Sales Truth: Debunk the Myths. Apply Powerful Principles. Win More New Sales.
von Mike Weinberg
High-producing sales killers have no trouble delineating between work and high-payoff, revenue-generating activity. They delegate as much service and administrative work as humanly possible. They’re ruthless with their time because sales killers understand the game is won by maximizing selling time, which requires minimizing their involvement in everything else. That is exactly why you don’t find the top sales hunters flipping burgers at the company picnic or telling customers to call them directly with every piddly little issue. Top-producing salespeople are selfish—in a good way. They’re selfishly productive. When you face resistance, don’t start selling your solution. Sell the value the prospect will receive from spending just a little bit of time with you. Let the prospect know that along with learning more about their situation, you’ll share how you are helping other people like them or organizations like theirs. Make it abundantly clear that whether or not there ends up being a fit, your prospect will leave that discovery meeting challenged by what you share and with fresh perspective, ideas, and insights.
Take this challenge: Commit to observing several of your sales team’s demos and online meetings from a remote location. Watch and listen from the perspective of the customer. I promise that if you do this a few times that you will come up with significant improvements for how you conduct your own online meetings that will radically alter the experience for the prospect and your own effectiveness!
Get Creative. Lose the Sales Voice and Hackneyed Phrases. To win with voicemail our messages need to stand out. That means we must come across much differently than the typical salesperson who often sounds either like a robocaller just going through the motions, or a cheesy, inauthentic pitchman. No one is returning a call from a bored-sounding seller who, forgive the pun, is just phoning it in.
The professional seller, the one who delivers value, who proactively works into accounts before they are shopping, who seeks to truly understand a customer’s needs, who does effective discovery work, who’s motivated to solve a customer’s problems, who tells a compelling story, who’s committed to delivering valuable outcomes—that salesperson is not going anywhere anytime soon.
We focused on a few areas to sharpen this firm’s sales sword. We streamlined their bloated, self-focused messaging and drafted a laser-precise story around the major issues they addressed for large employers, the outcomes being achieved by their clients, and a handful of true differentiators that set their service apart from the competition.
Particularly in larger, more complex, and longer sales-cycle deals, the advantage goes to the salesperson who does the best discovery work, meets with the most stakeholders and influencers, who best understands the various constituencies’ needs and desires, and who builds both the best relationships and most consensus—all before presenting.
"High-producing sales killers have no trouble delineating between work and high-payoff, revenue-generating activity. They delegate as much service and administrative work as humanly possible. They’re ruthless with their time because sales killers understand the game is won by maximizing selling time, which requires minimizing their involvement in everything else. That is exactly why you don’t find the top sales hunters flipping burgers at the company picnic or telling customers to call them directly with every piddly little issue. Top-producing salespeople are selfish—in a good way. They’re selfishly productive."
"When you face resistance, don’t start selling your solution. Sell the value the prospect will receive from spending just a little bit of time with you. Let the prospect know that along with learning more about their situation, you’ll share how you are helping other people like them or organizations like theirs. Make it abundantly clear that whether or not there ends up being a fit, your prospect will leave that discovery meeting challenged by what you share and with fresh perspective, ideas, and insights."
"I wanted to win as much new business as possible as quickly as possible. The best way to do that? Understand the characteristics of your very best customers—the ones who love you, who appreciate the value you deliver and the outcomes you, your company, or solution provide. Once you grasp those key characteristics (size, location, industry vertical, business model, etc.) sketch out an Ideal Customer Profile to describe the types of prospects that belong on your target list."
"To sales managers frustrated by their teams’ poor performance relative to acquiring new relationships within accounts, acquiring new customers, new market share, or new business in general, I strongly suggest taking time out from your own typical, crazed routine to simply observe how your people spend (waste) their time. Your sales results shortfall might be as easily explained as your sellers having lost sight of their primary job—growing revenue."
"Chapter 20 is the most popular chapter in Sales Management. Simplified. and I have seen sales teams’ cultures and results transformed simply from managers implementing the best practice outlined for conducting effective one-to-one monthly accountability meetings. Something wonderful and powerful transpires when managers review a salesperson’s results, pipeline, and activity against named target accounts (in that specific order)."
"Commit to leaving multiple messages over a relatively short period. Personally, I like to leave messages about every four business days until I’ve left five or six messages. Then I take a break. But don’t give up too early because experience shows that very often it’s messages four and five that tip the scales causing the prospect to finally respond. Again, we are earning the callback with perseverance and creativity."
"The most effective executives, sales managers, and salespeople I observe are masters at the basics. They have perfected old-school, traditional approaches. Instead of constantly entertaining themselves by shopping for the latest, greatest, and trendiest new tool, toy, or trick, they stay with the tried-and-true, proven fundamentals of sales and sales leadership. Not sexy, but incredibly effective."
- →Sellers need to close hot opportunities, advance active opportunities, and create new opportunities. These three Sales Verbs should always be top of mind. No one would argue the fact that sellers who find ways to fill their calendar with more time dedicated to closing, advancing, and creating opportunities will outperform those who don’t.
- →There is nothing vague or nebulous about a sales hunter’s target list. True hunters know exactly whose business they want, can articulate the reasons why these specific targets are on the list, and they dedicate chunks of calendar time to do nothing but pursue the targets.
- →What problems are your prospects looking to solve? What opportunities are they seeking to capture? Which of their fears are causing stress or keeping them up at night? Where do they feel trapped? What frustrations are driving them crazy?
- →Whatever the motivation for buyers’ lack of truthfulness or transparency with us, we need to do a better job discovering what is truly going on in our customers’ world—more specifically, how, when, and why they make decisions.
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