sales process – Getentrepreneurial.com: Resources for Small Business Entrepreneurs in 2024

I’d like to tell you a little story about Sam, an old acquaintance of mine. The first time I met Sam I had stopped in his little general store while passing through town to buy some soda for my long car ride back home. His was the only store in this very small rural town and he did a sizable amount of business. As I walked down one of the aisles to get to the refrigerated coolers in the back where they kept the soda, I couldn’t help but notice that the shelves were loaded with containers of salt for sale. There were salt containers from the front of the aisle to the back, from top to bottom, and on both sides of the aisle. I couldn’t believe it, an entire aisle dedicated to just salt.
I grabbed a couple sodas and went to check out.

As Sam stood there smiling I said to him, “Excuse me, but I noticed you have hundreds and hundreds of salts for sale.”

Sam simply said, “Yup. That’s right.”

So I said, “Well, you must be one heck of a salt salesman to sell that much salt.”

Sam slyly responded, “Nope. Actually, I’m a terrible salt salesman. But the guy who sold me all that salt, now HE was a great salt salesman.”

Dumbfounded, I paid for my soda, went to my car, and drove home.

Since I had so much time to think during my long drive, I couldn’t help but wonder about how Sam’s salt plight was so typical of customers who end up purchasing something they don’t really need. They purchase what the sales person wants them to, which is not always what the customer really wants or needs. Obviously, Sam did not need all that salt, but the salesman made a good commission check on that sale nonetheless.

Do you think that the sales person who sold Sam all that salt has a snowball’s chance in you-know-where of EVER selling ANYTHING to Sam again? Of course not! If he sold Sam only what he really needed at the time, he would have had a chance to develop a relationship for life and, over that life-time relationship, he would end up selling a lot more salt than he did in that one single sale.

This is one of the biggest lessons in sales – Understand what the customer needs and sell him the right solution for those needs. In doing so, you not only have done right by the customer, but the customer will trust you and that is how a relationship begins. Since customers are more knowledgeable, and even sophisticated, in today’s market, they are looking for sales people who are more problem-solvers and planners who can work with them as a partner rather than someone who is just trying to sell them something. Therefore, sales reps need to sell VALUE, not products or services. By developing your relationship-selling skills you’ll position yourself as a partner who sells value, which will make you stand out from the normal crowd of sales reps who are pushing products down their client’s throats.

Relationship-selling involves listening, instead of “telling”. Asking the right questions, shutting up, and carefully listening to the responses are the key ingredients for doing this right. Prospects will tell you almost anything if you show you care about them. The traditional “sales pitch” is now replaced with an interview, with the goal of solving your prospect’s problems. By considering the prospect’s bottom-line, instead of your own quota, you create a win-win situation. By solving their problems, you will get the sale and both of you will win.

In a non-relationship selling environment, the sale rep spends very little time in the early stages of the sales cycle. These stages include the initial contact phase where rapport needs to be built and the qualification phase where you establish whether there’s a good fit or not before wasting a lot of time. As a result, that same sales rep ends up spending way too much time presenting the solution, since they don’t know exactly what the right solution is. Therefore, the negotiating and closing phases take proportionately longer.

To sell value and develop a relationship-selling environment, you need to become a strategic partner who can bring value to the entire relationship, right from the start. Spending more time in the up-front phases of the sales process to build rapport and trust and to properly qualify your prospect to understand their needs, will make the next steps in the process go much easier and quicker.

You also need to be easy to do business with. Don’t make every step a painful experience. Each step should be viewed as something that is helping your prospect and driving them toward the conclusion (“their” conclusion) that they would be crazy not to purchase from you. If you are viewed as a valued problem-solver, then you will actually help them make their decisions, which is what many customers need. In other words, be part of their team.

Remember, it’s all about the customer, and not about what is best for you. So next time, try positioning yourself this way instead of focusing on your own needs. You’ll end up selling a lot more salt than you ever did before.

Good Luck & Good Selling!
Russ Lombardo is President of PEAK Sales Consulting, LLC and an experienced CRM and Sales consultant, trainer, writer, speaker and radio show host. Russ works with businesses to help improve their customer acquisition and retention for increased revenue and success. Russ is author of the books, “CyberSelling”, “CRM For The Common Man” and “Smart Marketing”. He can be reached at 702-655-5652 and emailed at russ@peaksalesconsulting.com.

You’ve heard the saying before that there is no “I” in team. And that’s true. A team is a collection of people working toward the same goal with the single objective of successfully reaching a satisfied conclusion. However, when you’re a sales rep there’s a slightly different spin on this little pearl of wisdom. Sometimes it’s a natural tendency to think more about “Me” than the team.
As a sales rep, you deal with a variety of people in a team-selling environment. In the early phases of selling when the opportunity is still new, you may deal with your inside sales or telemarketing people to help qualify the account. On the technical side you may engage the pre-sales systems engineer who works with the client’s technical or IT people. As you negotiate the deal the contracts people can get involved. When you get the order you could deal with your order entry staff. And, when the sale is made the customer support team may be deployed. There may even be additional people and departments you work with depending on your company and selling process.
Nevertheless, when it comes right down to it, who gets the ‘ax’ when the revenue numbers aren’t achieved? Who gets fired when the territory doesn’t hit quota? Who gets kicked to the curb when the big deal goes to a competitor? The SALES REP!!
We understand the concept of team selling and always want to be a “team player”. That’s a good thing since you need your team to help close business. Without the team, you cannot succeed. Don’t ever forget it. However, this advice can hurt you if you lose focus on who has the most at stake. Sure, this sounds selfish and greedy. But guess what, you’re the one whose commission plan has 50% at risk. If you don’t make your quota, half your income is at stake. The order entry people still get paid. The contracts administrator still takes home the same amount she did last month. Seems everyone still gets paid the same whether YOU get the deal or not – except you!
But wait! Don’t you also get paid the “Big Bucks” when you hit your quota? Don’t you get the huge bonus and over-rides when you “blow out” your numbers? What about then? Well, that my friend is what sales is all about. You are in a high-risk position. If you sell, you’re a hero and make lots of money (theoretically speaking, that is). And if you fail, you make less. Sometimes lots less. But what about the team?
If YOU have everything on the line, then who cares about the team? They get paid the same and you take all the risk. So why become a team player? You can’t spell team without “M” and “E”. So what about “ME” you say. Why should I care about the team? When I hear this from sales reps, I feel like crying. Some even believe that their team is there to serve their purposes and if things go wrong or they lose the deal, the team can take the fall. Teamwork doesn’t mean, “Let’s spread the blame as widely as possible.” It’s not about blame. It’s about success.
So, why should you care about your team? Well, if you don’t know by now, it might be too late. You cannot do your job without your team. Period! End of story! Sure, they get paid the same, win or lose. But they help make you a success. As that desperate man named Jerry said to the beautiful lady in that famous motion picture, “You complete me.” That’s exactly what your team does – they COMPLETE you. Team players in a sales environment sometimes have to weave a delicate thread when trying to balance their priorities. How do you take care of the team’s interests and priorities while not neglecting your own?
This reminds me of when I was on the high school wrestling team. Unlike football, which was truly a team sport, wrestling is a bit duplicitous. First, you are on a team and the entire team can have a winning or losing match, and season. However, each wrestler has to go out there and defeat their opponent one-on-one. You are on the mat all by yourself (well, with your opponent, of course). Your team isn’t out there with you trying to pin the other guy. If you win, that’s great for you. But you can win and your team can still lose if there aren’t enough individual wrestlers on your team who win.
In high school wrestling, each individual wrestler gets points for winning. If you win by scoring more individual points than your opponent, then your team gets, say, three points. If you pin your opponent, your team gets, say, five points. So you can pin your opponent in 10 seconds flat and look like a hero. But if the rest of your team doesn’t have enough individual points, the team loses. Sure, you can move on to wrestle in the District or Regional Championships, as an individual. But you could still be playing for a losing team. The best scenario I remember was having a personal success record and reaching the championship tournaments, while wrestling for a team with a winning season. Pride times two!
In sales, there is a big difference however. When the sales rep is out there on the mat with his or her opponent, the rest of the team is really out there too. The technical expert pitches in when needed. The contracts person does their part. Management helps where they can. And finally, if all goes well, the team overcomes diversity, the customer makes the best purchase decision for them, and everyone wins.
One way to ensure the team succeeds is to have a well-defined sales process. This entails laying out all the steps necessary to bring a sales lead from suspect to prospect to customer. The process should define who does what within each step, for how long they do it, how they hand off to the next responsible team player, if and when they get engaged again, and many more details that the entire team should understand and follow. The need for, and development of, sales processes is the subject of another article. In fact, books are written on this subject, not to mention the livelihood of many consultants dependent on them, including yours truly. But it is important to mention here as it relates to a team selling approach. No sense having a team if all the players are moving in different directions and cross-purposes.
So the next time you’re out there selling your head off, don’t forget you have a support team behind you whose sole purpose is to make the team, and you, succeed regardless of who gets paid what, and regardless of how you actually spell T.E.A.M.
Good luck and good selling!
Russ Lombardo is President of PEAK Sales Consulting, LLC and an experienced CRM and Sales consultant, trainer, writer, speaker and radio show host. Russ works with businesses to help improve their customer acquisition and retention for increased revenue and success. Russ is author of the books, “CyberSelling”, “CRM For The Common Man” and “Smart Marketing”. He can be reached at 702-655-5652 and emailed at russ@peaksalesconsulting.com.