Rick Page - Make Winning a Habit [с таблицами]

• Название: Make Winning a Habit [с таблицами]
• Автор: Rick Page
• Жанр: Маркетинг, PR, реклама

A master of the complex sale and a bestselling author, Rick Page is also one of the most experienced sales consultants and trainers in the world. Make Winning A Habit defines the gap between what companies know to do and how they consistently perform.

Page clearly identifies five “Ts” of transformation: Talent, Technique, Teamwork, Technology and Trust. These five elements, when fully developed and integrated into the sales and marketing organization, begin to create the habit of winning over customers in every industry. Stories of successes-and failures-from members of prominent companies help you apply the five “Ts” to your company's culture, and point the way to more effective plans for motivating employees, building and coaching winning teams, and improving hiring processes.

Then, with the use of Page's assessment scorecard, you can compare your company with some of the strategies and practices of the best sales forces in the world. Designed to gauge your organization's effectiveness and further develop breakthrough sales growth, this scorecard highlights your strengths and weaknesses, helping you bridge the gap between where you are and where you need to be.

You'll also learn about:

The “Deadly Dozen” (pains sales managers feel today) and how they can kill business

A ten-point process for identifying and hiring nothing less than “A” players

The 8 “ates” of managing strategic accounts and how they will maximize revenue and elevate relationships

How to identify and correct the six most common areas of poor individual sales performance

With Make Winning A Habit, you'll discover the obstacles between you and the consistent sales performance you can achieve-and find the tools to not only make success a habit, but one that will keep growing with your business.

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By the time we got to the presentation, most of the deals had already been decided (as they are now). We had friends in the audience, we knew their terminology, we knew their strategic issues, and we had planted subtle traps to get the competition reacting to us rather than vice versa.

We began to get inside their competitive loop much earlier, and our presentations were more focused on their needs and motivators rather than on our features. In addition, we qualified out of bad deals earlier.

Listen first; talk second — no matter if it’s a one-hour call or an entire-day demo.

This is especially a problem when selling a complex product or solution. There may be over 100 reasons why someone might buy from you, but they are really only looking for five or so. Which five? Or if they’re only looking for five or six capabilities of your product and you come in talking about 105, not only will you bore them, but you will appear uncaring about their problem. You also will look too complex. This sets you up for commoditization because they see a lot of things in your product that they don’t need and don’t think they should pay for.

Consultative selling begins to build rapport because you are focused on their issues rather than on your capabilities.

One of our clients tells a story of a sales call early in his career. He sat down with the executive and began to lay out a “partnership” between his organization and the client’s. The executive stopped him, midsentence, and retrieved a two-inch stack of business cards from his desk.

“This is a stack of cards from all the different salespeople from all the different divisions of your company who have come to see me in the last two years. I never see the same person twice. When you have called on me for a year and know more about my business than I do, then you can talk to me about being your partner. Until then, you’re the vendor and I’m the customer.”

After you build rapport, which moves the client to an open state of mind, you can begin building preference.

Growing from rapport to preference to trust takes time. This means that salespeople need to stay on the same accounts long enough to become a source of trust. Every time we churn accounts, we set the registers back to zero. A client relationship management (CRM) system might give you continuity of information, but that’s not the same as continuity of a relationship. Trust between people builds over time.

From Rapport to Preference — There Are Two Roads

Building preference is achieved through one of two traditional routes: You either (1) link your solution to your client’s pains or gains or (2) build preference through influences and relationships. Preferably, you do both. Most of the earlier selling methodologies address one or the other (see Figure 8–1).

Consultative selling begins to build rapport because you are focused on your client’s issues rather than on your capabilities.

It is important to remember personality types when choosing which of the pillars of trust to build on first. When building preference, not only must you link to solving your client’s business problems, but you also have to differentiate why you can do it better — and you need to do it in a professional manner.

Competitive selling isn’t negative selling unless it’s done incorrectly. If you are too heavy-handed too early in your differentiation or too negative, you can come across as defensive and unprofessional. However, if you don’t find ways to show why you’re better, the client might buy the wrong solution for all the wrong reasons. You could fail to serve your client by not being aggressive enough.

How fast you can approach competitive differentiation depends on your relationship with the individual buyer in the particular country or culture that you are in. In the United States, we’ve had competitive advertising on television for over 20 years. In some countries, however, it’s illegal to even mention your competitor. However, there are ways to differentiate yourself without ever mentioning the competitor’s name. For example, you can suggest that the client look for a specific capability from all the vendors or ask the same question of everyone including you.

The Differences in Differentiators

Differentiators fall into several categories. There are unique differentiators, which are a capability, functionality, or service that you have but that your competitors simply don’t offer. Unique differentiators that solve strategic problems for powerful buyers are a salesperson’s nirvana. If you ever get in this position, never discount the deal.

If you don’t find ways to show that you’re better, the client may buy the wrong solution for all the wrong reasons. You could fail to serve your client by not being aggressive enough.

Some differentiators are relative differentiators. You do it, but so does the competition. In this case, you have to show how you do it faster, better, cheaper, at lower risk, or with more experienced, dependable people than the competition. The consulting industry is full of relative differentiators. There is almost nothing a big consulting firm cannot do with enough time and money. Differentiation there comes from other sources, such as limiting risk, sharing risk, industry focus, qualifications of personnel, or actually meeting and bonding with the people who will be handling your project.

Unique differentiators that solve strategic problems for powerful buyers are a salesperson’s nirvana. If you ever get in this position, never discount the deal.

Some differentiators are motivators, and others are only satisfiers. For a capability to be a motivator, it must present significant political gain, recognition, glory, or lower risk.

I remember hearing one salesperson proclaiming the differentiating advantage of her user groups. Oh, wow. This is a compelling value proposition? I don’t think anyone ever chose a vendor because he or she had better user groups. This is an example of a satisfier. If you didn’t have one, it might hurt you, but having one just satisfies an item on a checklist. The higher up the food chain of value toward strategic, financial, political, and cultural benefits that your solution can provide, the better chance you have of motivating that buyer into action.

Products to Solutions — Want My Trust? Solve My Problem — Want Big Bucks? Solve Big Problems

Alignment and listening are the gateways to rapport. Linking solutions to problems and differentiation begins to build preference. To gain trust, however, you must solve your client’s problem. And to move from personal trust to organizational trust, you have to solve bigger, more strategic problems.

“Moving from products to solutions” has been in the sales and marketing vocabulary for over 40 years, but I’m not sure that the average salesperson knows exactly what it means or what his or her contribution is to this process.

It is helpful to start at the origin of the idea. In the early 1980s, Theodore Levitt, in his book, The Marketing Imagination, addressed the subject of differentiation beyond the product. Recapping an earlier Harvard Business Review article, he wrote of “The Differentiation — of Anything.”[5]

His description of the generic product, the expected product, the augmented product, and the potential product defined the conceptual difference between a product and a solution for the next four decades.

Marketing departments seized on the idea early and began expanding offerings and solutions. With the exception of the consulting industry, which has no product to sell, salespeople often have lagged in their ability to sell solutions rather than products (see Figure 8–2).

Selling solutions means building trust by lowering risk for the buyer — especially when you deliver results instead of tools. But salespeople have often struggled with how they can contribute to the value of the solution rather than how they just describe it.

How can salespeople contribute to and be a part of the solution rather than just provide information and entertainment? Salespeople contribute to solution value in the following ways:

• When they do a better job than the competition of linking the benefits of a complex product to the client’s needs. The more they can link into strategic issues and uniquely differentiate their solution, the more value they can command.

• When they can help the client to understand the differences between their product and the competitors’ and what advantage that brings to the client.

• When they can turn relationships into results and lower risk by problem resolution and command of resources within their own company.

• When they can understand the political power structure of the buying committee and what part each person will play in the decision-making process.

• When they can effectively read accounts, devise and communicate a winning strategy, and lead a sales team to victory.

• When they can contribute knowledge to the client beyond their product — industry trends, best practices, innovations, contacts, ideas, benchmarks, and an outside expert’s assessment of their own company.

References — A Treasury of Transferred Trust

Because trust is generally low in the early parts of an evaluation, you will need to provide proof statements of your capabilities. This is where references play an active part in your sales process. If you have a capability and your client doesn’t, you should encourage thorough reference checking in your client’s evaluation process.

References need to be developed and rewarded, and their time needs to be treated respectfully. They deserve notice that they will be called, what the issues may be, and — whereas a reference should not be bought or bribed — they should be rewarded for the time required by extra service, responsiveness, or other acknowledgments.

One caution about giving references before the prospect has “earned” the right to talk to your best customers: Most salespeople don’t understand that when you ask a client to be a reference for a particular prospect, you have used up a reference call whether the prospect calls or not. You also have to be careful that you don’t give references so early that the prospect calls without enough knowledge to ask the right questions, and your reference is put in the position of being the salesperson.

By the way, calling and debriefing your references after they have been contacted by your prospect is an excellent way to get a perspective on where you are in the sale. The prospect will tell them things that he or she won’t tell you. Another way to provide trust in a competitive evaluation is through unsolicited references. If you can get your references to call your prospects and give unsolicited references, that may be even better than simply providing them with a list.

Keep ’Em Honest

Also, never give a list of references to just one person on the buying committee. I’ve seen an excellent list of references given to somebody on a buying committee and the deal lost to bad references. How does that happen? The person calling probably had negative preference for you and biased the questions or the answers. And since he or she was the only one calling, the result went unchallenged until after the sale.

If you think evaluations are conducted fairly and without bias, you can skip this step. But you had better be independently wealthy.

Give lists to everyone on the buying committee. This will keep the checkers honest because they know they aren’t the only ones calling. If you think evaluations are conducted fairly and without bias, you can skip this step. But you had better be independently wealthy.

As preference is built among individuals on the buying team, people start to move beyond neutral to where they really want your solution. These people can become good sources of information about your competitive position, hidden agendas, or competitive tactics.

Without good inside informants, you are flying through mountains in a fog. If no one is helping you or telling you that you’re winning, ask yourself what your real chances are in this deal. Again, if you’re not getting signals that you’re winning, you’re probably not. Good salespeople listen for what their prospects don’t say.

The Pronoun Shift

If you’re not getting signals that you’re winning, you’re probably not.

One way to tell if you are winning is that as preference grows, people start changing their pronouns and questions from if they buy to when they buy and from whom to how. If you’ve given your presentation and your prospects aren’t asking questions about implementation, risk management, contract issues and support, then you are in trouble. If they are not talking about how to do business with you, they are probably not planning to do business with you. This is when you are in that dreadful zone of, “You’re not winning, and they aren’t telling you.”

This is always when salespeople get a terrible amount of misinformation. Not because buyers are mean — although in some cases they are — but they may tell you what they think is true and might not know for sure. Or they might like you personally but not prefer your company or product. Or they may want to keep you in the game as a safety net in case they can’t reach terms with the other vendor.

By the time you get to the presentation or proposal, you need more than inside informants — you need power sponsors at high levels. As prospects reach the decision-making phase, politics erupt, and the process can change dramatically. As they approach the crucible of decision, multimillion dollar deals can change in as little as 24 hours. At this point, you need people who really want you to win — people who will give you the information you need, introduce you to the people you need to meet, and go to bat for you with procurement and the decision committee.

Account Management—From Preference to Trust

Many companies define account management objectives in different ways. Some want caretakers, whereas others want to dominate the account by making it so that the customer never has a reason to call a competitor.

Quality is defined by customer expectations. The salesperson’s job is to properly set those expectations high enough to get the business but not so high that you can’t deliver.