know that others may not is this; Rarely will any typical marketing initiatives produce truly breakthrough results — and they can tie up a lot of money! What really sets up top and bottom-line breakthroughs is Foundational Marketing. Foundational Marketing is the stuff in the oval on the left. Foundational Marketing is inexpensive and the primary, required ingredient in every major success.

For any typical marketing expenditure to be productive, Foundational Marketing must be done well. In our experience, foundational marketing tools and techniques have produced remarkable results. For example:

A software firm earned 1,000 new clients in just a little more than two years
A fledgling medical product landed 150 hospital placements in its first two years, with some orders exceeding $1M. Prior to using Foundational Marketing techniques, this product was in only two hospitals, with the largest single order only $20,000.
An electronics firm achieved a 50%+ growth rate for six years straight
A components firm increased their win rate by 15% while investing 33% less quoting time
A wholesale distributor generated a 47% increase in regional sales in 1½ years

None of these breakthroughs required a significant investment in typical marketing.

To contrast the effectiveness of the two types of marketing even further, in one of those cases above, after the success had been achieved using Foundational Marketing techniques a new management team invested in a mid six-figure re-branding typical-marketing program that didn’t move the needle a bit – losing the discipline of Foundational Marketing along the way.

Why don’t more firms adhere to Foundational Marketing disciplines?

They don’t know what they are: B-school educators are fantastic at teaching principles and concepts, but in general, weak at delivering a practical approach to moving those principles and concepts into practice. I speak from experience as, at different times, both an MBA student and MBA-level university instructor. Concepts and principles education does not equate to skills, tools and process disciplines. Most B-school graduates do not come out newly-minted with a honed skill set and tool kit.

They haven’t developed a standard tool kit: You are more likely to find a dozen carpenters that use the same field-proven tools and processes for their trade, than a dozen top B-school graduates that use the same tool kit and process for strategy development. Coming to the job site, most marketing practitioners have to create their own tools and processes, convince the executive team to learn, trust and use them and support the execution discipline to see the resultant strategies through to success. Not to place all the blame on the practitioner, many firms simply haven’t developed a Foundational Marketing process and tool kit.

It’s tougher to do: Typical marketing programs are an easy way out – particularly if everyone in the industry is “doing something”. They can be delegated and the deliverables are easy to see: a new web site, a new logo, a bigger show booth.

They don’t have the discipline to do the Foundational work first: Unless the top-dog insists that Foundational Marketing receives first priority and is the right way to do marketing, it won’t get done. Foundational Marketing is a “think-before-doing” approach.

They think it takes too much time: Building a good foundation doesn’t take long if you have the right tools. We have witnessed strategic decisions made in a few days with execution and success in as little as 90 days.

They don’t believe in it because they’ve never seen it work: Using and trusting Foundational Marketing principles does take some faith and practice, but the track record is proven.

Under the Hood of Foundational Marketing:

Practicing Foundational Marketing is really not difficult if you have the right tools. Good and sound foundational marketing tools are based on empirical marketing science. Even non-marketing people can learn and succeed using them. In a way, a good Foundational Marketing tool is like a cell phone. You don’t need to be an electrical engineer with an understanding of electromagnetic field and communications theory to use a cell phone. All of that has been done for you and integrated into the cell phone. Good Foundational Marketing tools have already integrated sound empirical marketing science into them.

Success with Foundational Marketing does require – and this is the difficult part – transforming the way your organization thinks and the way your team executes marketing and sales. It really comes down to a battle of the mind – more than a battle of the wallet. When your organization understands Foundational Marketing – and begins to use its tools and techniques, both the probability of success and the return on investment of your marketing programs skyrocket.

A complete Foundational Marketing approach has four components:

· Market Strategy: A proven and steadfast way to decide what market segments to focus on and what differentiated position to carve out for your firm and each of its products.

· Business Development Initiatives: These are about how you will approach the segment(s) of the market you have decided to target. While components of tactical (typical marketing) are included, emphasis here is on specific customers to target, specific messages to communicate, the customer’s buying process, channel-to-market decisions and leveraging the intra-market customer-to-customer communication network in the target markets of choice.

· Sales Disciplines: There are two parts of the sales disciplines component of Foundational Marketing. Both require training and consistency. First, an effective, consistent sales process is a must – one which qualifies, discovers needs, proposes good solutions, and wins/sustains long-term clients. The second part is a differentiated sales story that is meaningful to customers – one which assures that your unique benefits story is told consistently through all channels to all target customers. It’s a story that emphasizes the economic, emotional and physical benefits in the right priority, for the right customers, in the right market. Sounds obvious, but many clients actually fail in these two fundamental requirements.

· A Performance Driven Culture: Think of the components of Foundational Marketing as the gears of an engine, the culture of a firm is the oil in the oil pan. (See the figure below). To consistently achieve your goals, the organization’s culture must encourage teams to communicate, execute, adjust, think, make decisions and lead in an honest way. A culture of performance excellence is defined by: accountability, clarity of expectations, measurements and metrics, ownership, open and honest communication, fact-oriented, sense of urgency, rewards and consequences, frequent checkpoints and the ability to quickly and constructively confront barriers and problems. With a culture of performance excellence lubricating Foundational Marketing, the engine hums. Without the oil of a culture of performance excellence, the gears seize.

Can Foundational Marketing fail?

Foundational Marketing programs do fail – for one of three reasons: First, if an organization does not have the discipline to execute and follow through, any program will fail. Foundational Marketing programs are no exception. Secondly, it is possible that some firms are too far gone to be saved by a Foundational Marketing program. However, in 20 years of consulting, we have witnessed only one firm in the second category. They required a complete change of their business model to survive. They did survive, but at a much lower revenue level.

Finally, we have witnessed firms that have relapsed. Relapse is characterized by success with Foundational Marketing, followed by a reversion back to sole dependence on those items in the typical marketing list. Relapse is very costly in money, time and lost opportunity. A relapse typically occurs when a new, uniformed marketing and sales or C-level executive enters the picture.

A Final Word:

A good example of the need for foundational discipline is in the weight loss arena. The basis of all weight loss programs is discipline: discipline to eat better, discipline to exercise more and discipline to adhere to a healthy lifestyle. The latest exercise machine does not obviate the need for discipline.

So it is with Foundational Marketing. Good tools and processes are needed – but organizational discipline fuels the best results. Foundational Marketing, supported by a culture of performance excellence has proven again and again to lower marketing and sales costs, increase market share, achieve more rapid adoption of new products and increase significantly the firm’s return on investment.

To learn more about Foundational Marketing call the QMP Group at 503.318.2696, email us at qmp1@qmpassociates.com or connect with us through our Contact Us page where you can detail your challenges.

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The Biggest Sales Myth

Posted on March 10, 2013August 25, 2014 by Jerry Vieira

A sure bet on what sales people believe…

One of the first topics commonly included in sales training programs and books is a discussion of “Sales Myths”. Over the years I have heard a number of these myths and have my own favorite set of a half-dozen or so that we use in our sales training program.

The myth that is particularly revealing is implied in this question we ask to sales people:

How many of you have ever lost to an inferior offering?

When I ask this, I always accompany it with a warning that it’s a trick question. In spite of the warning, a nearly unanimous show of hands is the response.

That’s when the trap closes.

It’s all about perspective

The truth is that you never lose to an inferior offering. It may appear inferior in your eyes, and from your perspective. You may even be able to show the specification inferiority in absolute provable, numerical or physical terms. But, it’s not your eyes and perspectives that matter. The only eyes and perspectives that matter are those of the customer.

So, what is the real story?

Losing to an offering that is inferior in your eyes really means some, or all, of the following:

You didn’t truly understand the criteria the customer used to make the decision until it was too late.
You didn’t ask what the criteria were.
You didn’t develop enough trust with the customer for them to share the criteria with you.
You didn’t understand the circumstances that influenced the customer.
You didn’t understand, or were unable to advise the customer to re-consider the decision criteria.
You were selling into a poorly qualified opportunity, one that didn’t match the strength of your offering.

Test yourselves:

If you are a sales person, or someone who has access to the sales pipeline of your firm, select the top six opportunities in the pipeline. For each of these opportunities list the top four to six criteria, in decreasing order of importance, that the customer will use to decide what to buy – or even if to buy at all.

When we use this exercise in our training programs, the stunned and embarrassed faces in the crowd are something to see.

Not too long ago, we were working with a client sales person on his pipeline. He was proudly sharing page after page of opportunity strategy worksheets. On every sheet the decision criteria, a section we strongly encourage sales people to document and use in formulating strategies and action plans, were exactly the same.

I had to ask how that could be – and if that was truly what the customers were telling him. If it were so, it would have been the most incredibly homogeneous market I had ever seen.

He replied, “No, the customers didn’t tell me those criteria. I know how my customers make their decisions. I don’t have to ask.”

Was this response arrogance? Laziness? Fear of asking? Lack of belief that decision criteria expressed by the customer is relevant? Whatever the reason, this poor sales person embarrassed himself in front of his peers and management?

Phrasing the question effectively

Much of the value that sales people receive from sales training is in learning key phrases and techniques for asking tough questions. These questions might be about funding availability, decision-making power, the competitive situation, gaining access to other folks involved in the decision, or, in this case the decision criteria.

One of the common traps sales people fall into with respect to understanding decision criteria is assuming that while they are talking with the customer, decision criteria are naturally being revealed in the normal course of conversation. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they aren’t.

The safe stance is to assume that they aren’t revealed. So, here are some questions to assist in revealing the real decision criteria:

Assuming you are not the exclusive decision maker, would you feel comfortable sharing what you believe other members of the committee are concerned about and would use in selecting the final solution?

If you feel uncomfortable speaking for them, what benefit do you think there might be in gathering the decision makers and influencers to work through and collect all the decision criteria and perspectives?

Have they compiled their concerns, needs and preferences in any sort of document?

Is there a vendor’s guide that would help assure that we will meet or exceed all your criteria?

Of course, there is always the option of asking directly, “What are the decision criteria”?

In reality, based on the responses of the hosts of sales people attending our training programs, that last question is rarely used. The more common scenario is that sales people believe that they know everything about the customer’s decision process simply by having had a discussion.

A final check…

Even if you haven’t broached the subject of decision criteria directly, and believe you know enough from the conversation, it is helpful to run through the following routine to review what you understand the criteria to be.

“Thanks for taking the time with me, Paul. Before we break up here, would you mind if I spent just a moment to confirm that I understand the criteria you will be using to make your decision. Here’s what I inferred from the conversation. (Re-cap here).

When you finish, ask, “Is there anything I missed? Is there anyone else that we need to speak with who might have additional criteria?”.

Explicit, Implicit and Hidden Criteria

If you follow that dialogue you get only explicit criteria. It’s certainly better than not knowing anything – but it’s incomplete.

Implicit and hidden criteria are best revealed through keen observation. While much is said in sales literature about listening skills, keen observation skills are equally, if not more important.

Observing and noting the physical surroundings, the personalities of the buyers, the organizational and political situation in the customer’s firm, the personal ambitions of the buyers and body language can reveal approaches which meet implicit and hidden criteria. If the office is highly organized and neat, so should be your proposal, your meetings, your presentations and your communications. If the customer works in teams, package your offering as a team effort. Implicit and hidden criteria / requirements can be met at the sub-conscious, as well as the conscious behavioral level.

Keep in mind what Yogi Berra is purported to have said,

“You can see an awful lot just by observing”

A final point:

In the hands of the skilled sales person, dialogue and observation must work closely together to identify customer buying criteria. The more the criteria are understood the higher the probability of winning and the lower the risk of losing to an apparently inferior offering. .

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Learn more about the QMP process for understanding customer decision making and creating winning sales strategies.

Common Sales Myth #1 – A Sales Person’s Job is Just to Sell

Posted on January 6, 2013May 18, 2015 by Jerry Vieira

After many years of both conducting sales training workshops and personally selling, I have come to recognize six popular misconceptions about selling. And, I must say, every time I broach those myths during a sales training session I get push-back, disbelief, the wagging of heads and several audible “No Way!’s”. So I am braced for your blog comments.

I have chosen to address each myth as a separate blog post, to make it more convenient to get through in the smaller and smaller free time chunks we all seem to be experiencing these days. Here’s the first.

Myth 1: A Sales Person’s Job is Just to Sell

We understand that sales people are under a lot of pressure to spend time face-to-face with customers and on the road – rather than behind a desk. But pushing, or allowing, a sales person to only sell is counterproductive. That approach would be the equivalent of saying, “A soldier’s job is just to shoot and kill the enemy.” Good soldiers do a lot more than simply shoot. They are part of a team that sometimes requires them to play different roles and take on different duties. Here are some examples, along with their contrasting business function.

They collect and report field intelligence: Good soldiers are trained, not only to shoot, but also to observe and report on the enemy (competitors), their armaments (competitive advantages and value propositions), their location (markets and customers) and their strong points (where they have impenetrable positions – be it markets or accounts). Soldiers also report on the enemy’s weaknesses and gaps in their lines (under-serviced customers and under-served markets).

Any General, coming onto the battlefield needs, first and foremost, intel – to be able to formulate a strategy. Business managers need intel as well, for the same reason.

They report on the effectiveness of their own, and the enemy’s, weapons: The business equivalent is reporting on customer receptivity to the sales tools in use, the sales approaches, product capabilities, product reliability, product effectiveness, installation problems, quality, training problems and a host of other relevant experiential aspects of selling, delivering and using the product.

They dig in and defend the ground already captured: In business terms they defend their current accounts through disciplined customer service and make sure they are secure.

They exploit a victory, charging after a retreating enemy, or pouring through a breach: When something works in the field they use it again and again, winning repeatedly over weak competitors and landing new customers until the territory is “owned” and they move into a temporary “hold and defend” mode – until the next opportunity for an offensive.

They share techniques and victories: In World War II, shortly after the Normandy invasion, the allies, having driven off the beaches into western France found themselves in bocage country . Bocage country is best described as countryside spotted with crop and grazing fields that are edged on all sides by 6 foot earthen walls entangled with scrub brush, vines and trees. These barriers have been built up over hundreds of years, a result of field-tending by farmers. From the air, bocage resembles a bunch of egg-cartons set side by side as far as the eye can see – each carton with deep, rectangular recesses. (Though at the time of the invasion, aerial observers did not recognize the impenetrable nature and height of the actual barriers.)

Capturing each field required soldiers to climb up one side of the barrier wall, scramble through the brush, trees and tangled vines, enter the field and charge across it to the bocage wall on the opposite side of the field. Tanks could not climb and penetrate these natural walls. The soldiers had no cover when entering the field. Casualties were high. The enemy simply placed machine guns at the opposite side of the field and mowed down any soldiers coming over the opposite wall. Progress in liberating France, ground to a halt.

That was, until some innovative engineer found that welding a fork-like scoop on the front end of a tank allowed it to tear through the walls, enter the fields ahead of the Allied soldiers and place heavy covering fire on the enemy gun emplacements on the opposite bocage wall. The success of that technique quickly spread to other infantry units. The casualty rate dropped. Progress accelerated. Eventually France was liberated.

When a sales person finds, discovers or invents something that succeeds and creates breakthroughs – it must be shared with all.

They train: To think that basic training is all that soldiers go through is a myth. Soldiers constantly repeat their training and hone their skills to a razor’s edge. They train on new techniques, new weapons, new systems and capturing obstacles and enemy positions in different terrains. Then they re-train on what they learned in their first training. Sales people, sadly, might train once a year. New sales people joining the team, may have to wait as long as 11 months before undergoing their basic training. Lack of training puts the team, the company and the product reputation at risk.

One more point: Training has two parts: basic physical conditioning (sales skills and disciplines) and weapons training (product and sales tool training).

Yes, there is more …

We could go on with the “good soldier” analogy, but by now, if you are a salesperson, you’ve probably reached your reading time-limit and need to run to do something else.

Have a good day.

Read the complete set of The 6 Common Sales Myths.

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Click to learn more about the QMP Sales Process and Skills Training, call us 503-318-2696 or connect through our Contact Us page

Common Sales Myth #2 – You’ve Lost to an Inferior Offering

Posted on January 3, 2013March 20, 2014 by Jerry Vieira

When we ask salespeople in our workshops to raise their hands if they have ever lost a deal to an inferior competitive offering, they almost universally raise their hands – even though we have told them ahead of time, “It’s a trick question.”

The truth is: No one ever loses to an inferior offering.

“How can that be true?”, you ask. “How,” you may ask, “could anyone consider that crap, superior?”

If you lost, all the evidence indicates it wasn’t really an inferior offering, after all. That truth of it lies in two facts; 1) the decision-maker’s perspective and the values from which the relative superiority and inferiority judgement arose both differed from yours and 2) the outcome satisfied only one person’s needs – and that person wasn’t you. But, ultimately, the outcome is the final proof.

At the moment a customer, and/or the ultimate decision maker, makes a decision to buy another “inferior” offering instead of your “superior” offering, that other offering is being perceived as a superior alternative in the eyes of that decision maker – by a unique, hidden or secret set of evaluation criteria that you simply don’t understand or chose to ignore. Your personal opinion doesn’t, and didn’t matter. Relevant value is only in the eyes of the beholder – not the seller.

There are several reasons we are led to self-deceptively believe this harmful myth.

1. We, in sales, think all value is economic. That’s the reason we put so much emphasis on price competitiveness.

Perceived value can be economic, but it can also be emotional or physical. When my family was young, I remember spending a lot of time analyzing car models and test driving a half dozen or so, narrowing them all down to two finalists. I sequentially drove both of them home for my wife’s final OK. She ran out to the driveway, a new-born in her arms and our other child, a two-year old, clinging to her jeans. She sat in the first car while I held the baby. She didn’t drive it. No excitement.

I returned that car and came back with the other option – a different brand and model from a different dealer. We repeated the drill. While she was sitting in the second car, she reached down, ran her hand across the seat (not leather in those days) and said, “This is it. It feels right.” We bought that car. It had nothing to do with the performance, reliability, handling or any other criteria I was discussing with either sales person. I didn’t have a clue that a “feel” test was going to be the ultimate consideration and the final decision point. I thought, as the salesperson did, that I was acting as the “official” power purchaser and “ultimate” decision maker.

This “feel test” was an obvious physical value – not an economic or emotional one – and it held importance in the criteria by a “hidden” decision maker.

2. We don’t understand the real decision criteria. In the story above, I narrowed down the choices. However, there was another final hurdle that neither the sales person or the purchasing agent (me) knew of.

3. We don’t understand all the decision makers (See my new car story, above)

4. We emphasize the wrong product (or service) strengths. Not all strengths are meaningful to all buyers – or with the same relative importance. There is nothing more irritating and distracting than a salesperson spewing data, stats and features when you are trying to focus on the one, two or three most important things in your personal decision tree.

5. We try to sell to the wrong target customer in the wrong target market. We continually hear, particularly from inventors and entrepreneurs when we ask them who their target customers are, that “everyone” can use their new product, service or invention. This leads to inefficient use of sales time, and significant mismatches in message. Telling the whole story, while missing the relevant customer or market-specific benefits, is common and leads sales people to say things like, “They (the customers) just don’t get it.”

We have witnessed a company that believed so strongly in the universality of their value proposition nearly go out of business as they scattered their message as broadly as possible. Panicked by their rapidly dwindling marketing and sales pocketbook, lack of success and anxiousness to avoid failure, they engaged us. We told them to focus very tightly on markets and customers where the value received was the greatest. They finally agreed and the business began to turn around in less than 3 months. That simple change resulted in a four year run of breakthrough growth.

6. We don’t understand our own value proposition and differentiation: Each of our products or services should have a clearly articulated value proposition and differentiation in all three value areas; economic, emotional and physical. These values must be enhanced by the corporate brand – the ambient light that our products shine in. Johnson & Johnson, 3M, GE and Apple (to a somewhat lesser extent these days) all bask in the glow of that favorable corporate light. The corporate light typically shines an intangible emotional and implied physical light on products and services.

Don’t bail on price as a last desperate attempt to fix your perception mistake.

One final point: To think that price is the only variable available to trigger a buy is flat wrong. But that is the topic of another myth. Suffice it to say, if that were true we’d all be driving the cheapest cars on the road.

Watch our QMP Insights blog for Sales Myth #3: “It’s relationship business”

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Click to learn more about the QMP Sales Process and Skills workshops or call us at 503-318-2696 or through our Contact Us page .

Common Sales Myth #3 – Sales is all about Relationships

Posted on January 2, 2013April 29, 2014 by Jerry Vieira

It’s a Relationship Business!

That four-word phrase is probably the most common statement we hear when we talk to sales people about their business. It is even more common than the statement, “It’s a Price-Driven Market” – though more often than not those two statements travel closely together.

Do You Have Brothers and/or Sisters? The Limits of the Relationship

To challenge the assumption that businesses are primarily relationship-driven we ask salespeople the following questions. Here they are, with the typical answers.

Q. “Do you have a brother and / or a sister?” A. “Yes.”

Q. “Do you have a good relationship with your brother or sister?” A. “Yes”

Q. “If your brother or sister tried to sell you something that would be detrimental to your business, would you buy it?” A. “No (expletive deleted) Way”

Q. “What if they threatened to would tell your Mom that you refused to buy from them, would it change your mind?” A. Laughter. “No”

Here’s the point: All relationships, even good ones, have their limits

Relationships are based on trust.

Any activity that violates trust, violates and detracts from the relationship.

Let’s look at the Trust Equation, developed by David Maister, Charles Green and Robert Galford in their wonderful book “The Trusted Advisor“. According to Maister et al, Trust equals the sum of= (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) divided by (Self Interest).

T = (C + R + I) / SI

Anything a sales person or their company does to lower Credibility, Reliability or Intimacy, lowers Trust and damages the business Relationship. As you can also see from the equation, anything that blatantly demonstrates your, or your firm’s, Self-Interest also damages Trust and thereby the Relationship.

Nothing in the equation can affect Trust more than the amount of your self-interest perceived by the customer. The higher the Self-Interest perceived, the lower the Trust.

Here’s the point. Depending on the Relationship alone can be perceived by the customer as inherently demonstrative of high Self-Interest. In Relationship terms, “They want me only for my money.”

What Relationships Can and Can’t Do

Relationships can:

Get you an audience to make your case
Buy you some time and patience when you or your company screw up
Get you early, but not necessarily exclusive, notice of a new opportunity at an account

Relationships can’t:

Make up for a significant competitive shortcoming in your product or service offering
Repeatedly cover for your operational team’s inability to deliver
Make up for poor product or service quality
Find and win completely new accounts
Provide you more than a few percent price premiums
Make up for poor market targeting
Make up for fundamentally slow market momentum
Fix functional short-comings in your products

Here’s the Point: Don’t get complacent because you have good relationships.

Don’t Shoot Yourself in the Foot

Believing that your relationships give you enormous power is, for the most part, fallacious thinking, and can actually ill-inform you on what you and your company need to do. Here are some examples:

If it’s all about relationships, what impetus will your engineering team have to design better products?
If it’s all about relationships, why should your firm ever reduce prices or negotiate terms?
If it’s about relationships, why should operations need to worry about quality? Or delivery?

Here’s the point: Bragging about the customer relationships you have can simply provide unjustifiable cover for others in the organization to not execute their job as effectively as they should. Remember, it’s still a very competitive world out there.

One More Point: The Fallacy of the Rolodex of Relationships

More often than is advisable, a client will enthusiastically recruit a sales person based on the contacts that sales candidate has amassed during their illustrious sales career. Sales people treasure and protect to the death, their sales contacts and consider that list as a strategic personal asset. It becomes a key feature in the personal selling proposition they use in seeking a new job.

Rolodex provides a great tool for managing those. However, even the best list of Rolodex or CRM-managed contacts, can rarely, for the long term make up for business shortcomings in product, service, delivery, quality, competitiveness and value.

Let me illustrate. In 1970, General Motors had roughly a 50% share of the US auto market. That market share was supported by an incredibly, well-established national network of dealers and sales people. Everyone knew everyone.

Since 2000 General Motors had lost roughly 50% of that 50% share.

Here’s the Point: Relationships aren’t everything.

Recommendations:

As much as has been written in this blog about the fallacies and dangers of dependence on customer relationships, let me make a final few points.

You must continue to develop your business relationships
You must continue to nurture those relationships based on paying close attention to each of the key elements of the trust equation
You must not, for a moment, let the rest of your business team off the hook by bragging and convincing them they only need to depend on your ability to develop and maintain good customer relationships

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Click to learn more about standard and tailored QMP Sales Skills and Process Workshops or Contact Us at 503-318-2696 to discuss your sales and sales management challenges.

Common Sales Myth #5 – Closing Techniques are Effective

Posted on January 1, 2013March 13, 2014 by wadmin

Let’s start this discussion with a stipulation that all successful sales have to go through some sort of closing stage. Nothing happens until a customer or client agrees to pay your company for the delivery of a service or a product. So, in the strictest sense, I guess we can call that a “close”. We can also imagine that all commerce in the world would come to a screeching halt unless some kind of transaction closing happened.

So, good closing techniques are essential – right? And if that’s so why am I targeting closing techniques as a myth?

A Closing Process is Different than a Closing Technique

A “Closing Process” is likely to be mechanistic. Get the quantity and delivery dates correct, get the PO issued and confirm with the customer your ability to meet the delivery schedule. These days that process may be enabled by all sorts of mobile systems, and field inventory accessibility tools. That’s mechanistic closing.

“Closing Techniques” are something different all-together. Closing Techniques are many times designed to manipulate the emotions of the buyer, or to create a sense of urgency, guilt or fear, toward the end of triggering a commitment to buy. At one level, an example might be a car salesman saying something like, “Well, these models are going fast. In fact, there was a guy in here earlier that test drove and liked the exact car you just expressed an interest in. He said he was bringing his wife back this evening for a final decision.” Or, in a business-to-business environment, “We are just about at capacity and if you really need delivery in July, we need to get your order committed and on the schedule no later than end of this week.”

Well before you assume that closing techniques are cool, perhaps even having been indoctrinated by the training your own sales management required, consider the following information – then decide for yourself.

The Impact of being “Closed” by a “Closing Technique”

Neil Rackham in his book “SPIN Selling” reveals the results of 10 years of research done by the Huthwaite Center into high $-value sales success, analyzing 10,000 sales people and 35,000 sales calls in 27 countries. They studied 116 factors that might contribute to sales success.

The results of that study concluded that customers with which “Closing Techniques” were used (emotional, urgency or fear) were:

Less likely to buy
Less likely to re-buy
Less likely to be satisfied after the buy

Admittedly that is an extremely brief description of his work and its conclusions. But it is compelling – and I strongly recommend all sales managers read “SPIN Selling“. It may alter, for the better and forever, your thoughts about training your sales people to use “Assumptive” closes, the “Standing Room Only” close, the “Alternative” close, or any other trick closing technique.

The Huthwaite SPIN model offers an excellent, and more effective, sales process alternative. SPIN is an achronym, and stands for Situation, Problem, Implication and Need-Payoff. The SPIN selling process trains people how to use questions of each type to win a sale.

So, Why is So Much Emphasis Still Placed on the Training and Use of “Closing Techniques”?

Today, the pressure on Sales Managers to produce sales results is higher than it has been in years. Foreign and price-based competition, combined with a still iffy and sluggish economy is resulting in significant pressure on small-to-mid-sized firms. The result is that CEOs, Owners and Sales Managers believe that closing techniques will somehow move a sale forward more quickly. But, in my experience I find that they are, for the most part, ignorant of what the data from the Huthwaite study reveal – and ignorant of other more effective sales techniques. And, they may be pressed to find the time or money to embark upon such a change of direction and approach in mid-stride.

Customer and Client Collaboration Works Much Better

So rather than disenfranchising your sales prospects with slick closing techniques, consider a sales approach more like the Winter Olympics sport of curling. A good sales person is like the “sweeper” who, through patient and detailed questioning, problem solving and collaboration leads the customer to the best answer to help them achieve their goal.

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Common Sales Myth #6 – The Biggest Accounts are the Best

Posted on December 31, 2012March 20, 2014 by Jerry Vieira

Here is the last in the series of Six Common Sales Myths.

For small to mid-size businesses, the decision to commit resources to target a large account should considered carefully. The primary considerations are: “What are the implications of winning?” and “How, should we go about it?”

So let me provide you both sides of the story.

Why the Largest Accounts are NOT the Best Sales Targets

The Competition is the Highest: Sales managers and sales people almost universally drool over the thought of landing the big account. Some folks call them “Whales”. With these whales come visions of top line revenue waves carrying on their crests big commission checks and bonus trips to Bermuda for exceeding sales production quotas. The bad news is that every competitor’s salesperson is striving for that same, beach-front room in Bermuda.

It Reduces Your Negotiating Power: Have you ever been presented with 90-day or 120-day payment terms by your large customers? Have you been confronted by corporate edicts from your large customers to buy overseas, or forced to share your product cost models or had to make a pledge of cost-downs (targeted and contracted cost reductions delivered directly to the customer). All of these can be relentless.

You May Become Too Dependent on Them: Bankers, these days, have tightened their requirements for business loans. One of the things they look closely at is the vulnerability associated with one customer presenting too large a proportion of a firm’s business. Having a hefty chunk of business from one large customer may also make one complacent.

Under What Circumstances Can Large Clients be Good?

When You Are Selling a Unique Value Proposition That Is IP Protected: This greatly relieves the pricing pressure and competitive threats – but it is likely short-lived.

When you are adding desperately needed capacity to overheated market demand for your product/service commodity: When there are overall industry shortages of the product or service commodity you deliver, because of very high market demand for your customer’s products, those large “whales” swim a lot farther to find the krill they need to survive. They also become a lot less demanding. Again, this somewhat relieves the discomfort associated with working with large customer accounts – but heated up industry demand does not last forever.

When Your Large Customer is Enlightened: Enlightened means they have embraced the concept of true partnership – recognizing the need for mutual investment, mutual trust, mutual innovation and mutual ROI.

When Decision Making is De-centralized: De-centralized decision making increases the probability that you will find either: a) an enlightened decision maker in one or more of the myriad divisions of the “whale” or, b) divisions and circumstances to which you can deliver significant value from your company’s specific combination of value proposition and differentiation.

When They Spur You on to Innovation or Breakthroughs: The promise of a big payoff, with lots of business from a large customer, can spur creativity and product innovation. What it should not encourage is gambling. By gambling, I mean taking a long-shot that requires stretching beyond reason the laws of physics or the organization’s overall capabilities. Such gambling can quickly destabilize the financial safety net of the firm.

How to Eat a Whale

Yes, yes. No surprise. The answer is one bite at a time. But where you bite first is the real question. Here are some guidelines on selecting where your bite will be most productive, profitable and nourishing.

There are 6 basic strategies in war and business – 3 F’s and 3 D’s, and no, these F’s and D’s in no way reflect my 6^th grade report card. Here are the strategies, by name:

– Frontal

– Fragment

– Flank

– Defend

– Depart

– Develop

The subject of strategy is simply too large to cover in this blog post, so suffice it to say that 5,000 years of military history and 75 years of marketing science have demonstrated, unequivocally, that the most productive strategic combination from the list above is the combination of Fragmentation (segmenting) & Flanking (differentiation). History and research have also demonstrated that frontal assaults can lead to disaster even in the case of great initial success. Remember Napoleon in Russia, Lee at Gettysburg, the English at Gallipoli, the German army in Russia and the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War. Or, in business terms, think Texas Instruments’ frontal assault on the watch market, Raychem in fiber optics and IBM in PCs. All were frontal assaults by large, highly confident organizations with huge assets behind them. All failed miserably.

By Fragmentation we mean, finding a business segment or Division of the “whale” to which your value proposition provides disproportionate economic value compared to its cost. By Flank we mean identifying, matching, communicating and demonstrating your differentiated value to the fragmented business segment that gets the most value from it, in effect, multiplying your overall value proposition.

A Case in Point:

Long before I was a market strategy and sales consultant, I was involved in a business that sold factory automation software. The division was attempting to sell this software solution to some of the largest, multi-site, multi-divisional manufacturers in the United States. We were spurred on by the knowledge that every large manufacturer we spoke with had active, funded corporate programs to find solutions to the common manufacturing challenge extant in all their manufacturing business units.

Talking with these corporate types, our software team energetically began to design and add capabilities to our system to assure we could handle all of the needs they had identified.

Unbeknownst to us, a competitor had been making inroads with what we perceived as a vastly inferior, inconsequential, less complete offering. They were selling low level, simple solutions into the divisions where decisions did not require corporate “influence”. They were, in effect, fragmenting the account -taking lots of little bites of the whale. By the time we had developed our comprehensive solution, the low level competitive solution had penetrated so expansively, in so many fragments of the business, that retrofitting was out of the question.

This is just one example of how subversive fragmentation can be used to penetrate a large account – one small bite at a time.

The Take-Away:

Large accounts are not inherently good or bad sales targets. They are good or bad sales targets depending on:

the strategy used to penetrate them,
the “enlightened partnership nature” of their corporate procurement,
the centralized or decentralized nature of their decision making,
the strength of your IP and the economic value proposition it delivers, and
whether or not you are adding industry capacity to overheated market demand

That’s the long and short of it.

For more information regarding QMP’s Sales Process and Skills Improvement Workshop or Sales Improvement Consulting Services, call to 503.318.2696 or connect through our Contact Us page.

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