Loved a recent post by the self-proclaimed “A Sales Guy” talking about the fact that when a sale focuses on price, it’s because the relative value surrounding the price has no context.
Take, for example, two salmon fillets, one $6.00 a pound, one $9.50. Same size, same weight. All things being equal, you take the cheaper of the two, right?
But what if the $6.00 / pound fillet was raised in a fish farm with 10,000 other salmon and artificially enhanced—and the $9.50 / pound fillet is freshly caught, true Alaska Salmon?
The context controls the value here . . . .
Inside Sales Research – Departments Keep Growing Because It’s a Win-Win-Win
5 October 2010 — Steve Watts
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There’s been a lot of talk ever since our 2009 InfoUSA study revealed that the inside sales industry was projected to grow at 7.5% per year over the next five years, while outside sales industry jobs is stagnating at 0.5% growth.
bNet Business’s Geoffrey James even sounded off on the topic, questioning the reasons behind the slow obsolescence of outside sales when the sales process and buying cycle have become even more “touch” intensive and complex.
In my mind, however, the trend is significant, but hardly inexplicable. The Web has made one of sales’ primary functions—distributing information to prospects—a much different activity than before. Even for complex purchases, there’s a wealth of information about available products and services, and the average prospect has significantly less of a need to rely on a sales rep to provide actionable information . . . .
Sales and Marketing Strategy – Creating “Three-Way” Sales Processes
27 September 2010 — Steve Watts
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Last week I overheard a conversation between one of our client implementation consultants and a former prospect who had just come on as a customer. One of the first things our implementation team does with a new client is hold a Business Plan Review, designed to identify a client’s key processes and value areas.
In a nutshell, the question this new client asked was, “How does defining all of these process steps directly benefit my sales reps?”
As much as we tout the benefits and productivity of a good sales process linked to a CRM software system, the short answer to this question is, “Sometimes they don’t.” . . . .
One of the most common themes of the Sales 2.0 Movement has been the need for the upcoming generation of corporate sales people to be a value-add, not a value-drain to their prospects. Several weeks ago I quoted Selling Power‘s Gerhardt Gschwandtner about how technology isn’t just shifting the power structure into the prospect’s hands, it’s “displacing” the existing selling process entirely.
And a great blog article today by marketing experts Brains on Fire brought some perspective on one of the ways a sales rep can move in the direction of being a value-add instead of the alternative:
In the blog article, author Robbin Phillips demonstrates the concept with a story about a hotel, a round of golf, and a missing sweatshirt . . . .
I had a conversation last week with one of our support reps that demonstrated with perfect clarity what I call the “Rule Zero Fallacy.”
If you’re a board game or card game enthusiast, inevitably you’ve run across a rule in a game somewhere that you simply didn’t like. And whether it’s pinochle, Rook, Ticket to Ride, or the Settlers of Catan, players usually create a replacement rule, or modify it to better suit their tastes. In some circles this type of “house ruling” is called “Rule Zero,” meaning, “No rule is ever broken because I can fix it.”
The problem is, “Rule Zero” is a fallacy, a contradiction in terms. The fact that you were willing to take the time to fix it yourself (and are generally satisfied with the result) doesn’t change the fact that it needed fixing to begin with.
But back to our real point:
A support agent came to me last week about a client who wanted to access a feature in one of our systems. Due to an admittedly poor interface design for this particular feature, getting access to it was problematic. It took navigating through a number of screens, hunting through the right links, and inputting some user-defined data . . . .
Inside Sales Tip: Treat a Sales Appointment Like a Corporate Meeting, Part I
19 August 2010 — Steve Watts
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Author Michael Lopp, blogging under the pseudonym “Rands in Repose,” presented an outstanding treatise this morning on how to run a meeting that brilliantly captures the essence of your average corporate pow-wow—but also contains some striking parallels to sales appointment setting.
What is a “sales cycle” after all, if nothing more than a series of “mini-meetings,” each designed to progress the sale and provide value for both parties?
Not every process works the same obviously, but as Lopp states, a good corporate meeting should decide whether it is about alignment or creation, should have both an agenda and a referee, and should avoid creating a culture of “having meetings for having a meeting’s sake.”
And all three ideas are eminently applicable to sales appointments . . . .
Sales 2.0, Hollywood, and the Death of the (Outside) Salesman
5 August 2010 — Steve Watts
3 Comments
Yesterday I talked a little bit about the coming Inside Sales revolution, and the impact it will ultimately have on sales organizations, sales culture, and the companies that rely on them.
And I realized that there’s a much larger comparison that can be made between Hollywood and the current sales industry.
Like many sales managers, Hollywood likes to think of itself as “innovative,” “pushing boundaries” and “creating something” where there wasn’t something there before.
And like many “old guard” sales managers, Hollywood is deluding itself . . . .
“If all a sales person can do is talk about the product, then for sure their job is at risk to technology . . . . The role of sales is going to have to evolve to [provide] a value-add, or otherwise they may well not be needed in the process.”
—Jim Dickie, CSO Insights.
A fascinating article by Selling Power’s Gerhard Gschwandtner recently explored the growing tension between technology and sales performance.
“We have entered the ‘displacement economy,’” he states, “where new technology drives out the old ways of doing business . . . The reality is that some companies are already leveraging technology, not to save time, but to save the high expense of keeping salespeople on the payroll.”
In other words, “Old guard” sales has a problem on its hands . . . .
Sales 2.0 – Psychology, Self-Selection, and “Getting There First”
19 July 2010 — Steve Watts
2 Comments
I’ve read, heard, and studied lots of talk about the psychology of sales and marketing.
What makes buyers tick.
How decisions are made.
Prestige, Pleasure, Pain (relief), Profits, or Preservation.
But I was reminded today of another key psychological aspect of sales:
Get there first.
“Getting there first” is a simple rule that Paul Castain’s Sales Playbook talks about.
Want to be a budding (sales) rock star?
Get there first.
When it comes to lead management and generating new sales, showing up last is often worse than not showing up at all . . . .
Don’t Toss Your Leads and Prospects Out the CRM / Service Back Door
13 July 2010 — Steve Watts
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Take a look at this collection of “No Longer With Us” retail stores. I don’t know about you, but I found it highly fascinating.
It’s amazing how many previously successful, nationally-recognized store brands reside on this list.
I bring this up because in a time and age long past, I worked as a humble retail clerk for a major electronics and computer “Big Box” company that is now long gone. I could tell you which one, but there’s really no point; 90 percent of the electronics “Big Box” stores from the ’90s and early 2000s went the way of Britney Spears’ relevance to the music industry for exactly the same reasons.
Each of the now-defunct, “major player” Big Box Electronic stores—Circuit City, CompUSA, Computer City, Incredible Universe, Ultimate Electronic—died because they failed to recognize the reality . . . .
