One of the most common challenges for sales leaders who are working to drive growth in today’s complex, competitive (and often shrinking) markets, is helping (or forcing) their salespeople to evolve from product presenters to true consultative sellers. It is easy to say “we need to be more consultative in our sales approach,” but driving genuine change in a salesperson who has deeply ingrained behavior patterns is often very difficult. Doing the same thing for an entire sales team is even more difficult.

Here are the main reasons why most product-driven salespeople resist the transition to a consultative selling approach:

• What they’re doing now works just fine. At least for the salespeople. If a salesperson is making a good living just pushing product, why bother changing? “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is their perspective. This attitude often results from compensation models that are disconnected from the financial success of the company. If a company is dependent upon sales growth from new accounts, but sales compensation treats all sales volume equally (from existing accounts and new accounts) and salespeople are achieving adequate incomes without new account growth, there really is no incentive for them to do the extra hard work of gaining new business.
• Genuine consultative selling is harder. It takes more time and requires greater skill. A consultative salesperson has to develop the ability to ask both tactical and strategic questions, listen actively, ask follow-up questions to drill down deeper, think intensely during every conversation to help the customer clarify needs and related challenges. Consultative sales proposals are more challenging to write, because you can’t just copy and paste the prospect’s contact information onto a previous proposal – it has to be customized based upon the prospect’s unique needs and challenges. For many salespeople, all of this extra effort feels like a waste of time.
• Consultative takes more time. Often a consultative sales approach involves multiple conversations, along with “homework” for the salesperson after the call, to determine the best next step for the prospective customer. Because the consultation process is designed to bring to the surface customer needs which may not have been readily apparent (even to customer) in the first place, it is typically more time intensive that simply conducting a product walk-through.
• You have to “earn the right” to sell in a consultative manner. Imagine that you conducted a survey of your customers and prospects, asking them what sort of sales approach they would prefer, and the two options were:

1. Consultative conversations with a salesperson, to identify my needs and determine the best solutions for me.
2. Just send me the information by email and let me decide.

Do you have any doubt that most of your customers would choose the second option? Many of them do not really enjoy the time they spend with salespeople, they hate the potential for pressure, and they feel perfectly capable of making their own good decisions without “interference” from a salesperson. Consultative selling can often bring to the surface needs and issues that the customer was not aware of, but it is precisely this lack of current awareness or perceived need, that prevent the customer from engaging in the necessary dialogue.

If a salesperson is going to engage in consultative conversations with these customers, he or she is going to have to “earn the right” to have those conversations. And this is an additional skills set that most salespeople do not have.

Consultative selling sometimes reveals hard truths. Getting to know the customer’s needs at a deeper level can be painful for a salesperson. When salespeople begin to have conversations with customers about the issues and challenges which are most relevant to them, it is not uncommon to discover that many of the salesperson’s products or services are not particularly relevant to the customer. This fact may have been masked for many years, because the products and services themselves were not developed with a customer-centric consultative approach. Not surprisingly, many organizations who lack a consultative selling mindset also lack a consultative product development process.

So why bother? Is it really worth the effort to drive your sales team to transition from product-centric presentations to solution-oriented consultations? If the product-centric approach is achieving the desired sales results, then obviously there is no need to change. But if you are struggling to drive sales growth, consultative selling has the potential to:

1. Open new accounts that have previously been unresponsive to your product-centric approach.
2. Drive greater sales volume in your existing accounts by surfacing new needs and problems to solve.
3. Create differentiation that will be difficult for your competitors to emulate.
4. Improve profitability by minimizing product pricing erosion.

If you decide to take the plunge and drive the consultative transition with your sales team, there are a number of things you can do to increase your likelihood of success. These include:

• Align sales compensation with the specific new behaviors you are driving.
• Completely re-train your sales managers first. Their entire sales coaching approach will have to change, and you want them to be prepared to reinforce the consultative approach as you roll it out to your sales team.
• Begin with a detailed assessment of current skills, habits and attitudes of your sales team. You want to have an accurate picture of every individual salesperson’s current skills set, plus you want to be able to view the skills of the entire team as a whole. This will help you determine where to concentrate your training and coaching efforts. There are many good selling skills assessments available, including the Professional Selling SkillMap™ which is an online assessment. (click the link above for more details)
• Develop a customized Consultative Selling Model that is unique to your business, based upon the practical realities your salespeople are facing. It is OK to start with one of the standard consultative selling programs (Miller Heiman, PSS, Real Selling, etc.) but before this is deployed to your sales team it should be fully customized to reflect their real world selling situations.

Shameless plug: Developing a customized selling model for your organization does not have to be expensive or time consuming. The Real Selling program was developed with an “open architecture” that allows for quick and cost-effective customization.

• Create “real world” audio and video examples of sales interactions using your customized consultative selling model. While this can be time consuming and (sometimes) expensive, it is one of the most powerful training tools you can have. Especially when you are driving new sales behaviors, being able to show salespeople exactly what those behaviors look like in action will save you months of training and coaching time.
• Live workshops must include extensive role playing even though salespeople hate it. Only through role playing can you give them an opportunity to fail in a safe environment, get immediate feedback, then practice again and again until the skills are mastered.
• Deploy pre-learning and post-training reinforcement using a broad range of media. Remember, you are trying to drive a significant behavioral change. So don’t assume that one workshop is going to produce this massive change. Prior to the workshop, provide your salespeople with significant pre-learning resources so they know exactly what to expect coming in. And after the workshop, deploy reinforcement training through as many media as possible: e-learning, podcasting, m-learning (via mobile phones), audio CD’s, video DvD’s, etc.
• Provide sales managers with coaching forms and tools to reinforce the new approach.
• Monitor and measure specific metrics tied to the new approach. These will be different for every organization, based upon their unique selling model and selling cycle.
• Conduct a post-training assessment similar to the initial assessment in order to quantify the specific behavior changes and identify individuals who need further training/coaching.

This may seem like a lot of effort. But the hard truth is that without a comprehensive training and reinforcement plan, your likelihood for success in driving this transition is pretty low. For most salespeople, this is a very difficult transition. Many sales leaders have attempted to drive a consultative selling transition by running their people through a workshop, or delivering a rousing speech at a national sales meeting, or badgering sales managers to coach their people to become more consultative. Most of those efforts fail, not because the strategy isn’t right – but because the training execution isn’t deep enough.

When Your Prospects are in “Survival Mode,” Sell Survival Gear

At its core every sale is driven by a customer need. When times are tough, be sure to adjust your value proposition to focus on the core “survival” needs of your prospective customers. We call these the Primal Buying Motives.

When the economy is booming and prospects are financially comfortable, their purchase decisions can be driven by a variety of factors including:

• Convenience
• Amusement
• Desire to fit in with the crowd
• Desire to stand out from the crowd
• Comfort
• Pride of ownership
• Satisfaction of emotion (love, anger, stress, joy, etc.)

We call these secondary buying motives, although they are sometimes the true driver of the buying decision. But when times are tough, the Primary Buying Motives take over as the exclusive driver of most significant purchase decisions. These include:

• Desire for gain (usually financial)
• Fear of loss (again, usually financial)
• Security and protection
• Pride of ownership (ego satisfaction)

Primal Buying Motives are emotional – and the buying DECISION is justified by logic. Often more than one Primal Buying Motive may apply to the same buying decision.  It is extremely important that you uncover these underlying buying motives because the prospect in all likelihood will not easily volunteer this information. They are sometimes only vaguely aware of their Primal Buying Motives themselves.

By opening a sales call with BENEFITS that address as many Primary Buying Motives as possible, you can gauge which of them provoke your prospects’ strongest responses. Then of course you will focus your conversations on the most relevant issues related to the individual’s Primal Buying Motives.

For example, suppose during an initial prospecting call you open by describing the benefits of your product or service that appeal to comfort and convenience, and  it is clear that you have hit on a hot button for the prospect. This tells you to keep returning to that motive.  However, more than one Primal Buying Motive may apply, and the motive you have not yet uncovered may turn out to be the most important of all. So continue to present benefits and ask questions designed to uncover ALL of the prospect’s Primal Buying Motives.

Uncover the other buying motives by asking good, open-ended questions to gather additional reactions. For example, suppose you have already discovered that profit – desire for gain – is extremely important to your prospect. You can start exploring other areas by asking questions like: “How would your organization feel if you were to solve the problem by …?” This tells you whether being a “hero” is important to this person.

Asking further questions to determine the prospects NEED for your product or service is fairly straightforward, but you do not want to make the common mistake of asking overly direct questions. At this point the prospect isn’t usually highly motivated to give you the information you need to sell them, so asking for that information needs to be done subtly and graciously with carefully crafted questions.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way.”

— Charles Dickens

Without question, most salespeople recognize they are now experiencing “the worst of times,” but with the right strategy, skills and effort, this can also be “the best of times.” 

A chance conversation with a sales representative for a medical equipment manufacturer helped me gain a deeper understanding of the frustrations that many salespeople, especially business-to-business salespeople, are facing at this moment in a very tough economic environment. I didn’t take notes, but the conversation went something like this:

“How’s business?” I asked.

“Non existent,” he replied.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean no one is buying anything. Everyone’s budgets have been frozen or cut. Purchase orders are being cancelled. And I’m lucky if I can even get a face-to-face. No one wants to talk to a salesman right now, except maybe to re-negotiate or cancel a contract. That’s what I mean by ‘non-existent.’ There is absolutely no business to be had.”

Now, over the course of a plus-20-year career coaching and training salespeople, I’ve heard versions of this lament hundreds and hundreds of times. And to be frank, most of the time it was simply a case of the salesperson not having the skills, knowledge or expertise to sell in a particularly challenging situation. And my job was to help them acquire the needed competency. Or occasionally to help them find a new (non-selling) career if they weren’t able to develop new capabilities.

So I am naturally skeptical when I hear a salesperson say “There is no business to be had,” but I also know we are facing one of the toughest business environments ever, perhaps the greatest economic downturn of our lives.

A week later I was having another conversation with a salesperson whose market is among the hardest hit – residential real estate – yet surprisingly, she is having a pretty good year. Naturally I was interested to learn what she was doing to drive sales growth, and it turned out that she had a very specific strategy. She isn’t comfortable with me sharing many of the details (she called this her “secret sauce”) but the important point here is that she didn’t just assume that a tight economy had to result in a financial downturn for her personally.

She decided to out-think, out-strategize, and out-sell her competition. And that is exactly what she is doing. My conversation with her prompted me to reach out to hundreds of salespeople in a variety of markets and industries, many of whom I have been involved in training or coaching over the years. What I was looking for were stories and specific examples of salespeople who were managing to “sell up” while the economy is drifting downward.

Of course the truth is that the majority of salespeople I spoke with are having a very tough time. And among the few who are experiencing good sales growth, many of those are not actually driving the growth – they are either benefiting from a unique product niche or some other business strategy that does not really involve them.

But I did manage to find a number of salespeople who were truly driving sales growth upstream, against a harsh economic back current. And I began capturing their stories in a blog, which you can access at www.blog.sellupinadowneconomy.com

I’ve been gathering stories and posting them to this blog for more than six months now, and I have become convinced that any salesperson, in any market, can drive sales growth. Even in the very toughest economic times, it is possible to make it happen. Of course it does mean that you have to be more creative, innovative, and aggressive in your sales approach.

I’ve seen that most salespeople try the “work harder” approach, but while working harder may be part of the answer, it isn’t the most important part. I encourage you to read the blog and maybe even post your own success stories.

Do Sales Managers Add Value?

A recent survey of more than 3000 salespeople reveals that the majority of sales managers are not driving business growth, or any other critical business objectives.

You may recall Shakespeare’s quote from Henry VI: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” which was of course a somewhat harsh approach to the problem. And of course I am not actually recommending that we kill all sales managers. But I do have serious doubts about the actual business contribution of many sales managers. They tend to be very well compensated, and many were highly productive as salespeople, but how do you truly measure the ROI of your sales management?

You may say that sales results will prove a sales manager’s worth (or lack thereof) but how do you assess the manager’s real contribution to those results. If your entire sales management team vanished one morning, would your sales volume decline significantly? Maybe…or maybe not.

Please understand that this has nothing to do with my personal feelings or opinions about sales managers. I have many good friends who are sales managers and I truly respect the work they do. However, there is significant evidence that in many cases, sales managers are not driving sales growth or adding other tangible value for their businesses.

Frontline Learning conducted a survey of more than 3000 salespeople in a broad range of markets and industries. The survey results were both interesting and troubling:

We are committed to providing training resources that produce practical, proven increases in employee productivity and morale. That’s why every product is researched, validated and field-tested before publication.

• 56% of salespeople reported that their direct manager adds “little value” or “no value” in helping them achieve their sales objectives.
• 62% of salespeople do not provide their sales manager with accurate information regarding prospects and sales call results.
• 58% consider their direct sales manager either a “necessary evil” or a “shameless waste of resources.”

Whether or not these perspectives are valid and objective, just the fact that salespeople have these opinions is problematic. Even if you have a highly competent, motivated and hard working sales manager, how is he or she supposed to be effective when dealing with a sales force that has such a low opinion of sales managers? And, even more disconcerting, what if the salespeople are right?

What if We Just Get Rid of Them?

In 2005 a US manufacturer of industrial equipment decided to dramatically scale back the ranks of their sales management team. They had determined that the sales management function have evolved into essentially a data reporting position, with regional sales managers delivering sales data every week, also providing interpretation and context for the results (good or bad). Sales Managers for this company also handled customer problems and complaints that came to them via the sales representatives. In terms of actual sales planning, coaching and training, these activities were minimal or non-existent.

The manufacturer developed an online system to automate the sales reporting function, and captured the interpretation/context directly from sales representatives, so the need for “on the ground” field sales management had diminished significantly.

The company’s sales force of 400 field sales representatives went from 30 regional sales managers to 10. And those 10 were focused on the geographic areas with the most growth potential.

Interestingly, the manufacturer so no negative impact on their sales results. Even a year later, there was no discernable negative impact. The 10 remaining sales managers received significant training and development support to help them transition to the role of on-the-ground sales coach. These managers were eventually able to drive a significant increase in sales volume from these high potential territories.

Here is a summary of the lessons this company learned from their experience:

• Determine where you have genuine growth potential, and where you need to focus primarily on maintaining the business. Your sales management model should be different for areas with different growth potential.
• For areas where you are primarily focused on maintaining the business, use technology and systems to collect data, not people. You may still deploy “sales managers” but they are really “sales maintenance managers” and should be compensated differently (less) than your sales growth managers.
• Clearly define the role of your growth-driving sales managers. It is not enough to tell them they need to be “in the field” X number of days a week. The specific coaching and sales planning activities need to be detailed.

For more details on specific activities for growth-driving sales managers, see Frontline Learning’s REAL Coaching program. It is a detailed, specific process designed to help sales managers add real value to the selling cycle.

Do you have a blind spot? How would you know if you did?

It is not uncommon for people to close their eyes to the parts of themselves they don’t want to see. Many of us find it difficult to own up to our flaws. We can naturally view these parts of ourselves as negative or bad. They don’t fit the positive self-image we like to entertain. Yet these negative or problematic aspects are often obvious to others, even if we think we are hiding them effectively.

Ultimately, there are only two ways to deal with blind spots: find out what they are, or avoid finding out. Unfortunately, both approaches are problematic.

If we try to find out from others, few people will be candid because of the fear of injuring our self-esteem and losing our friendship. The daring person who honestly tells it like it is might, in fact, lose our friendship, at least temporarily. And unless we know how to change, the sting of the negative information we get about ourselves might erode our self-esteem without contributing to our growth. Alternatively, that daring person might share feedback perceptions polluted by the his or her own defensiveness, which means we can never be absolutely certain of the reliability of the information.

If we take the path of least resistance (and “lesser courage”) and avoid finding out what our blind spots are, we are definitely in the majority. Most people rationalize known problems, blinding themselves to the extent of harm they cause, or else totally block out self-awareness in some ways in order to feel great about themselves so they can “have a nice day.” But at what price? Professionally and personally, who pays for a person’s disowned negativity? The people closest to that person, especially those with less power.

Socially, we have to either work around each other’s negative behaviors or confront each other with the problems they cause. When we work around each other, we become enablers, giving people with the biggest problems much more power over us than they really deserve. We end up taking care of problem people rather than accomplishing our own goals. Confronting behavior problems is the job of managers, and good managers are artful in their ability to facilitate change and growth in subordinates through confrontational finesse. But what happens when it’s the manager who avoids honest self-examination? What subordinate will step out to confront a manager when the manager could easily retaliate by “firing the messenger”?

Written feedback, gathered confidentially from a number of subordinates, peers, or customers provides more reliable results than the feedback of any one individual. In addition, subordinates and customers often perceive performance gaps that are missed by managers since it is the subordinates or customers who are closest to the individual’s job behaviors and are most affected by their blind spots.

For many training professionals the term “blended learning” simply means combining live workshops with e-learning before and/or after the event to drive deeper understanding and more lasting skill development. But the term can also refer to a much more comprehensive approach to adult learning; blending assessments, e-learning, audio podcasts, live workshops, video reinforcement and social media into a deep, substantive learning initiative designed to change behaviors and shift mindsets.

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We work to incorporate a wide variety of learning media into every training effort. This Blended Learning approach is customized for every situation, but often includes E-learning, audio- and video-based media, onsite workshops and reinforcement/coaching tools.

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