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Dude, You’re Gonna Need More Than 15 Minutes3

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Sales people are constantly working at communicating value to their buyers, especially in the early stages of the cycle, lead gen to prospecting and engaging the buyer to where they could complete an effective Discovery process. After sellers have done all the work involved in getting to the point where they can engage with a buyer, I am always surprised at how easily they are willing to undermine it, and risk their opportunity by saying something completely unnecessary, and serves only to sooth their nerves.

The expression that does this most is “I just need 15 minutes of your time” or “A quick 15 minutes”. Both are stupid and useless, the second is one I never did get, how is a “quick 15 minutes” different than 15 minutes, don’t all minutes have 60 seconds, it is just the quality of the content that seems to make some minutes last a lifetime.

I know why it is used, generally comes down to two things, both can be dealt with more intelligently and effectively. First is the popular notion that if you can get 15 minutes, and do well, they’ll give you an encore and you can stretch it out; I guess we all think we can do a good job. On the other hand I used to work for a VP of Sales who managed his calendar down to the minute, busy guy. He would ask you how long you needed, and would book you in for that time, if you said 15 minutes, he would end the meeting right at 15 minutes. He wasn’t rude, he had to get to his next scheduled meeting, if you couldn’t live up to the expectation I set, it was your issue, not his, you had to deal with it, not him.

Which brings us to the first contradiction, most decision makers have more than what to do in a day, how realistic is that they don’t have other meetings behind your, or other things that require their time and attention. Yes, no doubt we have all had instances where we were able to extend 15 minutes in to 45 or even 60 minutes, but an occasional anomaly does not make for a sound strategy.

The other issue with this approach is that you are in fact misleading the prospect before you have even met them. Think about it, do you really want to start things off by lying to the prospective buyer? Any way you rationalize it, that is exactly what you are doing, not a good foundation for a trust based relationship.

The second reason sales people do this is linked to the first, and just as weak. Specifically they are trying to minimize the apparent impact on the buyer, trying to make it “easy” on them, “Your time will not be wasted”, is the implication. But unless you are selling a coffee service or window cleaning, how much real or tangible value can you effectively communicate. More so, when you are selling what you would call a “solution”, where information has to be exchanged, 15 minutes is not going to get you there, you can pretend all you want, you are going to pitch, worse, you are going to ‘speed pitch’.

Some will tell me, “I can at least get things started”, sure then comeback and continue, with a bit of recapping, you are costing you and the buyer more time. By asking for 15 minutes you are undermining your so called “value proposition”. What the prospect hears is that this is so basic and unimportant, what they are asking themselves is as follows: “we’re going to make real progress in 15, can’t be that important or unique, maybe it can wait, or I can delegate it to someone who deals with unimportant things.”

Think about it, assuming things get started, small talk, while you assume they checked out your web site, you have to validate; if they did, you still need to create context, if they didn’t you have to do a bit more than that. From here, you need to at least go through the motions of gather information or executing a Discovery of facts and objective. Ah, look at that time is up! I remember someone trying to sell me an ad in local board of trade directory, they said they just need 15 minutes, I pointed out to him that he will need to ask me some questions, I will certainly have some for him, so let’s get real, how much time will we really need, he was honest enough to come across with a real time frame.

What’s worse, it is usually the seller who brings time in to the equation, not the prospect, again communicating a lack of confidence in their offering, or their ability to sell, or both. Just stop this juvenile practice, and sell.

Now I know that there times when you will be asked by a prospect how much time you need; in my case I gear my first meetings to about an hour, I am the one that gets antsy after 50 minutes. But rather than saying “one hour”, I pause, and ask, “how long can you give me?” They usually come back and say “is an hour enough?” Touch down!

But assuming they ask again, I just say “I usually need about 30 minutes for Discovery, I assume you’ll have some questions, so 40 minutes is safe.” If I feel they have a sense of humor, I add “any longer than that I take as interest on your part.”

I do have people who say “I can give you 30 minutes.” Great I can work with that; if they offer 15 minutes, I say no, I know what is going to happen, it is not a good use of my time, my most important resource. Either we can find a mutually better time, or on to the next one. If you have lots of prospects, this is not an issue, if you only have one or two, you may have to settle for the scraps that a quick 15 minutes represent.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

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Impact Questions – Sales eXchange 1870

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Back in the 80′s or maybe even earlier, the purveyors of Consultative Selling, put a lot of emphasis on Open Ended Questions, for all the right reasons. It took some effort and focus to get sales people to adopt this style of interaction, especially after years of pitching and doing things the traditional (old) way.

Many sales people had difficulty being comfortable and effective in the vast openness provided by this style of questions. It was difficult to fight the urge to regress to their previous comfort zones, many sellers had to be continuously managed to adopt the new more effective question based selling.

One practice was to paint closed ended questions as being inferior, substandard, in those days, even communist in nature; may sound extreme, but in reality, closed ended question were uniformly vilified. In fact the pendulum swung so far that closed ended question were just plain bad. Today, in many workshops, you still hear people demonizing closed ended questions.

Well I am here to tell you that there are no such things as bad questions. There are very few if any absolutes in sales. It’s more accurate to look at how appropriate a question is for a given circumstance. If you look at questions as tools of the trade, there is no such thing as one tool fits all; there may be tools that are appropriate to various tasks, others may be useful less often
Which is why I am here to say that the much maligned closed ended question does have a place in B2B selling in 2013; hell I’ll go further to say it has a place in Sales 2.0 and/or Social Selling. It is about the situation, what is the desired outcome, and what the next step needs to be from both parties perspectives.

Given the above there are regular occurrences in sales where closed ended question makes perfect sense. So I am on a mission to reintroduce this tool to your sales tool kit. A few years ago Timberlake made it his goal to being Sexy Back, so I am advocating the same for closed ended questions (although I am certain they will never be sexy, but the positive results delivered may be).

I am calling the updated version Impact Questions, a marketing friend told me that one needs to rebrand for re-launch; change the name and you change focus from potential negative connotations.

Let’s face it, there are times when you do want to focus things, narrow down the possibilities. Often you want close things off so you can move the process forward, or to realize that there is no forward to move to with a prospect and it may be time to move to the next opportunity.

During a cold call, oops, prospecting call, (need to be politically correct), open ended questions can take you off track; a question that works well in a sales call can be negative during a prospecting call. There are other times when you do want a clear one or the other, a yes or a no. It comes down to how the response serves the purpose. What is the impact of the answer, and how that answer impacts the outcome. For example, when I ask someone I called the first time if they “have ever worked with a third party trainer like Renbor?”, either answer serves to move the process forward, and could prove to be a benefit for both. Rather than using a series of open ended questions to arrive at the same point, a simple impact question focuses bith the prospect and I on the same critical turning point.

So know where you are trying to go, know how you can help a prospect or a customer, then ask the Impact Question, and deal with the impact, not whether it is open ended, closed ended, or some other ended, work to achieve positive impact for the buyer and yourself.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Don’t look around in your office for the answer, look at your prospects.

Who is a better closer, you or the buyer you are facing? In most cases the argument can easily be made that the buyer is a better closer. In more cases than not, they end up achieving their objective more than you do.

In the case of active buyers, those in the market, reaching out directly to sellers, or actively seeking input from their peer network; or passive buyers – those buyers who are not actively looking but are no longer happy with their current situation, making entrees into the market, searching the web for “what’s out there”. The buyers are usually the better closers, simply by closing you on the fact that they have other options, and unless things are done entirely on their terms, you’ll lose the deal. The more one capitulates here, the clearer it becomes that the buyer is closing the seller on the deal they want. Discounting is an issue in most verticals, either you close the buyer on the value you deliver, or they close you on what you have to surrender to win the deal.

In circumstances where there is no deal, either because the buyer bought from someone else, or decided not to make a decision, again the buyer was the better closer because they closed themselves on not buying, where the seller was not able to close them on buying. Assuming you were truly convinced that they had a need, and you qualified them, and they didn’t buy, they were the better closer.

Where sellers seems to be much better closers are with those buyers commonly called as status quo. Where the seller was able to engage in a proper manner, meaning not waiting around to be found by someone with preconceived ideas and price points, but engaged as two peers around a common opportunity. This involves a proactive approach by the seller, doing the research as to who is in a position to benefit from their offering and engaging with them as a potential means of achieving objectives, not as a latter part of a buying process that started long before the seller was aware. Where the seller takes the initiative rather than the buyer, the odds are much more even.

The reason for this is obvious but often overlooked. In the end, it is not about the close but everything that precedes it. All the elements of the EDGE Process; beyond the research, it is the prospecting Engage long before the buyer goes to market; the Discovery to help confirm the buyer’s objectives, and build value through a collaborative process that encourages the buyer to be part of the process – and part of the outcome. Leading to the point where you Gain commitment based on the mutual definition of value, and then of course Execute together with the buyer.

The ability to change the focus from close to outcome allows you to help more clients close on you.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Many people involved in sales seem to be fixated with budget; they want to qualify for it way to early in the process. I know it is important, but you maybe disqualifying perfectly good buyers for the wrong reason.

Your job in sales is to well, sell, which means identifying requirements or gaps in the prospect’s current situation. But most, about 75% of potential buyers, don’t know, realize or admit they have requirements or gaps, remember – status quo is your biggest hurdle. So if they don’t perceive a need, they don’t see a need to allocate budget. This does not mean that they don’t in fact could benefit from your product, but they have lived with the pain long enough, or on the positive side they didn’t realize they could achieve their goals by taking advantage of your offering. Ask this type of person about budget too early, and you will end up disqualifying a perfectly good buyer.

If you are talking to the right people in the right way, budget is very much an issue that can be (at times easily) overcome. Consider these examples, have you ever walked into an electronics store looking to buy a flat screen, you know what you had in mind, you encountered a clerk who “qualified you”? They asked a bunch of questions, including budget, and then showed you two or three products that fit what you described. Contrast that with the time I walked into an electronics store, with a specific flat screen in mind, shopped it on line in advance so I had a budget in mind, but I encountered a different sales person. She asked me why I was buying the TV, had I had a flat screen before? What type of things would I be watching? She then continued to ask if I what kind of DVD player I had, telling me about Blue Ray, asked if stream from the web, and of course since I told her I watch music DVD’s, what was I using to maximize the sonic experience. When all was said and done, I had exceeded my flat screen budget by $250, or 20%; in addition I became the proud owner of an unbudgeted Blue ray player, decided to give my inadequate home theater system to the kids, how else was I going to make room for the new one.

You can say I was an impulse buyer, I would argue that I was maximizing my investment in my enhanced flat screen. Either way there is no arguing that rather than qualifying me for budget, she qualified me for what I was trying to achieve and how to best maximize that over the life of my new Smart TV.

Corporate buyers are no different, the higher you go in the organization, the truer this is. Executives are able to create budget, able to shift funds around, and make a buy based on a host of factors beyond budget. I have many clients who did not have budget for training when I cold called them, but after we engaged, and I demonstrated how their investment in what I do will deliver results and returns that will exceed their investment, and justify an unbudgeted expenditure.

Executives want, no need, to make a difference, show them how you can do that and you will find a person motivated to make things happen. Show them that you primary interest is their ability to spend, and even those with budget will self-disqualify. It’s about engagement and investment – not budget. Go ahead, qualify someone for a better competitor.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Sales people are aware that their biggest competitor in the market is complacency, the lack of the buyer willingness to change, the status quo. Change is hard; it involves time, effort, and the need to overcome the fear of the unknown. This is why even when things are not perfect, visibly not meeting expectations, buyers will stick with less than they deserve, fear is a strong emotion.

Add to this the fact that sellers are already predisposed to the view that people buy based on emotions, which they then rationalize. As stated above fear is an emotion, and as a result sellers are up against the dynamic that buyer feel a strong reaction to a strong emotion, one that keeps buyers spending a lot of time rationalizing why they do not need to change, why they can “make due” rather than risk change.

This triggers two common approaches in sales and marketing types. The first, probably the most common, and well disguised when presented by the guru community, never quiet expressed as this, but essentially: “wait till something changes, then pounce”. To which I say, there is no sales metric for waiting, do you know why, because it is not your job to wait, it is your job to sales happen.

The second, a bit more logical, is to try to minimize the fear and risk associated with changing (to your product), by putting a lot of effort into proving why your offering is better, safer, and economically more sound that the buyer’s current circumstance. Unfortunately in the process we are pushing up against the buyer’s safety zone, heightening their fear of the unknown. Every feature and benefit we recite causes them to cling more firmly to the safety of the status quo. We unintentionally work against ourselves.

Given all this, why not turn you efforts to undermining where they are now? Rather than trying to entice them to go where you want them to go, introduce some doubt and uncertainty into where they are now, and where their current path will lead them. The one emotion that is worse than the fear of the unknown is the fear of the known. If I can focus the discussion on why the current situation is untenable, why if they left it unaddressed it will bring exposure, the discussion turns to how to avoid that, rather than avoiding the risk of change, the unknown.

If you know how to articulate why your product is truly better for the buyer, what the benefits are, financial, productivity, time advantage, etc., then you have the speaking points you’ll need to turn the table. Use that knowledge to develop the type of questions that drive the discussion to WHY NOT for the status quo, rather than WHY change. Your why is the safe alternative to the why not.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

“Leveraging Value from Engaging the Buyer to Closing the Sale” – A Sales Association Webinar
Tuesday, October 30 – 2 p.m. EST / 1 p.m. CST / Noon MST / 11 a.m. PST (1 hour in length)

On Tuesday October 30, I have the privilege to deliver a webinar for The Sales Association – I will be talking to specific steps sellers can take to delivering and leveraging value throughout the sale.

Almost every conversation about selling starts or ends with the concept of value. At the same time, there are as many different understandings and definitions of value as there are sellers and buyers. Without a clear and actionable definition of value, many conversations between buyers and sellers are less than effective, and do not help create a buy.

Starting with a clear definition of value, participants will learn the five-step process to leveraging value throughout the sale, from the initial engagement to winning the client.

Steps include:

Identifying and validating buyer’s objectives
Understanding why buyers really buy
Why Buyers buy and don’t buy from you and your company
Converting the above to Impact Questions for quality conversations
A structured follow-through approach to maximize impact and progress

Participants will learn how to use this process to create alignment with the buyer, their objectives and buying process.

Click Her to Register Now!

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Today I have a bunch of things to do, so we’ll make things short, sweet and to the point, I need to prioritize and maximize my time. Coincidentally, the point of the post is about improving the results of your prioritization process, extending the return on effort.

We have all heard the expression “practice makes perfect”, there is no debate that doing something repeatedly, will help you do it better if not perfect. This is great as long as you are doing the right thing, or doing something the right way; perfecting a bad practice is not that good no matter how perfect you make it.

Forget for a moment how you prioritize your target competitive accounts, there are a number of methods you can use to make sure you are pursuing the right opportunities, based on your specific criteria and measures. It is what happens once that list is complete that I want to focus on. Change this one thing now, and you’ll close the year strong and set yourself up for 2013.

10% of sellers, will take the resulting list, put their Amazing Kreskin hat on, and proceed to second guess their work, and divine using their mystic powers who they should call, in reality who they should not call, and why, amazing powers I’ve yet to master; but I have made my numbers, where many of these psychic sellers do not.

Another 15% – 20%, will do the right thing, and pursue the best opportunities first; start with the A’s, B’s second, and C’s last. Apportioning 50% of their prospecting time to the A’s, B’s 30%, C’s 20%. Some will add a filter to make sure that the A’s represent the highest value, and greatest probability for closing.

The rest of the sellers will hit the list in alphabetical order, the way they are spit out is the way they will work the list. I am not going to change that here, but let me make a suggestion, start at the back of the list, start with the Z’s, they have never been called. Here is why, regardless of what people will tell you, activity does lead to interaction, interaction leads to prospects, prospects lead to sales; and all these things require time and your focus.

As people hit the list, improve their approach, they do get better with practice, which means as they get past the letter A and B, their prospecting is getting better, by the time they get to E, they are in a groove, and getting more traction. By the time they get past G, they have opportunities in their pipeline, they have real things to keep them busy, and they have success. And what happens to most sales people when they get some customers? They stop prospecting and “look after the customer”. As a result, the companies at the end of the alphabet have a very small percentage of sellers calling them.

Go ahead, give them a call, surprise them and yourself.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Nothing bothers me more than when a rep uses any expression relating to selling that includes a variation of “throw me a bone”. You hear this a lot especially in industries that are highly competitive, the buyers have viable options, and the risk of commoditization looms large.

Usually while discussing their prospecting efforts with an account currently serviced by a competitor, reps tells me how they follow up with and touch the client, in the hope that the buyer will “throw me a bone, and I can prove myself.”

You may say this is not prevalent, but it is much broader than most want to believe; especially when you look past the semantics, and focus on the underlying reality. Many will phrase it differently, but the underlying attitude, is passive and lacks a cohesive action plan that permeates sales at all levels.

It certainly symptomatic of sellers who don’t understand the real value they can bring to a client, cannot articulate the value in a meaningful way, or both. This in itself is not the worst thing sellers can face, as overcoming this is a question of will, learning and practice. But the reps are not alone to blame in perpetuating this sheepish way of selling. Many are left to themselves to figure things out, to define their value and how to communicate that to the various audiences involved in buying their offerings. Many managers, who are really just old sellers with an “attaboy”, encourage their teams to do as they did, after all they must know what they are doing, they got the “attaboy”.

Some get no support from their marketing teams. They produce lovely brochures, cool 3-D picture of the product, specs galore, not one line about business application, or how it may help the buyer beyond what the buyer already knows. All culminating in the product comparing columns on the back page, with of course our product having the most check marks (even when no one cares about any of the features).

What angers me is the lack of willingness by many to do anything about the situation. Not realizing that the effort to change it is not only less than the effort needed to continue to sell in this submissive and ineffective way. Yes there is a learning curve that requires time and effort, and may at times cause bruising. But once mastered, it require less ongoing effort to maintain, especially if you put processes in place. Processes that include reviewing current engagements to understand, get a head of and respond to market trends and continue to be of value to the market and your buyers.

You may think this is only prevalent in simple, perhaps commoditized type of sales, not true. I recently met with a counterpart who works with large ticket items, high six figures, what many may call a complex sale, and he sees the same issue, what he calls “bone catchers”. Now I am all for relationships, but there has to be more to a relationship than a seller standing on his hind legs wagging his tail waiting for a buyer to flick a bone and some crumbs their way.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

All the pundits tell us that in “today’s economy”, buyers are just too busy to deal with anything unless they deem it to be critical to their success. This is why many sellers have difficulty getting through, they fail to penetrate the “prove value to me” wall erected by prospects, and in effect they fail the BS test. So if one does get through, it should not only be recognized, but should at the very least begin a real exchange about the buyers objectives and how the seller is in a position to advance or help the prospect achieve them. But as it turns out, this is not always the case.

It seems that in many instances, buyers and sellers enter a game of “Sales Hide and Seek”, rather than a real business discussion, taking an ambiguous and unproductive approach rather than a direct discussion of the issues and potential answers. Both parties are guilty, and both pay the price by extending the sales cycle, costing time, money and opportunity. The buyer takes longer to implement the solution, at times the wrong solution, taking longer to realize the benefits delivered. Sellers extend their cycle and limit their opportunity to sell and engage with more buyers or other real buyers. Even as the buyer becomes a customer, they are impacted by the company spending more money and resources to selling than to R&D and product improvement which directly impacts the customer base.

Sellers are told to go for relationships rather than dealing directly with issues, trying too hard to be genteel, rather than provoking, and getting to the root of the issue. Winning the buyer’s respect and trust by willing to deal with tough situations, not hiding from them. Rather than missing repeated opportunities to demonstrate their understanding, their expertise and ability to make a difference especially in though areas. Sellers talk about “finding the pain”, but only go for superficial pain which leads the buyer to hide their intent, as they lose confidence in the buyer due to their inability to deal with the buyer’s real challenges. Circling issues, only focusing on “pain” they can see and think they can solve. With this soft approach, rather than being provocative and relevant, makes these sellers look like kids playing hide and seek.

The buyers are no better, one can argue worse. They give up an hour of their valuable “crazy busy time”, only to make it unproductive for them, their companies, and the seller. They clam up when asked direct questions, as though the seller was the opposition, rather than a professional investing time and resources to help the buyer reach their objectives. Again one can’t blame them if they figure out early that they are meeting with a light weight sellers. But I have attended a number of sales calls where the rep had prepared well, asked the right questions, going to the root of the buyers objectives and barriers to reaching them, only to be met with an evasive buyer, incomplete in their answers, not sharing key data, or access to those who have answers. Again, looking more like a game of hide and seek rather than a process for improvement.

In the end, the goal is not to lay blame for the almost counterproductive time wasted by both sellers and buyers, but to encourage both parties to work towards a common goal, if one is plausible and/or possible, rather than playing a time consuming game of hide and seek. The game has no winner, just adds cost and time to the sale.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Hanging Out with @GlobeSmallBiz: How to develop a Winning Sales strategy

Last week I had the opportunity to participate in The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business’ Small Business interview series on Google+ Hangout. As the title suggests, we discussed a number of topics relating to sales, and sales challenges important for small business owners.

This was not only a great use of the technology, but we covered a number of key issues potential pitfalls, and opportunities for small business owners.

Take a look, comment, enjoy, and profit.

httpvh://youtu.be/A3FEyN2B4dE

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

1 2 3 4 Next »

What's In Your Pipeline?

Dude, You’re Gonna Need More Than 15 Minutes3

Impact Questions – Sales eXchange 1870

Who Is a Better Closer? – Sales eXchange 17946

Are You Qualifying for Budget or Out Of A Sale?77

‘Why Not’, Not Why83

A Sales Association #Webinar31

Z to A – Sales eXchange 17042

Don’t Wait For A Bone!109

Playing Sales Hide and Seek – Sales eXchange 16899

Hanging Out with @GlobeSmallBiz: How to develop a Winning Sales strategy45