For many years the legend of the 600lb sales gorilla or Alpha Hyper Masculine ‘sales superstar’ has been strutting the hallways and boardrooms of businesses. Often revered for achieving top of the league ladder sales results, yet feared by many for their aggressive, manipulative, ego centric, demanding, intimidating antics, countless CEO’s and sales managers have allowed these sales prima donnas to remain in their sales teams but at what cost to their sales team and their business?

Too scared to confront them about their behaviours or sales tactics for fear of losing their sales contribution, many sales managers and their sales team have simply suffered in the presence of these sales bullies. In my many years of working with sales teams and sales managers I have met my fair share of Alpha Hyper Masculine sales bullies and their distressed managers and sales teams. Here’s what I have observed:

1. They have the ear of the Managing Director/CEO who thinks they can do no wrong.
2. They won’t let the business anywhere near their customers.
3. They tell tall tales about their legendary sales conquests.
4. They refuse to be coached, counselled or trained.
5. They are very demanding, always complaining about the lack of resources and taking up the time of countless people to do their bidding, leaving the other sales people to fend for themselves.
6. They often exhibit bad behaviour, and may be heard swearing or making inappropriate comments to their colleagues or other staff who are often too fearful to report them (see point 1).
7. They can engage in questionable sales tactics, yet claim that they are pristine and operate with the utmost of integrity.
8. They claim to know a lot of people and be very well connected.
9. They use actual or implied intimidation to get their way with internal team members.
10. They use charm and manipulation to get their way with key stakeholders.
11. They act with righteous indignation if you question anything about them.
12. They don’t think they need to comply with company policies so often refuse to complete paperwork or keep up to date CRM’s if they think it’s a ‘waste of time’.

You only have to watch the movie ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ to see your fair share of Alpha Hyper Masculine sales bullies. This type of sales culture was revered by a number of industry sectors in the 70’s and 80’s, including real estate, car sales, stock broking, etc. Watching it makes me feel ill, but many sales teams got off on this and even use ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ as a model of how they should sell in some quarters today.

Yet most people watching ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ or meeting their very own Alpha Hyper Masculine sales bullies feel repulsed by them. Often very wary of them, others wonder why they have to tolerate them and why management won’t act. Truth is these sales bullies have never been pulled into line. Their outstanding sales results have somehow bought them immunity from behaving in a civil manner. The smell of money they can bring in has condoned behaviour that has often outweighed the need to act ethically and uphold team values and respectful behaviour. Their bad behaviour has been allowed to manifest without restrictions, ‘oh let him get away with it. Look at the results he pulls in’. These sales gorillas are the direct result of poor quality leadership, lack of clear standards and bad decision making.

What most businesses do not know is that these sales bullies, for all their so called sales success, actually fall well behind the real sales superstars in terms of achieving high level and sustainable sales results who, by contrast, are open minded, curious, collaborative, team oriented, open to learning and aim for partnerships on every level. And these real sales superstars are humble too which is a direct contradiction to the behaviour of the sales bullies.

• So are you currently letting fear hold you and your team hostage by allowing your Alpha Hyper Masculine sales bullies to persist?
• What would happen if you got rid of the sales bullies?
• How would the rest of your team respond when they left?
• What would happen to sales and the clients?

In my experience when the sales bully – the Alpha finally departs, there is an initial sense of shock which quickly gives way to relief and the opportunity for the sales team to really pull together and prosper. The biggest fear of losing the sales bully’s sales power and their clients doesn’t eventuate in the vast majority of cases. In fact it is often revealed that the clients are happy the sales bully has left and look forward to a more open and prosperous relationship with the company concerned and sales grow even more.

I am not suggesting that most leaders intentionally hired these sales bullies or intended for them to manifest however, without clear codes of conduct or values and a proper understanding of what you want by way of ‘ good sales performance’ ‘ you cannot hire or develop the right salespeople to do the right things in the right sales culture.

In his book ‘The No Asshole Rule’, Leigh Buchanan writes about bosses behaving badly. Its thesis – don’t hire jerks, has become public policy in many companies around the world. I would suggest we think clearly about what we want manifested in our sales teams and take a leaf out of Leigh’s book and make sure we employ ‘The No Asshole Rule’ and don’t hire sales jerks.

The post Hiring A 300kg Gorilla Is A Big Mistake! Why? appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Sound familiar?

Your business is growing and diversifying. You’ve experimented with bringing in an inexperienced sales person (who did not work out). You realise you need a more experienced direct sales person, but you don’t know where to go or what to look for. All you know is you need a sales person who is able to prospect for, and win, new business opportunities on a consistent daily basis, however you are not really able to detail anything else. You know your recruitment approach is haphazard at best. And what’s worse, it’s costing you big time.

Or you’re an established business whose been hiring sales people with industry experience from your industry for years but that’s not working any more. You just seem to be getting the same old idea and results.

I’m very familiar with these scenarios. Many businesses, large and small, still find it very difficult to recruit effective sales people.

You see, before I started my own business in 1995, I used to work in sales recruitment where I interviewed over 8,000 B2B sales people and sales managers in the technical, industrial, medical, scientific and building sectors. I have had a lot of experience helping to determine what good sales people and leaders need to have and have researched much better ways of assessing sales talent.

Many people who know me know that I’ve been going on about having a more disciplined structured sales recruitment process and strategy for years. Many people are cynical about sales recruitment. You can hear the sighing or see the eyes rolling, can’t you?

The problem is most people are not trained in effective recruitment practices and yet it is one of the most critical jobs in your business, especially for sales. They often give it to someone else and then blame them when it doesn’t work.

So who is in charge of your sales recruitment process?

You are! Whether you go direct to market or use a recruiter, you hold the key. If you do not own the sales recruitment process you and your business are in big trouble.

I went out on a limb a few years ago and set about building effective and user-friendly sales recruitment processes because they weren’t satisfied with what options they were using. I wanted to give them control so they were in the driver’s seat.

Many sales leaders feel at the mercy of the market when it came to sales recruitment. Especially when using recruitment companies. It was all a bit “black box”.

Now you might think I have an issue with recruitment firms (I am an ex-recruiter myself). In principle I do not, but my advice is “recruit your recruiter”.

Make sure they really do know how to recruit what you need. I am not entirely blaming recruitment firms (sure there are a few shonky ones out there, just as in any industry) but I do believe there is work to be done on both sides.

Here are some of the issues I see plaguing businesses when it comes to having poor sales recruitment outcomes:

Issue 1: The Right Sales Approach Or Sales person

You do not know what type of sales approach or sales person you need to deliver your sales strategy. Ask: Has your strategy and/or marketplace changed recently? If so, how do you need to sell now? Not all sales roles are the same. Be clear about what type of sales approach you need to make your business successful: For instance do you need:

• An ‘expert’ who is bringing new products, ideas or concepts to the market versus an ‘organiser’ working in an established ‘educated’ (about what you do) market place?
• A sales person who can develop long-term viable business relationships with clients or a person who can get around to many people in your customer market and make quick one-off sales?
• An account manager who maintains accounts or someone who can develop new business with new or existing accounts.
• A sales person who can sell expensive quality value products/service or a person who can sell commodities or cheaper price sensitive items?

Issue 2: Sales Competencies

You do not really know how to clearly define, articulate and compare what qualities you want in a good sales person. What skills, knowledge, attitudes and behaviours do your sales people need to demonstrate to be competitive and successful in your marketplace?

For instance, latest research now reveals that high performing sales people also display high levels of emotional intelligence (EI). Know what sales competencies you need.

Issue 3: The Recruitment Process

You do not use or have a logical structured recruitment process to objectively assess, compare and select candidates. Providing structure is probably the single technique most likely to help in improving the reliability of a selection method or process. Use a structured recruitment process to follow that allows for you to compare and contrast applicants in a more disciplined and consistent manner.

• Use the Key Selection Criteria (competencies mentioned above) as the framework.
• Standardise all selection activities.
• Rank the criteria: Are they essential, desirable or nice to have? And select in that order.

Research shows that the average percent increase in output from using a structured multi-assessment selection approach (structured behavioural competency interviews, relevant psychometric assessments, simulation exercises, structure reference, etc.) is approximately 2.5 times greater in sales jobs than in low-complexity non-sales jobs

Issue 4: Outreach Approach

You do not have or use an integrated recruitment strategy to find good sales people. How do you find the “right” sales people for your business and how do prospective sales candidates find out about your business?

Just like sales, in today’s market you need a combination of “push and pull” contact strategies for finding the right candidates for your business. Advertising alone is not likely to yield the candidates you seek. You are always recruiting sales people even if you do not have a vacancy.

Issue 5: The Usual Suspects

You continue to recruit from your own industry, recycling the same people and do not look outside your industry to refresh the gene pool with new talent. Same old people, same old ideas, same old results. Need I say more?

Issue 6: Benchmarking

You do not screen your recruiters for “best practice” nor do you brief them properly. It is a very costly exercise to get recruitment wrong and many people so not have the time to do it themselves.

However many are equally sceptical about the real value of using recruitment consultants. It is as difficult to find a good recruiter, as it is to find a good sales person. If you are going to use a recruiter, ask them what processes they use to source and select candidates.

Check them against the processes recommended above to see if they use “best practice” methods or just “wing it”.

By giving the recruitment consultant a clear job and person specification and competency profile you are able to clearly articulate and request what you need and what they need to deliver.

No more “bums on seats”, thank you very much. The good ones will tell you who is available in the market place, what each type of person is attracting salary wise, and most importantly help you find the right sales person for your business.

Being in control of your recruitment process is very important. Not being able to articulate what and who you need to perform the job well is very risky. As you can see it’s all in the preparation. Putting in the work on getting it right up front and then sticking to a plan really pays off.

The positive feedback I am getting from sales managers and senior managers when they do follow the process is so rewarding. For instance:

• “It really works! I was able to make a selection decision based much more on the evidence not my emotions or prejudices.”
• “I’m not getting caught up in my own dialogue and can really concentrate on them.”
• “I didn’t think it would, but it saves me so much time and money.”
• “I don’t take any one out of desperation and more.”
• “When we follow the process, my co-interviewer and I come to the same conclusion time and time again and we have the evidence to prove it.”
• “I feel in control and are able to make more informed decisions.”
• “I know how to work with my recruiter to my best advantage.”

I hope this helps.

The post Sales Recruitment – 6 Issues You Need To Address To Get It Right appeared first on Head Of Sales.

We’ve all been there: a sea of people, pulled together from across the country or region, locked in a windowless room with artificial light, seated at round tables with mints and water, patiently waiting for the parade of presenters to finish their ‘Death by PowerPoint’ presentations so we can get to the coffee station during the day and then the bar at night to start really engaging with our colleagues. During the day some relief can be found in the smartphones that everyone will be less and less discreetly looking at repeatedly, checking messages and social media for something to actually engage in, as the show drags on.

Every now and then the boredom is punctuated by some lively motivational speaker who tells us ‘You can do anything!’ (insert FIST PUMP), ‘Just believe in yourself’ (insert HIGH FIVE), ‘Be positive and great things will happen for you’ (insert VISUALISATION EXERCISE), ‘Now turn and tell the person next to you why you are so awesome and deserve endless riches’ (insert GROUP ACTIVITY), ‘Think about the challenges you have overcome that made you who you are’ (insert STORYTELLING). And so on.

This interlude is like a sugar hit. Perks people up for a short while, and then fades again.

The sales conference may have a big awards night or extracurricular activities, an entertainment extravaganza filled with lots of fun things to do, lots of food and drink, lots of prize giving, etc. That is fine, that can be appropriate. On top of that, participants simply might enjoy the location, the hotel, meeting colleagues, getting some time out. But is this what the conference should be all about?

So let’s start to rethink why and how we run sales conferences.

Why have a sales conference?

They are expensive to run and time consuming so we had better make it worth our while. Be clear about what you are actually trying to achieve. If the purpose is to get people together, interact, have a good time away from work, fine. But if it is about selling, sharing or generating knowledge, or any other topics relevant for everyday work, you cannot leave achieving such a goal to chance, or PowerPoint.

Purpose & Context

• There must be an overarching purpose to running a sales conference, a meaningful story and context that people can relate to.
• Set clear goals. What are you trying to achieve by running the sales conference?
  • Launch a new game changing product or service?
  • Reset the culture and team dynamics?
  • Launch the new sales strategy?
  • Bring the team together to focus on new capabilities, competitive edge, etc.?
• Have a plan. A good conference follows a logic thread, a storyline, it systematically builds something up and guides people to this result.

Make sure you are very clear about what you are trying to achieve. And any motivational speakers you bring into the mix must serve this purpose and context. Any extracurricular activities can still add flavour to this mix if planned and done well.

How to run a sales conference

There are a number of simple guidelines to follow to get your sales conference right:

• Actively engage people from the outset. Make it clear that they are not meant to be passive recipients of whatever kind of messages.
• Set context and purpose, and then create the right environment for active engagement. Make sure your preparation work has identified not only what is important to the organisation, but also what is relevant for the participants.
• Creating meaningful engagement acts as a catalyst for positive change and momentum. Giving your audience the chance to participate and contribute creates more buy-in than most motivational speakers.
• Rather than talking at the audience and telling them what we want them to hear and do, why not turn it around and make the audience the content providers, the active participants and the bringers of wisdom? Turn the audience into active contributors.

We have helped many companies turn around their sales conferences into dynamic actively engaged events that ignite opportunity and lead people to the future where they feel a sense of ownership and can-do moving forward beyond the conference.

Designing activities that stimulate communication and tap into the wisdom of the room in more concrete, meaningful ways is key.

Here is an example:

Recently, we started working with a new client who had just taken over the role as head of sales. We helped him prepare the new sales strategy, including their value proposition, sales messaging and a new solution sales approach. He had an upcoming sales conference for 150 people to kick off this new strategy. This was a make or break situation as the previous sales strategies and sales conferences had fallen short of expectations and went nowhere in the long run. Yet his people were desperately wanting direction and purpose; they loved their company and wanted to see it succeed.

Our client wanted the sales conference to deliver the following:

1. Re-energise and focus the sales teams to a true customer centric sales strategy and get them excited about how they fit into it.
2. Explain and align them to the company’s purpose and values.
3. Give them one view across all of the businesses and organisational capability.
4. Set out a high level sales strategy and plan, and then set some goals for the year, for both managers and their teams.
5. Help team members have a clear understanding of each of the key customer value propositions across their offerings.
6. Ensure the team members understand what they will be prioritising in the coming 12 months, and what success looks like if they achieve those priorities.
7. Get individual teams started to develop their own plans for how they will contribute to the overall plan.
8. On top of that ensure that everyone will have fun along the way.

Our client wanted to hear people saying:

“That was the best and most inspiring sales conference I have ever been to”.

“I know where I fit in, and what I’ve got to do, and I’m excited about the future”.

And that is what he got.

We designed a sales conference that was full of enriching activities that all linked back to his goals for the team. Day 1 set the scene and Day 2 became an active ‘market place’, a beehive of purposeful activity, focused on starting the transition from a culture of transactional selling to a solution selling culture.

Case study driven and focused on diversity, teamwork, learning and active communication, the teams were empowered to learn all about what their company offered their clients – products, services, solutions, people and value. Instead of enduring a dozen slideshows about company division, products and services, 150 people worked simultaneously and actively in small teams across the day assessing situations, solving problems, learning about new opportunities and solutions, learning from each other, getting to know each other.

As a ‘side-effect’ they also gathered all the information that otherwise would have been presented to them in the traditional way. But in the context of real life case studies they could immediately contextualise and use this information. It stuck right away. The owners of all this information also were happy, because they had the opportunity not only to present, but to engage and interact with their audience and hence position themselves much more effectively.

At 4pm on Day 2, the conference was still pumping. People were on task actively engaged and supporting each other. The energy was focused and aligned. It never waned from 8.30am on Day 1.

We had many people come to us saying how wonderful this was. How happy they were. This energy has carried over into the workplace. Now active work is happening to bring about the changes needed and everybody is on board and wanting to make it happen.

A sales conference can’t change everything overnight but it can ignite opportunity, purpose and agency. It’s about engaging the very people who attend and making them the active participants and leaders of change.  When sales conferences are designed with the participants in mind they can:

• Help develop and reinforce a culture and team that is highly engaged and performing in the market place.
• Create a sense of belonging and understanding of where they fit in, and mutual obligation to each other to deliver for customers.
• Build confidence that there is a plan in place for teams to follow and be supported to deliver, but also that there will be accountability for outcomes
• Present a clear direction of what is expected of everyone and where they fit in.
• Present the opportunity to be supported and challenged by each other
• Create a sense of ownership and engagement over what everyone is accountable for.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

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Let’s look at the merit of nerd-geek lead sales recovery first.

The 21^st Century world is getting more difficult to navigate. Gone are the days of being first to market with a new product and having a reasonable lead time to win the hearts and minds of our target markets by spruiking the obvious benefits of our offer to all and sundry and making easy sales.

Today, in a sea of overwhelming choice, discerning buyers are looking for leverage, a leading edge, better productivity and cost control, business value, surety of supply and so on. They are looking to engage with people who have a depth and breadth of knowledge in their area of expertise, people who can engage in business discussions that respect complexity and offer ideas and solutions that address the opportunities of both today and the future. This requires a higher order of thinking and a skill set that allows for effective communication and collaboration. 

Many 20^th century salespeople have found the move to more complex thinking and business solution selling difficult, relying on old forms of persuasion, charm, friendship and showmanship; however, many have been found wanting by their clients and are likely destined for obscurity if they don’t transition to a higher order thinking.

Step in the wide range of engineers, technicians, mathematicians and scientists who are schooled in higher order thinking. As cited in the 30 June 2016 FINSIA article, ‘Solving the STEM Paradox’, overall, individuals with STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) backgrounds and training are able to be better problem solvers in technology-rich environments — they’re better equipped for new business models, new markets and new sources of economic growth, academics suggest.

The irony ‘Solving the STEM Paradox’ highlights is that ‘They’re supposed to be the most desirable candidates in the employment market: the saviours of services-driven economy, the diviners of economic growth. And yet individuals with education and backgrounds in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, remain underemployed compared to the broader population.’

Addressing the STEM paradox and building better sales teams

I want to suggest that one way to address both the STEM paradox and crafting and generating better sales teams is to bring in more engineers, technicians, mathematicians and scientists into our sales teams.

I have found with the vast majority of technical people I have met in my life (and that’s a lot) that they love solving problems and being useful. However, many of them were not taught how to be ‘user friendly’. They confused telling with helping which often alienated people so we have been training and coaching them in how to make effective contact with people and understand where they are coming from before they fix anything, and it’s working very well. What we have done is equip them with a whole new skill set that complements their technical assets.

Solution Selling as a team sport that pays big dividends

Get these techies, geeks and nerds working with account managers and BDMs as key members of client facing teams and then the magic really begins to unfold.  One of our key clients in the mining and construction space has ensured that all their client facing people –sales leaders, account managers, technical managers, customer service representatives and technical site supervisors– have all been included in the roll out of their sales strategy and go-to-market action plan; instructed in their sales process map and levels of accountability, and then trained and coached over 10 months to take their value proposition to market.  This has resulted in a range of positive outcomes for the team/business including being the only division in the world that is ahead of budget and making profitable sales in a declining market and having a tight, unified team that knows how to sell real value and find and win profitable business opportunities when everyone else is dropping prices out of desperation. This team knows that harnessing its depth of technical knowledge and industry experience combined with skillful sales/key account planning and solution selling capabilities are their secret weapons in the race to win share of mind and profitable business with their customers.

So here is a whole new career path for the engineers, technicians, mathematicians and scientists and whole new recruitment pool for employers and sales leaders.

I would take advantage of this if I were you. With the barrier between customers and the rest of the organisation disappearing, more technical people are finding themselves engaging with customers directly. Whether in direct selling roles, technical support roles, on-site technical roles, let’s engage with more of our technical colleagues and give them the gift of good selling skills and resources.

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Many so called “experts” claim that there are two types of salespeople – Hunters and Farmers.

Salespeople, so these experts claim, are either one or the other. Consequently they fit one sales position or another. In my experience, having spent decades working with salespeople at every level in a wide variety of segments, salespeople don’t fit into these neat stereotypes.

The myth about Hunters and Farmers in Selling has been overtaken by a business reality.

Before we crack the myth let’s take a look at where the concept came from in the first place.

The person credited with starting the concept of ‘Hunters and Farmers’, which has been adopted by some sales managers and many business leaders, was the American sometime radio talk show host and psychoanalyst, Thom Hartmann. He initially proposed the farmer / hunter metaphor to explain the origins of what we now know, as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD*) to help his own son (who suffered from ADHD) adjust to the condition.

Some of the characteristics that have been defined for people who have ADHD include:

Find it hard to concentrate; makes careless mistakes; does not seem to listen; avoids difficult tasks; becomes easily distracted and are disorganised and forgetful; does not follow through on instructions and can’t finish work.

This (hunter / farmer) theory was extrapolated to those salespeople who are labelled Hunters implying that they have ADHD and anti-selling contradicting characteristics. However, there is no proof to assert that ADHD and Hunters are associated in anyway. This is how myths start. What we do know is that salespeople come in all shapes and sizes and many can be successful given the right conditions.

The term Hunter has become a default term for new business development. It is not uncommon to hear sales managers describe Hunters as hard selling, cold-callers who deal with buyers where benefits are limited to narrowly framed needs. Farmers on the other hand are often viewed as being more “customer-centric”, solutions oriented and able to develop trust. If one listened to the “experts” Hunters are brutish, self-centred and uncaring, and Farmers are gentle focused, sensitive and trustworthy. If that wasn’t bad enough, many recruitment consultants conduct personnel assessments to identify if a candidate is either a Farmer or Hunter.

A popular tool used to assess sales personalities and identify “the right kind of personality for a salesperson” is a ‘personality profile’ assessment known as DiSC**. This assessment comes up with these same conclusions, though it doesn’t make use of the descriptive titles Hunter or Farmer. Usually, these reports are delivered with a bullet-point summary about the characteristics of the person and the kind of work that should be assigned to the individual.

The reports include recommendations for hunters and those candidates who are farmers similar to this:

The candidate is mostly a Hunter and is best suited to:

• Bringing in new business
• Working in new sales territories
• Focusing on prospect conversion
• Sales that require minimal post-sales follow-up
• Tends to sell best when on his / her own
• Comfortable in pushing for a close

The candidate is mostly a Farmer and is best suited to:

• Optimising sales in existing accounts
• Comfortable in identifying additional buyers
• Proactive in building relationships
• Matches product benefits to diverse needs
• Good at solving customer problems Demonstrates attention to detail Meticulous in fulfilling administrative responsibilities

Here is the challenge. If one assumes that Hunters have specific characteristics that Farmers don’t, and vice versa, then:

• Hunters aren’t interested in solving customer problems and farmers aren’t interested in closing deals; yet, in today’s market place, salespeople unable to help buyers solve problems and then offer solutions with some degree of confidence, aren’t likely to succeed.

• Farmers have some unique ability that gives them exposure to senior executives and hunters can’t develop trust that is the foundation of a sound business relationship with C-Level decision makers and yet, if salespeople can’t get to build trust-based relationships with decision-makers they aren’t likely to get the business irrespective of whether they are hunters or farmers.

The costly consequences of maintaining the Hunter / Farmer Myth

These conclusions (made by various consultants) make no sense whatsoever. Employing hunter and farmer sales teams increases costs and often confuses buyers. In addition, the potential benefits of shared knowledge, experiences and synergies are lost. Worse, sales managers, already under pressure to manage complex sales teams, are now being asked to lead two diverse groups, often with conflicting objectives (hunters with a supposedly new business focus and farmers with a relationship focus).

Effective sales development has demonstrated that with the right training and coaching in a sales organisation that is strategically aligned, and where sales managers are doing their job in leading (rather than merely managing) the sales force, coaching and mentoring, then the right type of profile for professional salespeople is a more realistic blended characterisation of both hunter and farmer.

Those organisations who have a better understanding and develop their own benchmark for what ‘good salespeople’ should look like, and should be doing, are the ones that are gaining incremental share of spend and capturing more of the support of their target market, simply because buyers are working with people who are professionals rather than people who have only half the competence needed for the job.

*we acknowledge that the medical jury is out about the authenticity of ADHD as an actual disorder.

** DISC is simple quadrant profiling system and is similar to MBTI. They are most useful in helping people understand different communication and decision making styles of people. These tools were never designed as proper psychometric assessment tools and they do not provide an in-depth analysis of the intricacies of personality. However, many people still use them when recruiting

The post Cracking The Myth Of Sales Hunters & Farmers appeared first on Head Of Sales.

• Relationship Selling – Develop strong trust-based relationships to encourage buyers to make a commitment (1990’s – Mike Bosworth)
• Solutions Selling – Work with customers to develop a mutual understanding of the solutions that would be a best fit (2000’s)
• Challenger Sale – Challenge customers to think differently while controlling the sales process (2011 – The Corporate Executive Board)

1990s to 2000s

Mike Bosworth began his career in 1972 with Xerox and from 1976 to 1982 was the primary architect and deliverer of Xerox sales training – PSS. In 1983, Bosworth founded his company Solution Selling – a sales training organisation. In 1993 he published Customer Centric Selling, proposing a solutions orientation to sales. Like Needs Satisfaction and SPIN, this version of solution selling proposed a number of distinct phases:

1. Pre-call planning and research
2. Stimulating interest
3. Establishing the critical business issues
4. Mapping the organisation
5. Negotiating access to senior decision-makers
6. Managing the product evolution
7. Negotiating
8. Closing

The flaw in this version of solution selling is that it’s not “solution selling” oriented. Phase 6 “Managing the product evolution” indicates that this system is still about the product, solution selling is not. What research has shown is that Solution Selling is about how customers view solutions, not how salespeople define them. In fact, all of the methods that support real Solution Selling encourage salespeople to work with their customers to gain an understanding of what the customer believes is an ideal fit solution.

As in the Blue Sheet approach used by Miller Heiman in Strategic Selling, solutions salespeople are expected to master a process for establishing strategic alignment between themselves and the buyer by going through the visioning process model described above.

Since the 1990s sales organisations have been bombarded with a host of methodologies; almost all of them shades of either PSS (Needs Satisfaction Selling) or SPIN (Consultative Selling).

2010s

Now we have many different sales specialists, consultants, psychologists and academics all working closely with salespeople and customers with the purpose of trying to identify what is really required in the world of selling.

No one individual that we could find can lay claim to being the parent (or founder) of Solution Selling. Equally important, not one authority can lay claim to having identified the perfect solution selling proposition. It’s been a process of synthesis and observation, trial and error but most importantly, it’s been the observation and the discussions with customers that has finally resulted in the realities of solution selling today.

Historically, customers needed salespeople. Initially they needed salespeople to inform them because they had little access to information. They also had limited choice. Over the last century, but more particularly, over the last decade or so, the same customers have been overwhelmed with information. They don’t need salespeople to provide information, they need salespeople to help them wade through the masses of available information to find the salient facts and identify the best fit solution.

Salespeople are no longer purveyors of the latest news about the latest gadgets, inventions and ideas. They certainly aren’t necessarily the first port of call for customers who are looking for a particular solution to a pressing challenge. They most definitely are not even a consideration for the purchase of commoditised items that require little technical knowledge or understanding.

In this paradigm the role of the sales professional has changed. Now, even more than when the concept was first developed in the 1970s, salespeople have to be consultative. They need to be business people who can sell, rather than salespeople who understand business. They need to have the skills to establish and fast track trusted relationships with a range of decision-makers in the variety of organisations with which they work.

One need only spend a week in the field, meeting with customers to know the game has changed. Sales strategies and tactics that worked well in the not too distant past, are no longer enough. Yes, salespeople should bring ideas to customers to help them grow their business and solve business problems. That’s nothing new. That was proposed as the underlying premise of PSS in 1968; by Miller Heiman (Strategic Selling) in the late 1970s, by Neil Rackham (SPIN) in the 1980s; by Mike Bosworth in the 1990s (Customer Centric Selling) and even by Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People – 1938).

Perhaps the closest to a revolution in selling since the 1968-1970s metamorphosis was the evolution of Solution Selling around 2000 – a method that evolved as a result of customer demands and expectations that forced sales professionals to re-think their approach.

The over-load of information, access to massive choice of hardly differentiated products and services (even at a complex level), and the increase in influence that buyers had on sales, coupled with pressure to reduce costs and improve profits of the buying organisations, forced salespeople to open up, share control of the sales and partner with customers to identify real and meaningful solutions.

In this era, buyers were (and still are) willing to identify preferred vendors, supplies and service providers, but they expect them to be more flexible. They want their suppliers to invest in understanding their business imperatives and then develop solutions that deliver more profits at both lower cost and less risk. Customers, not salespeople, define a solution and sales learned quickly that it would either adapt to this new environment or perish.

Solution Selling is a sales method that has been, and continues to be, driven by customer demands.

In November 2011 Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson published The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation. This book rapidly became a bestseller based on the premise that sales success isn’t just about building relationships with customers, it is also about challenging them. Authors of the book, Dixon and Adamson, studied thousands of sales representatives, across an array of industries around the US. This conclusion validated what David Ogilvy (1911–1999), the advertising guru responsible for developing relationship marketing as a concept, said back in the early 1990s, that relationships opened the door and gave the salesperson an opportunity to pitch their argument. Relationships even allowed the salesperson and sales organisation to make a mistake or two. Because a relationship existed the salesperson was given a second chance. But “in and of itself” (Ogilvy quotations) relationships won’t generate business…”

The Challenger Sale also says that the model shouldn’t just be a sales process but rather a company-wide initiative that incorporates other functional areas including marketing, product development, manufacturing and strategy, which is what Peter Drucker referred to in his book The Age of Discontinuity (1953): Organisations keen on being customer focused needed to adapt their approach to helping their customers realise their goals and objectives. “The purpose of business is to satisfy the customer’s needs. The consequence of satisfying customer needs, is making a profit.”

According to the authors (of The Challenger Sale), to sell in a business-to-business context solutions salespeople must approach customers with unique insights that show them how they can save or make money, as it was stated by PSS, in the way of pushing salespeople to introduce benefits in the form of dollars that could be created or saved, and later Strategic Selling (Miller Heiman – 1995) which stressed the importance of selling dollars earned or saved.

The Challenger Sale also recommends that instead of a bludgeoning customers with endless facts and features about the company and products, salespeople should tailor their sales message to the customer’s specific needs and objectives. This reflects what the Fuller Brush company did in 1928 with its massive door-to-door sales force and powerful sales management led by Albert Teetsel. Teetsel told salespeople not to overwhelm housewives with too many facts about the different brushes they had to offer. “Quickly establish what the best brush would be for the housewife and then stick to the basic feature of making the house cleaning easier and quicker, giving the lady of the house time to enjoy listening to the radio. Facts and figures only confuse customers”, said Teesel.

This sales methodology also recommends that salespeople should be more assertive pushing back when necessary in taking control of the sale. This advice was shown to be flawed by Miller Heiman in Strategic Selling, Mike Bosworth in Customer Centric Selling and even Neil Rackham in SPIN, simply because customers do not like to be antagonised, and certainly resist being controlled.

That doesn’t mean that salespeople have to be wimps. Customers expect salespeople to have strong views. They want salespeople to understand the world in which they are operating, and to have sufficient confidence in their own organisation and the solutions they are proposing, to put up some argument based on a valid business reason. But they don’t expect salespeople to try to manipulate them.

The Challenger Sale defines the attributes of successful salespeople. But, the logic is somewhat flawed. For example, by attempting to present salespeople who are good at relationship building as being too supportive and too generous with their time, as opposed to what they identify as the “ideal” – The Challenger – who loves to debate.

Challenger Salespeople do several things that, according to the authors, make them different and successful: they always have a different view of things, they love to debate, they love to control the sales call, they understand the customer’s business and they push their customers.

However:
• If a salesperson didn’t have a different point of view, what would be the reason for a prospect to meet with them? If all the salesperson has to offer is already known, then the buyer can more cost-effectively do their own research.
• If a salesperson is simply going to meet with customers to prove a point (debate) they are more likely to get thrown out of the meeting, unless the discussion is on equal terms with both buyer and seller sharing opinions with neither striving for one-upmanship.
• And if salespeople still believe they can control the sales call they are living in a fools-paradise. Customers are equal partners in the sale. They share the interaction and would never allow salespeople to control them – the risks are just too high.
• But if salespeople fail to push their customers, if they fail to come up with concepts, ideas and solutions that are radical, then they are offering pedestrian solutions, usually undifferentiated and hardly enough to excite discerning buyers.

What customers do strenuously resist today is dealing with salespeople who know it all; salespeople who attempt to take control or confront decision-making processes.

Customers, particularly in the Australian market and increasingly worldwide, are looking for a collaborative approach to buying and selling, where they can work with sales professionals who bring their in-depth knowledge and understanding of how solutions can be applied and who work with their customers who also have an in-depth knowledge of their own business and challenges. The two – buyer and seller – work collaboratively, in partnership, to develop solutions that deliver the greatest effectiveness and improved efficiency, with the least possible risk at a total cost of ownership that is bearable and justifiable.

The History of Sales Methodology – Part 1 (1900 -1950s)

The History of Sales Methodology – Part 2 (late 1950s – 1980s)

The post The History of Sales Methodology – Part 3 (1990s – 2010’s) appeared first on Head Of Sales.

• Formula / AIDA Selling – Use the same, fixed approach to get Attention, Interest, Desire and Action (1950s – David Ogilvy).
• Needs Satisfaction Selling – 7 step process to uncover needs and introduce benefits (1968 – Don Hammalian and Xerox Corporation).
• Strategic Selling – Use fixed planning process to highlight danger areas and penetrate decision-making process (1970s – Miller Heiman).
• Consultative Selling – Use in-depth questioning techniques to understand customer pain and then consult by helping buyer see impact for themselves (1980’s – Neil Rackham).

Late 1950’s – 1980’s

Towards the latter part of the 1950s salespeople were struggling. Although competition was not as intense as it is today, in a post-war society where factories were overproducing, merely to take up slack in their factory production, there was more product than buyers. Many organisations turned to marketing for assistance. And one of the major recommendations from marketing was to develop niche markets in order to enable sales to focus more effectively on potential buyers. The marketing argument was that if organisations clustered buyers into homogeneous segments – where their needs and behaviour were similar, if not totally identical – sales could develop a formula that would deliver greater success.

Formula Selling is a standardised (canned) approach to selling, based on a fixed sequence of steps, such as that outlined in the very popular “AIDA process”, which does not permit any variation due to changed circumstances or innovative ideas.

AIDA – which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action – is the acronym for the standardised protocol used by salespeople to grab the Attention of a prospect, encourage an Interest in what the salesperson had to offer, stimulate a Desire to buy and then generate an Action which was committing to making a purchase. Although it became prevalent in the 1950s, Formula Selling is still very much in use today by telesales operators in call centres around the world. And AIDA still works in a simple and uncomplicated sales situation, where
the buyer is relatively uninformed and with products or services that are essentially commoditised.

1968

Perhaps the most important evolution in selling took place in 1968 with the development of Needs Satisfaction Selling by Xerox Corporation of the United States.

Interestingly, the stimulus for this revolutionary sales methodology was the need to provide support and assistance to Xerox salespeople who were starting to lose deals to competition, as the Xerox patent on dryphotocopying came to an end.

Investing more than $10 million Xerox developed this powerful sales methodology and sales training programme – a concept that has influenced all training and sales methodologies ever since. The essence of this sales method was that almost nobody wanted to be sold anything. However, people did want to make informed decisions and it was the responsibility of professional salespeople to be in a position to a) understand what customers wanted, and b) be competent in explaining how the benefits of a product would help customers make that informed decision.

Needs Satisfaction Selling was the first structured sales process designed to facilitate the buyer’s decision-making process and assist salespeople overcome some of the resistance prospective customers may have and, at the same time, build stronger working relationships. The phenomenal success of the Xerox method of selling led the organisation to commercialise the concept. Xerox formed a new company (Xerox Learning Systems – XLS) in 1972 with the purpose of selling its sales method and training, known as Professional Selling Skills (PSS), together with a range of other sales development programmes (including speed reading, customer service skills, sales management and interviewing skills).

Don Hammalian who, along with Neill Rackham, was the co-author of PSS explained that at the time Xerox Corporation developed the sales method, it was looking for some way in which it could teach Xerox salespeople to sell solutions in what was rapidly becoming a complex, price sensitive and competitive environment. However, Hammalian did admit that in its initial iterations PSS was a highly manipulative model that was product focused and not one that should be advocated today.

Accepting that the number of steps in the sales method was somewhat arbitrary, Hammalian is justifiably proud that PSS / Needs Satisfaction Selling was the first programme of its type that introduced a sales philosophy, methodology and that was supported with a clear set of skills that could be learned using what was then the latest method in adult learning – Linear Learning.

This process, developed by Xerox and still very much in play today, includes the following seven stages:

1. Planning the sales call
2. Introduce yourself / company and start the sales call
3. Asking questions and probing for insight into the prospect’s business
4. Introduce benefits that would satisfy the needs of the customer
5. Identify and handle objections and other buyer attitudes (scepticism
   and indifference)
6. Close the deal and negotiate terms
7. Follow up the call to ensure customer satisfaction

Since the commercialisation of Needs Satisfaction Selling (in PSS) in the 1970s more and more organisations have introduced different selling techniques, with supporting methodologies, styles and most importantly, training. In fact, one of the major differences between pre and post Needs Satisfaction Selling is that the sales methods developed prior to PSS were attempts (even if they were flawed) at finding ways to improve sales by improving methodologies. Post PSS the development of new sales methods seem to be more like sales training programmes.

Mid 1970s

Although by the mid-1970s customers were really enjoying the power of being better informed and having more choice, there was some gloom on the horizon. OPEC (Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) became a real threat to the global economy with its grip on oil prices that saw oil prices jump from a low of $3 to $12 a barrel, increasing production and transport costs and making buyers more risk averse, more cautious and at the same time, more demanding.

In response to the additional pressure salespeople faced Robert Miller (Kepner Tregoe Consulting) and Stephen Heiman (a former IBM salesman) introduced Strategic Selling.

Strategic Selling was an approach that provided salespeople, already equipped with the basic skills propagated by PSS, with the tools for planning and managing large and complex accounts. Strategic Selling added very little to sales processes, though it did introduce a methodology of planning for large and complex accounts. The methodology that underpins the Strategic Selling approach is, however, flawed, given that no actual skillset was outlined in order to enable salespeople to change their behaviour from product focused selling to complex, consultative selling in large and key accounts.

1980s to early 1990s

One of the more successful sales methodologies that evolved after Needs Satisfaction Selling, was Neil Rackham’s SPIN Selling (Consultative Selling).
The protocol developed and in use in Needs Satisfaction Selling (which by now had become the standard for selling on a global scale), was no longer adequate. Something more was needed. In his classic work, SPIN Selling (Neil Rackham – 1988) showed how fundamental sales skills and techniques (as proposed by PSS) could be used to ask the right kind of questions and actually reduce the need to sell, stimulating the opportunity for professional salespeople to consult.

One of the most common strategies in almost all of the post PSS sales methods (and most particularly in Rackham’s SPIN) is best described as the “hurt and rescue” approach to selling. The salesperson finds out the problem the customer has and identifies what “hurts” the customer and then “rescues” the customer by introducing the features and benefits of the products being sold.

SPIN took the concept of “hurt and rescue” to a new level. Gone was the concept of identifying and handling customer objections. Although SPIN still relied on an introduction and pre-call research, the entire focus of this Consultative Selling method was based on using questioning techniques to help customers become self-aware. SPIN relied on four different questions to help customers “rescue” themselves:

Situational Questions in which the salesperson made an attempt to find out some background that could be used to gauge the buyer’s business situation and understand the context of the issues that would be used in the sales process.

Problem Questions were asked to uncover what “hurt” the prospect. The trap here, created by asking these types of questions so early in the sales cycle, was that salespeople would ask questions related to the problems the customer had, that could be rescued by the salesperson’s
products. So, although SPIN positioned itself as a consultative, solutions oriented sales method, very much like PSS, it was another way to sell the company’s products rather than to really solve the buyer’s problems by providing a solution. Perhaps the only real difference was the depth to which SPIN took the questioning techniques in its more consultative approach.

Implication Questions were asked to bridge the gap between what the salesperson’s products or services could do, and the “hurt” uncovered by the salesperson. So instead of telling the customer what the features and benefits were, the salesperson would ask the customer to visualise the implications of the problem without having the product / solution.

Needs Payoff Questions represented the final phrase of SPIN. Having identified what hurt the prospect it was now up to the salesperson to rescue them by giving them something to identify how a solution would resolve the pain that was being felt.

Overall, SPIN was, together with PSS, a combination of the most revolutionary approaches to selling. Whilst PSS introduced features and benefits with a focus on understanding the customer, SPIN took that process further and involved the customer in a consultative approach to selling. The key issue is why these two programmes – Need Satisfaction Selling and the Consultative Selling approach – were so successful? The reality is quite simple – they were both developed in response to the increased sophistication and demands of customers.

As far back as 1968 Xerox recognised that customers want choice. They don’t want salespeople to come in and tell them what to do, they want salespeople to consult with them, to be advisers and to help them make the right decision from a plethora of choices. They want salespeople to be sufficiently well trained to understand business and brave enough to propose new and sometimes revolutionary concepts as solutions. They expect professional salespeople to challenge their thinking and in that way, introduce new ideas.

Certainly in the case of SPIN, with its highly consultative approach to selling, the sales method is about the salesperson gaining an understanding of the customer. That foundation, laid by people such as Hammalian and Rackham is as relevant today, as it was then. Most of the sales methods offered today are based on PSS and/or SPIN, with added input from psychology and new research. In doing so, the new methodologies have clarified some elements of the former methods and given us a more refined evolution of what PSS and SPIN were.

Since the 1980s a range of other organisations also started developing sales methods, usually designed to support and promote their sales training programmes rather than to introduce improvements in sales methodology.

The History of Sales Methodology – Part 1 (1900 -1950s)

The History of Sales Methodology – Part 3 (1990s – 2010’s)

The post The History of Sales Methodology – Part 2 (late 1950s – 1980s) appeared first on Head Of Sales.

How can we build effective sales teams for the short and long term?

This is the perennial question that has been asked by sales managers and business leaders for years.

The simple answer is bit by bit, over time by investing wisely in the right things.

Warren Buffett knows a thing or two about investing and his insights and wise counsel hold very true for building highly effective sales teams. Here are some of his famous quotes and how we see them in relation to building sales teams:

1. There are no bonus points for complicated investments. The truly big investment idea can usually be explained in a short paragraph.*
   • This is true for a great sales strategy. A sales strategy should be easily understood by the sales team and the whole business and be expressed in simple language. It should clearly state the purpose of the business and its sales team including which markets we are focusing on; the way we are going to go to market and what values and governance we will stand to when engaging our clients and team members. Go ahead and write a simple paragraph describing your Sales Strategy. Could your sales team follow it easily?
   • We have to stop over-complicating sales teams with the obsessive focus on reporting on the numbers and results only (forecasting, pipeline, big data, results, etc.) at the expense of actually working with our sales teams to get them selling better. You cannot coach results, you can only coach activities. We need to invest in the front end getting salespeople to sell better and then the results will come.
   • Instead of lumping all clients in one massive go-to-market plan we could instead practice micro-segmentation and equip and direct our sales teams about who they need to specifically sell to and why. Result? More targeted sales activities, client conversations, better sales results and happier clients.
     
     
2. Buy businesses that can be run by idiots. I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.
   • We need to stop relying on silver bullet point solutions to run sales teams and operations and start putting in place well-prepared sales operations frameworks and good sales strategies that allow anyone stepping into our sales world to have the best chance of getting out there and selling effectively.
   • We need to take sales management much more seriously and start to properly train and equip sales managers to be effective sales leaders. Equipping them with the right resources to make sound decisions around sales strategy, market segmentation, account mapping, sales financials, people selection and development, how they lead and deploy their sales teams, and how they work with the executive team ensuring understanding and respect for the sales function in all its complexity. At Barrett, we truly understand and appreciate that sales operations are complex systems and we can help people manage that complexity so that everyone can operate in the light and make informed decisions about what to do instead of relying on gut feel and guesses.
     
     
3. Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

Developing an effective sales team takes time, dedication, leadership and courage in the face of short-termism and fads. For instance, implementing a 70:20:10 framework that creates a Perpetual Learning Culture leads to increased sales results, better margins, happier clients and accomplished salespeople, and a marked competitive edge.

4. Bad things aren’t obvious when times are good. After all, you only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.

How many businesses and their sales teams have been caught short by the GFC and the many changes in the market place since? Too many. Why? Because too many were not geared for customer centricity still focused on themselves, and they did not look ahead at what was changing, nor did they really listen to their clients and what they were wanting. The result? Too many businesses and their sales teams are in a ‘pricing=race-to-the-bottom’ syndrome because they do not know how to sell value instead of product, amongst other things.

So, to get things going and make sure you are on the right track, here is our sales operations checklist. Do you have the following in place?

1. Sales strategy, the right market segments supported by the right sales messaging, go-to-market action plan
2. The right sales structure with clear levels of accountability including standards of behaviour and values so we know what we need to do to deliver better sales results
3. The right sales processes in place that can be easily taught and applied in the real world
4. User-friendly technology that helps us to sell and not tie us up in excessive administration
5. Effective sales managers who lead, coach and support us instead of selling for us
6. A continuous learning environment that encourages regular reflection and practice and keeps us up-to-date and fit for purpose

*‘Our investments continue to be few in number and simple in concept: The truly big investment idea can usually be explained in a short paragraph. We like a business with enduring competitive advantages that are run by able and owner-oriented people. When these attributes exist, and when we can make purchases at sensible prices, it is hard to go wrong (a challenge we periodically manage to overcome). Investors should remember that their scorecard is not computed using Olympic-diving methods: Degree-of-difficulty doesn’t count. If you are right about a business whole value is largely dependent on a single key factor that is both easy to understand and enduring, the payoff is the same as if you had correctly analysed an investment alternative characterised by many constantly shifting and complex variables.’

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Methodology and Philosophy (1900 -1950s)

• Trust Based Selling – Improve professional image by building trust (1916 – DM Barrett / Patterson)
• Scientific Selling – Use phrenology to identify prime prospects (1916 – Phrenologists)
• Mood Selling – Use emotion to persuade customers to buy (1920’s – American Bible Society & American Bible Tract)
• Fuller Brush Men – Focused on people. Strong management helping sales teams (1920’s – Fuller Brush Co. / Alfred C. Fuller / Albert E. Teetsel)
• Psychological Selling – Learn to understand what makes buyers tick (1930’s – Dale Carnegie / Ford Motor Company)
• Barrier Selling – Get prospects to say ‘yes’ often enough to be trapped (1930’s – Insurance companies and Britannica Encyclopaedia)
• SELL – Tell-Sell process leading customer to a commitment (1940-50’s)
• ADAPT – Develop some pseudo technical jargon to keep buyers intrigued (1940-50’s)
• ARC – Cross selling and up selling in retail (1940-50’s)

1916

A major milestone in sales methodology development took place in 1916 when the first World Salesmanship Congress took place in Detroit (USA). Its constitution vowed the event was to “promote the dignity of salesmanship by the elevation of the rank of the salesman to a higher
plane” and to “encourage contributions to the science of salesmanship in the form of books, lectures, courses and publications.” The idea for the event came from D.M. Barrett, who was the editor of Salesmanship magazine and who had already organised a sales club in Detroit whose slogan was “Business betterment through betterment in salesmanship”. The keynote speaker at the congress was Woodrow Wilson, President of the USA at that time. Here we can see how individuals and organisations made the first attempts at making sales a more prestigious career and also at giving sales a rightful place within businesses.

Patterson (NCR) was one of the major sponsors of the World Salesmanship Congress. The sales methodology being promoted then, as the most effective of the day, and the message given to the more than three thousand salespeople who attended the congress, was that to be effective salespeople needed to build trust with customers. Earning and keeping the customer’s trust, attendees heard, “was the only way to promote the dignity of salesmanship, elevating the salesman to a higher plane…”

Even at this early stage in the evolution of sales methodologies, new sales techniques were being promoted as the answer to the challenges salespeople faced.

Amongst the more dubious people that introduced alternative sales methods at the World Salesmanship Congress was one Grant Nablo, a phrenologist (someone who is supposed to be able to read a person’s character by the shape of their skull). His proposed sales methodology
hinged on salesmen learning to read the character of their prospects by observing the shape of their skull. The basis of this sales method, proposed as the “introduction of Science in Selling”, was that if salespeople identified prospects with high foreheads they could improve sales for new products because these people (with high foreheads) were more imaginative than others and were likely to be early adopters, making selling new ideas, products and services easier and quicker.

So popular was the Science in Selling (phrenology) method that the Ford Motor Company produced a primer for its sales force – “Ford Products and Their” Sale (1923) that contained the following instruction: “Sell the vehicle according to the shape of the prospect’s head. High foreheads leave room for larger development and indicate people who are less likely to resist new ideas…”

1920’s

The great depression in the US, caused by the stock market crash of 1929, gave impetus to a range of sales methodologies as more and more people – struggling to earn a living – turned to selling simply because of the low barriers to entry into the craft. Although efforts to organise and standardise sales systems had started already, they were the realm of big corporations and mostly those operating in the B2B arena. This left the majority of people coming into the sales profession with little or no training at all from the companies they joined –organisations such as the American Bible Society and the American Tract Society– so they developed their own methodologies. The more successful of these enjoyed a period in the sunshine as the techniques spread and appeared to have some success. Amongst the more familiar – vestiges of which still continue in selling today – are the sales methods of:

Mood Selling which was introduced at the time of the depression. It was developed by bible salesmen who called door-to-door and, without any sales training, attempted to appeal to the emotions of buyers by claiming that the purchase of a bible would not only be good for the customer’s soul, but would help the salesperson stave off the starvation of his children.

This method of selling relied on an emotional pull to the people being sold to. Popular appeals were the saving of a soul (bible) and helping the salesperson feed their children (who these salespeople often took with them on their sales calls).

For a time, Mood Selling was a successful, though less than ethical, sales methodology. But customers and prospects started to see through the techniques being used and began to resist the appeals made by these “salespeople”. The change in buyer attitude forced salespeople to take stock of what they were doing and how they were selling.

Amongst the myriad of methodologies that came to play during this time, was that of the Fuller Brush Company. The company had been founded in 1906 by Alfred C. Fuller, who would both manufacture the brushes by night and sell them by day. In 1908, his wife joined him in his selling efforts and had better results than he did on her first day, and almost every day for a couple of years. By the 1920s The Fuller Brush Company had people all over the country going door-to-door selling brushes. But there was something different about these salespeople. Fuller provided them with training on a system that gained them entry to the houses they called on almost every time. The sales method had been developed by Alfred C. Fuller and refined with the collaboration of his sales managers. Every call started with presenting a gift to the housewife, followed by a demonstration of their products – Fuller had worked out early on that the key was to sell what the brushes could do for his clients, not the brushes themselves. In 1922, these men started to be known as the “The Fuller Brush Men”. They were not employed by the company, they were distributors. They each had a territory and the tools and processes they needed to be successful. One of the most talented managers was Albert E. Teetsel who brought to the company the concept of positive thought. He encouraged every salesperson to always reply to “How are you?” with “Fine and dandy”, underscoring the company’s most distinctive feature – its emphasis on people. Each distributor had to sign a pledge which said, amongst other things, that the salesperson’s “obligation is one of
service to the customer, to the company I represent and to the community in which I live and work.”, and, “I will be courteous; I will be kind; I will be sincere; I will be helpful.” The commercial and popular success of the company was built on the focus on its people, in particular, the sales team.

1936

In 1936 the iconic book ”How to Win Friends and Influence People” was published, catapulting Dale Carnegie to the head of the line of sales gurus. The huge success of his book is still being felt today and many of the modern sales techniques (including the concept of Customer Centric and Relationship Selling) have Carnegie to thank because they haven’t ventured too far from what he propagated as the way to effective relationship building and successful selling.

With everyone in sales trying to win friends and influence people, the advent of commission and sales incentives changed the paradigm once again and launched what was a successful, but massively flawed, sales methodology – Barrier Selling. This powerful technique evolved at the same time as salespeople were making the adjustment from earning a base salary to commission as an incentive for sales performance. The technique pushed salespeople to manipulate their customers.

Barrier Selling was (is) the sales method of asking customers leading questions to which the most logical answer would be “Yes.” Salespeople would ask several questions getting a string of affirmative (yes) responses before throwing in the key question “And of course, you want us to deliver this widget early next week?”

In using this method, two factors worked against the customer. One was the fact that salespeople seldom applied it without a spouse or child being present. So, for example, insurance salespeople – who were (and still are) notorious for using this technique – would never sell life insurance to a partner without the spouse being present. The kind of questions asked would be something like: “Obviously if something happened to you, you would want your partner to be looked after. Wouldn’t you?” It is unlikely that the person would say no in any circumstances, but even less so, with the partner present. Britannica Encyclopaedia salespeople were no different. They wouldn’t attempt to sell a set of Britannica without the
children being present. And the questions used to “trap” the buyer would be something like: “Obviously you want your child to have the very best education possible, don’t you?”

At the time that this technique was popular, salespeople still had a large role to play in providing information. Customers had little choice, limited access to information and relied heavily on what salespeople said and did, in order to learn about new products and services. In addition, there weren’t laws and controls to prohibit salespeople or protect consumers from this type of behaviour. Caveat Emptor – “let the buyer beware…” was the consumer mantra of the day. Salespeople made claims and promises, used techniques and methods simply to get a deal. And they did so with impunity and little fear of consequence. Because a large portion of a
salesperson’s income at the time (very often as much as 90%) was based on their ability to close the deal, salespeople were willing to risk everything with little thought to how customers felt or suffered as a result of their activities.

So destructive was this method of selling that governments introduced the cooling off period, allowing people to cancel agreements entered into under these circumstances.

1930s to early 1950s

In the period from around mid 1930s to early 1950s, just after the decline in the popularity of Barrier Selling, a range of alternative selling methods of little effectiveness, appeared on the scene. Each of these represented a different approach to selling that claimed, at the time, to revolutionise the way salespeople performed. Some of the more popular of these included:

SELL – Show, Explain advantage, Lead to benefit, Let them talk
This method encouraged salespeople to the Tell-Sell approach. Salespeople told their prospects success stories, in the process showing features of their products, explaining the product’s advantages and how other customers became successful or achieved staggering results (benefits) as a result of using this products.

ADAPT – Assessment, Discovery, Activation, Projection, Transition
Adapt was an acronym that became popular around the 1950s in Britain as a means of interacting with customers and prospects. The focus of this (at the time) popular method was to undertake some form of pseudotechnical assessment. The salesperson gave the appearance of using some methodology to assess the prospect’s business issues, though none of the records actually illustrate how this assessment was actually conducted. Once the assessment had been conducted, salespeople then directed the sales call, hoping that the prospect would discover how a product would benefit them. Once this discovery was made the salesperson would request a commitment which would transition the buyer from prospect to customer.

ARC – Ask, Recommend, Cross-sell and Close
In the early 1950s a sales method, uniquely designed to improve retail sales situations, evolved. ARC encouraged salespeople to ask customers what they wanted and then to introduce additional items to complement the initial interest. This method of cross-selling improved sales performance and enabled salespeople to increase the size of the original order. It wasn’t long before ARC spread to other areas of selling. Even in business-to-business selling the idea of cross-selling found traction and enabled salespeople to expand share of wallet. This technique was later used as part of Strategic Selling (Miller Heiman, 1975) to help salespeople cross and up-sell, and in the process increase share of wallet.

Coming up soon:

The History of Sales Methodology – Part 2 (late 1950s – 1980s)

The History of Sales Methodology – Part 3 (1990s – 2010’s)

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What should I be looking for in a good sales recruit?

This is a vexing question for many sales and business leaders.

And some of the answers we still hear aren’t very helpful either.

‘They must be hunters.’

‘They need to be hungry.’

‘They’ve got to be able to close deals.’

‘They must have a mortgage and family so they are ‘motivated’ to sell more.’

‘They must have industry experience.’

Notice anything familiar about most of these answers?

They are all stuck in the ‘aggressive, self-serving, desperate approach to selling’ paradigm which is not what good selling actually is – at least the selling practices and qualities we know to be suitable, good for business, salespeople and customers.

The industry experience one can be an issue, too. Often times when we recruit industry experience we can often get the same people, with the same old ideas and the same old results. So be aware about industry experience, as it’s not always the best path to follow.

These tired old tropes keep us from hiring the right sales talent our businesses really need.

So we encourage you to not fall into this simplistic mind trap because it won’t end well for you, your customers, your salespeople, or your business and its reputation.

So what should we really be looking for in a good sales recruit?

It all depends… What are you selling and to whom?

1. Are you selling B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer)?
2. Are you selling unique solutions or specialised/customised products or services?
3. Are you selling simple off-the-shelf products or services?

The higher the complexity of what you are selling, the more skilful and knowledgeable your salespeople will need to be when it comes to customer engagement.

At the other end, if what you’re selling is simple and off-the-shelf, then you will more than likely need to have an online presence that is automated and underpinned by a human service component that helps sort out any issues as they arise.

Either way, you need to determine what type of salesperson and/or approach you need first before you answer the original question posed here.

However, if your business needs people in sales roles who need to sell in person to other people who need problems solved and opportunities realised, then here are some core qualities, capabilities and competencies you might want to assess for before you take anyone on board.

The information I’m sharing with you is based on over 20 years of research we have done into sales competency mapping combined with my many years in sales recruitment where I interviewed over 8,000 people in sales and sales leadership roles face-to-face for about an hour each. I trust this will help you make more informed decisions when it comes to recruiting good sales talent.

A fair exchange of value

Regardless of what you sell, at the heart of any good sales interaction and relationship is the realisation that there has been a fair exchange of value where both buyer and seller benefit. Authenticity, empathy, and logic are the foundations of trust. And trust has to be built by salespeople and their businesses in order for buyers to feel confident in the choices they have made.

So what would I be looking for in a good sales recruit first?

• What they see as a fair exchange of value and how they create the conditions for this to happen
• How they approach developing new business with new and existing clients;
• How they approach developing new business relationships and maintaining existing relationships so opportunity can continue to flourish for both parties
• What selling means to them – do they see it as a vehicle that allows opportunity to flourish and people to prosper together, or as a means to an end where the customers are merely objects to be exploited?
• How they arrive for an interview: Do they arrive on time? How do they treat people when they arrive and leave reception? How are they dressed? How prepared are they? and so on
• Do I trust them? Do I feel they have my best interests at heart?

Before I dive into the technical depth of their skills and capabilities, I am looking at their character, their values, their self-management, their manners and courtesy, and their perspective on building trust and fostering healthy relationships internally and externally now and for the long term.

If they cannot get that right then no amount of technical know-how and experience is going to make them a good fit.

If they pass muster here, then let’s go into more specific detail. While I cannot account for every nuance in every sales role here now, here are some of the core competencies we found most businesses in B2B and complex B2C want their sales recruits to be across and accomplished in to be effective salespeople:

B2B or Complex B2C Salesperson’s Role

• Knowledge
  • Business Acumen
  • Understanding customers’ needs
  • Understanding the market
  • Knowledge of resources (incl. product knowledge, CRM, sales tools/systems and social selling practices)
• Skills
  • Building relationships and networks
  • Prospecting and new business development
  • Account management and planning
  • Solution Selling
• Mindset
  • Consultative problem solving
  • Empathy and understanding
  • Ethics, integrity and professionalism
  • Self-reflection and development

Next time we’ll look into how to assess for these qualities.

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