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Published in the June 2006
issue of Inside
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In conversation with a youthful 23 year old, we
got around to talking about planning for ones future. Since I am past fifty,
you might imagine that we had a different perspective on time. It made me
reach back and touch my sense of the endless school summer holidays. Those
long gone escapes seemed to last forever. Flipping back into my sense of the
present, I compared the apparent passing of time.
Scientists can easily prove that a day in my youth lasted the same amount of
time as a day in my middle years. My perception tells me otherwise. Time
seems to be accelerating. Days, weeks, months, and years seem to be flitting
past, faster and faster. Perhaps this is a phenomenon of aging. It certainly
draws attention to the pace of change. If scientists were to measure it, I
think they would confirm my sense that change is happening faster and
faster.
Long gone are the days when sales people could pitch up, show a few products
and earn a living.
In a previous article, All Change, I suggested that modern sales people need
to be in the ‘good ideas’ business. Let’s step again into the role of
today’s sales people and consider what other qualifications might be
increasingly important as the future arrives, crashing over our threshold.
Good ideas on there own aren’t much use. Perhaps you can remember the
experience of being new to a company and bursting with good ideas that would
help others or the organisation succeed. People can’t hear good ideas from a
newbie. The idea its self may be sound but people don’t listen until you
have been around for a while. The message bearer must have credibility as
well as logic and enthusiasm on his or her side.
It is much the same in selling. Until you can gain the trust and confidence
of a prospect, your great ideas have no standing and are likely to be
ignored. It has always been the case that sales people who can build rapport
and trust fast, have a greater influence with prospects. What has changed?
Apart from people having less time than ever to cogitate, most have a much
greater understanding of sales techniques. Having excellent communication
skills and abundant confidence only gets you to first base these days. A
prominent sales persona can put prospects on their guard rather than build
trust.
The hard way to build trust fast is to make ones self a prominent expert in
your field. Not a scientist, not quite. Not a practising engineer or
technician and certainly not someone who baffles people with overt
intelligence, unfathomable knowledge, and a surfeit of jargon. Yet today’s
sales people need to establish credibility as an expert. How does one put
ones finger on the pulse of a particular industry or market?
Todays would be sales stars need to have an up to the moment grasp of both
their own industry and each customer’s so that they can bridge the gap. No
amount of confidence and bravado will make up for a lack of market space
understanding. Customers listen to their own experts first and the ticket
for engaging with the customers experts is ones own expertise.
Let’s summarise the areas modern B2B sales people need expertise in.
• The most obvious requirement is for expertise in their products and
services.
• Knowing what is happening in their market, what the thought leaders are
saying and what the competitors are doing is essential. Customers can easily
gather this type of information with a few clicks of the mouse and a little
reading. Woe betides the sales person who reveals a lack of knowledge about
his own market.
• Understanding the customer and the customer’s market is necessary for
sales people who want to be in the ‘good ideas’ business. Randomly proposed
ideas only lead to loss of credibility. Ideas that are appropriate and
practical increase credibility. They take into account the customers
circumstances and market conditions.
Those who have such expertise don’t need to flaunt it. Their mastery of
these matters is obvious to anyone they converse with about business. It is
easy to subtly demonstrate true knowledge and expertise through the
phraseology of questions asked.
While sales people might rely on their employer for education about products
and services, market and customer understanding usually depends on
individual initiative and effort. Fortunately, technology makes it feasible
for us to keep up.
Using search engine alerts, we can have new information on any topic,
person, or company flagged up to us as it happens. The advent of news
readers and web logs (blogs) make it possible for us to filter out the
overwhelming mass of information and see only what we want to see. Numerous
Ezines (email newsletters) offer another means to keep abreast of the latest
information on selected topics.
Automatic document summarisers can help cut down the amount of reading.
Speed reading and photo reading habits make it possible for sales people to
keep up while keeping up with their customer contact and prospecting
activities.
It seems to me that a range of new or different skills are now much more
important for B2B sales success. The following four competencies are now,
‘must haves’.
• Using technology to filter out unnecessary information
• Assimilating information faster than competitors
• Understanding customer markets and business issues
• Creating ideas to help customers succeed
Mastery of traditional sales competencies is no longer enough to ensure
success. Sales people who look out for tomorrow and get ready to embrace the
new day as it arrives, will continue to reap the high rewards available to
outstanding performers.
Author and speaker, Patricia Fripp said, “It is not your customer's job to
remember you. It is your obligation and responsibility to make sure they
don't have the chance to forget you.”
The more personal value we add, the more entwined we become in customer
success, the less they will be able to do without us.
Article by Clive Miller
Questions and comments to
clive@salessense.co.uk |
Article
by Clive Miller
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