Sales Success – A guide to successful sales
Copyright © 2011 Robert D Hastings
All rights reserved.
ISBN:
ISBN-13:
DEDICATION
To all those salespeople who give it all for their product, service and company and who are undersold as to the value they bring each and every day.
CONTENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 0
INTRODUCTION TO SALES
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SELLING 0
DEFINING THE SALES ROLE
A BRIEF VIEW OF BUSINESS MARKETING
THE MARKETING MIX
DOMINANT FACTORS IN SUCCESSFUL SALES
HOW TO CREATE A SELLING VALUE PROPOSITION
P2P SALES – THE DIRECT APPROACH
B2B & B2C DISTRIBUTION SELLING
UNDERSTANDING CHANNEL SALES DEVELOPMENT
8 PILLAR APPROACH TO MANAGING SALES
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CALL RELUCTANCE
PROSPECTING FOR BUSINESS
A SHORT COURSE IN BODY LANGUAGE
RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT
USING DATA AND MATH
TIPS ON SUCCESS IN SELLING
TIPS ON PHONE MANNERS
TIPS ON DEMAND GENERATION
BUSINESS GLOSSARY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rob Hastings: Dip Mkt, Grad Dip Mgt, Masters Business Administration
Rob has worked in five of his own businesses over the past 25 years and the majority of those businesses were on-sold profitably.
He has penned a number of works on business in the BUSINESSMAN 101 Plus series including:
Rob holds great passion for small business in competitive markets and he has held a range of senior roles from Managing Director and General Management to National Sales Manager.
Most of his previous roles have been in blue chip companies in the business market. He holds international experience and managing companies with 100+ staff.
He holds broad experience in development of new markets and channel based B2B and B2C, distribution.
The lessons he has learnt in his day-to-day business environment as well as his small business start-ups has been condensed to ensure that factual and workable lessons are included in his books.
Rob is married and lives in Sydney and works within the business community including operating several of his own businesses, conducting seminars and teaching.
What is sales and selling, exactly?
As a place to begin in ‘Sales direct’, we note that selling is one of the simplest forms of a transaction and in most cases forms a contract. As a career, selling has been in existence since the process of trade and commercial activity began.
The act of selling is one of the oldest professions in the world and a career route for many individuals encompassing a wide variety of skills in every market and business in the world.
Selling of services, products, governments, political persuasion, health, education and a myriad of other areas of human endeavour is a social process and intrinsic to every society in the world.
Industry segments from sewerage treatment to sports, employs sales professionals to sell their products and services to markets of choice.
There are many terms for selling from spruiking to spin and almost every business in the world uses selling as part of what they do each day.
The process of a sale encompasses wide areas of behavioural science involving the sphere of human interaction and relationship process. Selling requires specialised skills in product knowledge, psychological tenets in motivation and human relationship, endeavour and persistence.
We can even argue convincingly that when a Prime Minister or President get up to garner support for an economic measure or a change in legislation they are in effect, selling.
Sales professionals are the front line of many industries and organisations. Employed as a front line advance they take products and services into competitive markets. The success of the sales department in many organisations contains the revenue dependency in their business activities each day. Sales can create great organisations and without such a skill, many companies lose market share so it is no wonder they invest so heavily in sales skills.Sales can be an arduous and stressful occupation but it is perhaps, the easiest role in any organisation to measure.
This is due to the budget requirements in any organisation and reported as revenue, product sales or service sales measured in most organisations by month, quarter and year. If your actual is less than your budget requirement you will be measured with concern and if you are a high achiever the expectation will be set that you will consistently achieve.
Very few organisations differ from this type of regard for the sales cycle.
Under this type of scrutiny, sales professionals go out to market each day and sell through their innate and learned abilities and under the stress that comes with providing the requirements of their role.
Whilst there is no human mix that is ideal for sales professionals it seems to suit personality types that find ease with other people and a high goal attainment capability. Highly pressured sales environments involve a degree of stress that indicates that high performers thrive in a pressure environment or they manage the stress issues.
Sales, like any other profession will have low and high performance individuals and the role of this book ‘Sales Expert- A guide to successful sales’ is written to offer insight into what works in a direct or distribution sales role.
In world, market terms, the influence and capacity of sales professionals is the revenue lifeblood of most organisations and without the necessary sales expertise, those organisations could not have achieved the size and success they have enjoyed and the enviable success of some large companies has been entirely dependent on sales skill.
However, in some professions, the ‘sales’ word brings derision and scorn, yet, in other markets such as the aircraft industry the term indicates a high degree of professionalism and experience.
In many countries, the mental image of a used car salesperson or a real estate agent is tardy and viewed with suspicion yet without the skills of sales professionals in those industries very few automobiles or real estate items could end up sold.
Selling is the act of reaching out to customers and working with incoming customers.
It is and will always be a two Way Street of endeavour and skills combining to offer the most effective selling capability and it are important to note that selling is a skill and it is not a genetic process so there are no ‘born’ salespeople.
Selling, as in flying or driving is a skill and it takes a period of time to learn and in years not months. Psychologically speaking, selling is not talking people into doing something they really do not want to do because in most cases it is improbable or impossible to do so.
Those industries who hold sales professionals in revenue production roles continue to prosper and gain business whether it is real estate or financial markets. Through their professional sales capability, many individuals make great contributions to their business and community and generally renumerated handsomely in the process.
Those that create a discredited process do not last long because their motives eventually discovered and discredited, and faith is lost in the message they offer consumers. It is not to say that these types of sales people do not exist; they do.
However, sales gained much of this hard reputation in the past and the negative description is due to forceful sales techniques that have been successful in the past but are less relevant today.
We refer to the dictionary definition of selling which simply states that selling is as follows:
Adjective
Of, pertaining to, or engaged in sales
OR
‘Selling starts with consent (or agreement) to an acquisition or appropriation or request followed by the passing of title (property or ownership) in the item and the application and due settlement of a price. The obligation for which arises due to the seller's requirement to pass ownership, being a price the seller is happy to part with ownership of or any claim upon the item.
To be precise the sale completes prior to the payment and gives rise to the obligation of payment.’
So we can define between the terms of sales and selling we suggest that selling is the act of sales and it comprises a range of activities between a seller and a buyer.
This also notes a contractual position to pay once the product or service sold and payment forms the third part of any contract.
In simplistic contract terms we note that offer, acceptance and consideration are the basic tenets of contract.
In selling terms the salesperson makes an offer, if the buyer accepts, then consideration is payable and it is important to note that consideration does not have to be in money terms because in very early times there was no money but sales must have existed.
Notably, some personality types lend themselves to this type of vocation and they are usually outgoing and competent in the area of human interaction.
However, holding any type of personality is not a prerequisite to success in a selling career. Some of the most successful sales professionals have not fitted the agreed mix of skills.
The process of selling is about influence and about control of the sales cycle.
We acknowledge that competent sales professionals are influencers in the decision making of any eligible purchaser of a plethora of products, services and processes in any country in the world today.
The skill set of sales professionals, results from training and understanding the wide variance of the sales process. The capability required to influence and control, the sales process, comes from experience at the coalface of business transaction.
Selling is one of primary drivers of any business and fundamental in the success of most businesses in offering a range of skills to sell the business function to the business- to -business and business -to -consumer sectors.
One only has to work into a store where the sales process is poor or non- existent to feel the effect of a lack of service and care.
In this book, ‘Sales Expert- a guide to successful sales’ we work within the fundamentals of seven pillars of wisdom.
Those pillars encompass the history of sales, the sales cycle and process, direct and distribution sales, person –to- person interaction including body language and the dominant factors in sales success.
We commend you in your chosen vocation and we offer the following pillars of information in your sales process as you work on becoming a top professional in your field of endeavour.
We have noted below one of the finest quotes and the message is of great importance in sales and selling as a professional career.
Nothing can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent are.
Genius will not: unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
Calvin Coolidge
History records that sales and the act of selling linked with trade very early in human development and has been in partnership with business for well over two thousand years.
In marketplaces as on the evolving trade routes of ancient times, selling evolved as the tentacles of product and services in creating business for merchants.
In the world today, there are many more products and services and segmented markets but selling as a need to create and develop markets has not changed.
Trade occurred in many parts of the world for over two thousand years and from the cradle of civilisation in the Middle East to China where the first forms of currency became commonplace in trading exchanges which were the simple venues such as a town or city marketplace.
The Minoans and the Egyptians built some of the early empires based on trade and supply of grain and other commodities became commonplace. Alexander the Great created trade routes through his conquest of the East and maintained a large army through trading with locals as he pushed through Asia.
The routes that his large army opened up became paths of trade and many of his army settled in these distant lands and worked in agriculture. Trade became part of their expertise whether it was in grain or arms.
In most of the trade routes including the Silk Road of China, that reputedly Marco Polo travelled, carried caravans travelling from East to West to sell a range of goods such as valuable spices, silk, jewellery and exotic goods.
The exchange of trade created payments in gold or silver and other commodities of value. Salt was one of the first commodities used in the exchange and payment of goods. Less developed societies such as the Middle East, used to trade food item such as fish or olive oil as payment for other goods
Activity in the purchasing and selling of any product or service requires human interaction of some sort at a point in time. When a product or service passes from one hand to another, there is invariably payment or compensation of some sort as part of the exchange.
Consideration in this transaction does not need to be monetary but in the eyes of the purchaser, it must be worth the exchange.
Buying and selling is one of the most pervasive of human activities and generally most humans have something to sell and they mostly have an understanding, but not necessarily the means, to purchase an item of choice. Selling evolved as the need to sell become more imperative.
Our research has noted that selling must have begun at the start of trade. It is sensible to believe that sales people back in early times, required similar skills to sales professionals of today. They went forth with their product or service and sold on the merits of their ability.
Obviously, the human characteristics of buyer and seller interaction that we understand through modern psychology were in place but not as evident. However, the will and capability of any person in ancient times would have assisted in their success. As to when sales became a profession is harder to assess.
Broadly speaking, sales evolved from a homogenised approach to expertise within emerging industries and much of that development came from the industrialisation of the developing world.
We read about sales and selling as broad skills sets and this is required, yet these terms are superfluous when you view the requirements of major industry and verticals such as real estate though to Information Technology.
Selling, like, any other modern process of business has evolved to specific processes and capabilities and is increasingly business vertical based.
The result of the need for increased expertise in product and services, results in sales professional remaining in specific business sectors in which they spend their career because the change to another industry is difficult.
One of the modern evolutions in selling shows that experience and a history of sales capability gained in one business market or vertical it is increasingly difficult to change to another type of industry because the expertise is lost and the change requires a new set of knowledge variables and industry specific skill set.
In an example, we note that it is not plausible to believe that a fertilizer sales professional could easily work within the health equipment industry without specific training and experience. If we reversed the roles to the agricultural industry, the same issues will apply.
Most developed countries offer recorded history of early sales people who crisscrossed the country selling a range of goods. In colonised countries like the United States, Canada and Australia the early days have recorded history of sales people called ‘hucksters’, ‘peddlers’ or ‘commercial travellers’ who sold product into the far reaches of those countries.
It did not matter if the product was a honey filled Billy can or a range of brushes, the skills of direct selling became a currency within a business role.
One of the positive influences of early sales ‘peddlers’ or ‘commercial canvassers’ is their capability to gain access to isolated communities and to offer products which were not commercially available from any other source.
As travelling sales agents, these early sales professionals increased their range of goods and the areas to which they travelled.
In the rural and mountain communities of North America and Europe, early trading invested in furs from trappers of valuable animals to feed the coats and trimmings of influential and rich citizens.
This early network of sales agents became the national process of sales business, as we know it today.
Sales people evolved from independent operators to stakeholders of large organizations and those organisations became industry specific. Industry and department managers searched for ways to systematize the sales process and the sales team was born.
Unfortunately, from the evolution of these travellers, hucksters and canvassers became a reputation of dishonesty and taking advantage of unsuspecting citizens. Again, most developed countries have folklore that outlines characters that crisscrossed the country as a loveable rogue and in part, they were dishonest sellers.
Mark Twain’s, Huckleberry Finn is a good example of this type of story as is the settlement of Sydney, Australia and how the early settlers evolved keeping in mind that the early settlers were convicted criminals.
The evolution and influence of sales through early communities meant the selling profession gained a less than satisfactory standing in the community. A role in selling became, to many, a less prestigious occupation and ranked well below the title of doctor or lawyer.
Yet, in modern times and in many countries, top sales people earn far more than a General Practise doctor or a local lawyer.
In the early years of the twentieth century, sales professionals started to signify their status by making their mark and fortunes through selling and with great success.
It was essentially a male dominated domain, with some exceptions such as the California Perfume Company. The old name evolved into the highly successful and recognised brand name of Avon.
Over the past eighty years, there are significant contributors to the art and science of selling.
To find examples, we note John H Patterson founder of the National Cash Register Company and Dale Carnegie based on his watershed book ‘ How to gain friends and influence people’ © as iconic figureheads in the evolution of sales.
The list is long, through to Thomas Watson who after working as a salesperson at NCR founded IBM; or we consider Alfred Fuller of Fuller Brush fame or Henry Heinz founder of Heinz foods.
What we understand after reviewing the history of these individuals is that without a strong understanding and skill in the sales process they would not have created their business achievement. Each of them was a strong sales professional.
Whilst the United States is pivotal in defining the sales professional process, many countries have offered their share of expertise from Sir Richard Branson through to Werner Von Siemens the industrialist who created the Siemens telecommunications empire.
Sales and the process of selling are as important as any business function in the world business market and it is the make or break of many organisations that rely on the sales function to gain needed revenues.
In the sales industry, the value of understanding the history of contribution by those pioneers who understood the value and potential of sales should not be underrated.
The fundamental value in selling as a livelihood is to understand from the start of your career that the profession is as important as any contribution in the society we live in today. It is no less an honourable profession than any other.
As we noted before, the sales role has become increasingly fragmented and specialised. In a sales role what is the responsibility that faces any new recruit or entry into a new role?
In the world of today, professional sales is the career, but the specialisation may be required as an account manager or a relationship manager or require a range of skills in direct sales and include some of the skills in long term accounts.
We are no longer in a world where one-size-fits-all mentality prevails and the roles in direct and distribution are very different. In many cases, a direct person–to- person sales executive will not see the purchaser again or rarely.
In distribution, the model exists on relationship management and the very fact that a sales executive or account manager will see the purchaser with frequency creates a far different process.
The methodology and attitude in differing sales roles is complex due to the differing responsibilities and in many cases, sales people from one industry find it difficult to switch to a different sales approach.
The primary issue in changing is the skill and knowledge requirements and the emotional quotient requirement for differing roles.
We review emotional intelligence in a later chapter and in modern times, it is described as the process by which the emotional capability in a person is gauged as to their effectiveness in different types of roles.
As an example, well- respected and successful managers are usually emotionally well rounded and whilst they can drive their people, they command respect because they are able to connect emotionally.
Emotionally based products that require a strong emotional connection such as insurance, cars, fine arts and jewellery to name a few, require salespeople who can work from an emotional standpoint with good insight to their buyer.
The buyers in this type of product range and vertical are usually people who have an emotional or status position to the item and sales professionals in this type of environment have the capability to leverage the emotional tie.
Software and hardware industries usually have a predominance of detailed or technical based sales professionals who have a strong sense of identity with the product or service and strongly understand the feature and benefit process and how to present.
In these industries, there are usually education prerequisites that are required dependent on the specialisation required.
The type of sales professional who succeeds in a technical based industry such as software, telecommunications, specialist manufacturing, business consulting and technical based services will usually have a background as a technician or a technical orientated mind. The reasoning behind this is the ability to assess a broad area of information and present it in a limited time in front of a customer with success.