Mdina blog

More selling and less presenting

Sales people feel good when they are transferring knowledge to others, but they need to think as carefully about what information they receive from clients as they do about their presentations.

It is not surprising that sales people are comfortable talking about their products and services, they know the features and how to present them. Questioning clients is more difficult as it is a less defined path, especially if the client is perceived to be more senior.

At Mdina Partnership we are often requested to help with sales teams who all too quickly go into presentation mode with their clients without exploring the target business needs and key decision drivers.

How to solve this? If you are not in a position to use an external training company, here is an idea that we use in some of our sales development sessions.

1.    At the next internal development programme, advise the sales team that they are going to do some role plays (we call it Action Learning, but everyone sees through this and groans!).

2.    Develop an “out-of-industry” role play where you create a client with a Need and a sales person who has been asked to go and see the client. The role playing sales person sells a range of a well known goods or services that are unrelated to your business. For example, if you sell photocopiers, make the role plays about selling commercial drinks vending machines.

The sales person has little or no knowledge of the products he or she has to sell in the role play so they are forced to use good questioning instead to understand the client's needs. If the sales person does not have a questioning plan, then this soon becomes obvious.

During our training programmes we ask the teams we're working with to develop some key questions which they then prioritise related to their industry and clients. We help them develop a structure for each meeting (ensuring that they retain their own personalities) which increases the confidence in managing each sales meeting.

3. When the sales person eventually presents their solution, it is tailored to what they have just learned from the client and this is much more effective for sales, profit and forecasting.

When reviewing the role play and explain the full scenario, ask the group what they would do differently next time. Typically this raises awareness of the importance of asking good questions and the pit falls of relying too much on product knowledge.

If handled positively this is a very effective developmental approach – good luck.

Mark Jacobs - Mdina Partnership Ltd

 

What's the problem with sales people?

If I said the word salesman, what words now fill your mind?

Pushy?    Gift of the gab?    Says anthing to get a sale?   Dishonest?

These kind of perceptions are very common and are held also by sales people (I know as I have checked with hundreds of them).  This is a crying shame because actually selling is truly an art form when done correctly and professionally.

Many sales people I have encountered can't wait to tell the client about what they have - hell I spent years doing just that when I was a junior sales person many years ago.

We all know that sales people should spend more time finding out about the clients needs but often people believe that clients need their products.

The question we should all ask is why is someone buying our product or service? What does it give them?

Let's consider a house which is for sale and we will call it plot 23. There are three potential buyers:-

1.    Ted who is an investor who wants to buy to rent it out. He aims to make money from the rental and future equity gains.

2.    Mr & Mrs Brown who have another baby on the way and need more space.

3.    Mr & Mrs Jones who want to move to a nice area because they have been frequently broken into with their current location.

The house potentially solves three different scenarios here:-

1.    More money that investing money in a high interest account.

2.    Somewhere to live that feels comfortable

3.    Security (or at least perceived security).

Once the need is understood, the house can be presented appropriately - but regardless of who buys it, the house does not change.

Consider one of your products or services - just one. You will be able to state many reasons for why different buyers could be motivated to purchase, and some of these will be radically different.

So the more we understand about the motivations behind a purchase the better our chances of a sale and these will include good business reasons but also personal reasons such as ease, time, personal likes and dislikes.

So my message is that your products and services work. If they didn't then it is unlikely that you would remain in business. It is also likely that your clients could find other competitive products at roughly the same price to solve their problems. I am not a great beleiver in product differentiation as a deal closer (I do beleive that is gererates interest and then the selling starts).

Often, the things that differentiates one company from another is the approach that client facing personnel have with their customers. So when we are helping to develop our sales delegates we are trying to produce business to business professionals not stereo typical sales people who do product pitches.

Sales people often ask "what will it take for you to buy this product". A better question is "What makes you interested in buying the product?"

When sales poeple understand this, then the real art ounderstanding how clients tick really begins. And when that is done well it truly is an art form.

Mark Jacobs

Sales development with Steve Tarr

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Sales development with Steve Tarr

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Sales Development with Steve Tarr

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Key Account Management

In this ever changing business world we are living in the importance of managing key accounts is becoming more and more important.

Most of our clients are realising that with limited sales resource they have to decide which customers are going to get the focus of that sales resource.

The successful sales teams are being caused to re focus by their sales managers, being called to account more and more for how they are investing their expensive sales resource.

Let me know your thoughts on this subject and on how Mdina are dealing with this challenge

Steve Tarr

Making Notes

I find it increasingly frustrating how sales people sit in front of their customers for some times over 1 hour and do not make any notes.

During our sales development sessions we emphasise the importance of making notes.

On the assumption that the sales person is asking good effective questions then at least the sales person should be making appropriate notes, if for no other reason as to show interest.

I would love to hear from other people as to whether they have noticed this poor behaviour

Steve Tarr