Let’s start with what many may agree with and make the comparison between good soldiering and top selling. Veterans Day in the USA, Armistice Day or Remembrance Day in other parts of the world, falls on November 11. It may be difficult to totally decide what makes a good soldier, but here a few items to consider:  

1.    They are on the front lines. Soldiers are on the front lines for their country. Salespeople are on the front line for their companies or themselves in the case of self-employment. Let’s recognize that soldiers may actually die when fighting for their country. Salespeople do not have to lay down their lives, just hold out their hearts.

2.    They get regular training. Soldiers get trained in many things including their warrior tasks. A top salesperson invests in training, coaching and other self-improvement. Like a soldier who isn’t trained going into battle, a salesperson that isn’t trained in selling, product and service understanding, and people skills, might as well stay safe in their office because they won’t be prepared.

3.    They maintain their equipment. A soldier is responsible for the care and ownership of equipment issued to them. Because top salespeople are not born, this means that the equipment salespeople gain must come through reading, training, or perhaps a bruised ego from an occasional lost sale, and mostly through having customers buy from them! A salesperson’s equipment to maintain and upgrade as needed is their attitude, belief system, character and behaviors.

 4.    Their profession is described with admirable words like courage and loyalty. Okay – this is really important to understand as this relates to selling. Because many of our own personal experiences as buyers are negative, we have underlying beliefs about the process of selling being manipulative, aggressive, pestering, shady and the list goes on. Soldiers believe the admirable words they hear and that drives their determination. Salespeople must focus on selling experiences that also are admirable. Think of the times when you know customers raved about your honesty, reliability, superior product, and were willing to go beyond what you said you would. You have to believe those words, like a soldier.

5.    They believe what they are fighting. Soldiers are always ready to deploy; we know that from hearing any one of them speak in media interviews. Salespeople must have just as strong a belief in what they sell and in themselves. Limiting beliefs, low self-confidence, procrastination, or getting caught in a sales slump can keep you from the very people who want what you have to offer. Why would a salesperson not fight to help their customer?

6.    They put service before self. Soldiers are on the front lines with a belief in something bigger than themselves. If salespeople what to put service before self, reflect on the true value of what your product or service does for the customer! Let go of what will happen for you with increased commissions, more awards and greater recognition by your peers. Keep the value, the benefit, of what your product and service can do for your customer above yourself. It will give you the strength you need when you want to procrastinate on the cold call or follow up or any other sales piece.

There is a United States National Salesperson Day – the first Friday of March that recognizes professional salespeople. There’s time in between Veterans Day and that holiday to think about and act on the similarity between the soldier and the salesperson. And why do so? If you want the results of good selling to be like the results of good soldiers, then actions are important. Certainly there is no absolute, no concrete quality of good soldiering.  There are, however, good soldiers and top salespeople.

What if as a salesperson you let your actions be guided by the only four words in the English language which end in ‘dous’: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous? Have you ever thought about a way, a process like this, to think bigger than you already do? It might just get you more sales more quickly.

Tremendous: Give your customers and prospects tremendous value. By one definition, tremendous means, “extraordinarily great in size, amount, or intensity.” Whatever your product or service, can it be greater in size, amount or intensity? Introverts can take their preference for building deep relationships; just use your customer’s response as a thermometer. Why not ask your customers and prospects if you are not certain? Ask and keep asking until you are able to clarify it.

Horrendous: How can you avoid being horrendous? The fear of losing out on a special offer or special price may not be denied as a psychological tactic to help people make a decision sooner. “Don’t miss this sale.” “Only 12 left.” They can work. Even better would be to eliminate a fearful risk that your prospect might have by use of a guarantee or a reminder of a warranty.

Stupendous. Doesn’t everyone who sells want a stupendous month? Or quarter? What do you have to do? First, get in the flow in however works for you. Decide what is stupendous for you. This year, more than ever you want to be perfectly clear about what stupendous is for you. The recession in the USA finally declared by the media in November after most knew we were in one, means that we likely won’t see a rebound until late 2009 or early 2010.

And hazardous. Avoid hazardous actions like lack of sales planning, lack of updating your sales skills and lack of follow up. With better planning you save time and energy; energy being a thing that introverts covet. With an update of sales skills you weather any economic crisis and outsell competitors every day; your competitors are not likely updating their skills. And follow-up is the one action that can be hazardous to 80% of your sales; statistically 80% of your sales happen between the 5th and 21st contact.

Use these only four words in the English language that end in ‘dous’ to help you plan your way to your biggest sales year ever. Give tremendous value, avoid the horrendous risk, decide what is stupendous for you and avoid hazardous actions.

Do you mind if I ask you something? How many years have you been in business?

OK thanks. Now in that time, how many serious recessions have you been through?

In that case here’s something to scare you a bit: Less than half of the business-to-business salespeople -just like you- who are selling today, have ever sold in a serious economic downturn.

Think about it. One of the down-sides of the longest ‘bull-market’ in history is that a whole selling generation has grown up without ever having experienced ’seriously hard times’. They have no experience which enables them cope effectively. Even for many of those of us who do remember a previous recession, the memory is now so foggy that it’s a mild discomfort rather that a shiny box of chromium- plated coping tools.

It gets worse though. The majority of middle level sales managers – and very often senior management as well – are seriously lacking experience when it comes to the vital job of leading their sales force through these very hard times. So, in that case, how DO you navigate successfully through the present, fragile, plateau-phase which is variously described as, “bottoming out”, “soft landing”, “economic heart-attack recovery” or whatever other term lets you avoid saying ‘Recession’ or even ‘Depression’ ?

As I travel the World training and advising business leaders, I see that most companies are implementing sales approaches that failed in the previous mild-recessions and are likely to have the same spectacular lack of success with this once-in-a-century slump.             The useless sales approaches can be put into four clearly defined groups:

1) Something will turn up

2) Knock on more doors

3) Cut the prices

4) Fiddle with the advertising

The first approach [Something will turn up] would be recognized by the 19th Century Author ‘Charles Dickens’ “Mr Micawber” who was eternally – and for no good reason- expecting ’something to turn up’. There are already reports that banks around the World are recruiting highly bonused executives as if they are expecting the ‘good-old days’ to return any time now. Governments from USA to Europe and Asia are warning that any return to ‘normality’ is going to be very drawn out. Indeed the current plateau-phase may last for several years. Not only that, but the ‘new normal’ when we get there, is going to be very different from anything that any of us has experienced before. Old style sales pitching (often called Death by Powerpoint in which the seller’s main objective is to give his/her canned presentation, then sit back and wait for the contract to emerge by osmosis) just doesn’t work when your customers are being much more careful with their money.

The second most popular strategic sales approach in Hard Times is: ‘knock on more doors’. Work harder: more calls, more demos, more proposals. I recall this strategy being implemented by my first sales company for whom I sold copying machines in London in the early 1970’s. “Go down each street on your sales territory rubbing your elbow against the wall. Every time your elbow ‘goes in’ it will probably be a door. Enter that door- who knows what customers may be lurking behind it !” The trouble with this ‘numbers game’ strategy – “the more doors you knock on the more orders you get”- is that the vast majority of today’s sales mangers truly believe that this is the reality of the sales profession. They are wrong. The net result of ‘knock on all doors and cold-call all every name’, is that most of the time the seller is talking to people who are simply not and never will be clients. The only outcome is shorter and shorter sales meetings, constant rejection and a thoroughly disillusioned sales team. There are much more effective and efficient ways to find customers in the 21st Century. Even if it worked in the good times it most certainly is not working now!

Price cutting is the third most popular approach. Yet there is no evidence that cutting your prices increases your business. If you are truly stuck in the price sensitive /heavy discounting groove – which most of my customers seem to believe they are- you are probably going to go out of business soon.

For example if your selling price is $100 per unit and 80% of that price consists of fixed and variable costs then offering your customers a 10% discount on that price is effectively slashing you 20% profit margin by 50%. If your business can get by on half pay for another two years I may need lessons from you in creative accountancy. The truth is that your customers will endeavor to get price reductions because, as all successful sellers will tell you, ‘price is always an objection’. But your customers WILL pay your full price provided you sell correctly and remain in-tune with the sales realities of a recession.

Despite what I’ve heard recently at a couple of guru-led ‘rah-rah’ sales seminars in London it is highly unlikely that you will be able to, “Double Your Sales in 3 Months!” whatever they tell you. Academic analysis shows that, for most companies, the ‘buying cycle’, in hard times, takes up to 40% longer than normal because of things like budget freezes and more approval and purchase justification steps. And there is not a lot that your salespeople can do to shorten this. Any attempt by your company to pressure or speed up the decision, will upset your customers and make you seem over anxious simultaneously it will bring in in very little extra in terms of sales.

And finally there’s ‘Fiddle with the Advertising’. Advertising budgets, like training budgets, are the easy ones to cut. Many companies who were regular advertisers cut back on it violently during a recession. The problem with that is their potential customers then believe -not seeing them about any more- that they have gone out of business. Other companies believe the opposite; they think that ‘advertising’ could be the way to find more customers and generate more enquiries. So they suddenly start advertising. Well, as the founder of Bloomingdale’s store in New York said over 80 years ago: “Half of all the money I spend on advertising is wasted…the problem is I don’t know which half”. So if you think that increased advertising is the right way, do it very carefully. The strong likelihood is that you are about to lose much more money than you make. If you do generate a lot more enquiries most of them are likely to be from people and companies who are simply not prospects for your product or service; more disillusionment on the way.

OK now I’ve worried you sufficiently …so what’s the most effective ‘hard times’ approach?

The first step towards ‘Hard Times’ success is that you must focus your selling activities where it counts. During the hard times experienced in the late 80″s I was living in the USA. While I was there a local research team carried out some work which looked at the differentiators between successful and not so successful sellers working in tough competitive high-end business-to-business markets. They discovered that the not-so-successful sellers, focused on trying to open more accounts during a recession. They went after every suspect opportunity, however small. They created a lot of busy-work but they were largely ineffective. The average value of their sales dropped and their overall sales volume dropped as well. By contrast, the successful sellers concentrated their activities on their best opportunities. They spent much more time in developing their call and account strategy rather than rushing about making more and more calls.

Quietly Confident

During the research mentioned above, they also interviewed customers to find why they bought from a particular seller. From the customer point of view ’seller confidence’ was frequently mentioned as the decisive factor. So the next question is, ‘Why should confidence be so important in a recession?’ As discussed earlier in this article there is much sales folklore that says that ‘in tough times your customers will buy on price alone’. There is no evidence to support this. The facts show that in hard times, customers buy safety and reduction in risk more than anything else. In fact the American research showed that customers actually paid an average of 12% more for equivalent equipment from market leaders and suppliers they trusted, than they did from cheaper suppliers. Why is this? There were two primary answers. Firstly, in difficult markets, decisions are generally taken by committees and lower risk solutions are generally favored when groups make decisions. And generally it was found that, the lower risk solution carried a higher price tag. Secondly, buyers were very aware that their decisions (and jobs!) would come under more scrutiny and they would be blamed -personally- if equipment didn’t come up to scratch.

So how can all this be summarized for your immediate success?

First You must concentrate on your best opportunities; don’t go chasing every ’suspect’ just because he shows some little sign of life. Spend much more time and effort on planning and preparation. Be confident. Ask more questions about problems you know your product can solve. Questions about problems are a top seller’s friends! Sell the safety and reliability of your products and services and don’t get stuck in the mental groove that you have to compete on price alone.

If you don’t do this I WILL steal your customers away from you and they will pay me more.

Yes I will.

Oh and read my best selling books ( http://www.skills-for-business.co.uk/ ) and discover how I do it…then copy me

Bob Etherington

www.bobetheringtongroup.com

“Now we’re talking business”