Working through this pandemic has brought many different challenges for all types of businesses, and COVID-19 presented us with a big decision: do we let things play out and see what happens? Or do we double down and invest in technology?

As a global business who sells products in more than 50 countries, we operate in a B2B, B2C and B2B2C world, so we needed to ensure our sales channels were still able to work as best as they could.

We asked the question internally: “In 12 or 18 months, are we going to regret investing in technology now?”. No one could say “no”.

There were some things that we already knew we needed to do. Straight away, we brought forward the technological investment that was already on our roadmap. Since then it feels like we’ve done at least two years of work in the past six months, but it’s been worth it.

Under our new CEO and the executive team, we’ve been focusing very heavily on internal communication and transparency to make sure our shared purpose, vision and strategy have cascaded through the company and permeate everything we do at every level.

This culture enabled us to quickly take action and helped power the changes we made to the way we connected with all of our partners and customers.

Reimagining the sales process

As you’d expect during this global pandemic, we’ve had to rethink our approach to sales. And as a global business, that looked different in each region.

Parts of North America have essentially been in lockdown since March; in New Zealand we had very swift lockdowns, but were back in action relatively quickly. So we’ve had to tailor our approach based on what’s happening in the region.

Across the world, though, retailers’ ability to sell to the customer was taken away overnight. This meant we had to change how we supported them – and change that quickly.

The most significant change, of course, was for those who usually operate from a storefront. If you don’t have a store, how do you keep on selling?

The immediate things we focused on were perhaps the obvious. Were our products on their website? Did they have the right content to support those products? And this, all of a sudden, leads into how can we keep training your staff?

It was important they understood the principles of B2C commerce, so when they’re engaging a customer whose only access to the store is now via a website, they can have the right conversations.

The key thing to note, however, is that we didn’t turn to a direct sales approach – we weren’t cold calling or putting the hard sell on. We said to everyone selling: “we want you to keep engaging with customers in exactly the same way. The only thing that’s changed is the medium – you’re online, not face-to-face”.

The fundamentals are very similar.

Out with the hard sell, in with the gentle touch

From the outset of the pandemic, we decided to change the way we marketed and to take the focus away from the product.

We didn’t think it was right to deliberately promote our brand, so we decided to engage with customers on a much more human level. There was so much information about coronavirus and the economy, and it was all doom and gloom. We just wanted to add something positive – a distraction to lighten the mood and help people.

We started to communicate with customers about things that could improve their lives a little – especially given they were going to be spending more time at home.

We ran a series of ‘life hacks’ on timely topics, like ’how can I make my food last longer in my refrigerator?’ or ‘how do I use my dishwasher better?’, and ‘how do I make a cake for someone who’s allergic to flour?’. We just wanted to stay connected with our customers and continue to find new ways to add something of value.

Fast-tracking tech implementation

To keep the business and our channels to market working as well as they could given the new circumstances, we quickly moved all of our websites – across all of our brands and countries – onto Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

The first step was to home in on the user experience. The second step was to support our trade customers by continuing to build out our trade portal, which is built on Community Cloud, and getting that into the hands of more customers.

The third step, which was critical, was putting in place the internal tools of enablement – making sure employees had the right tools at their fingertips.

We did a lot of work in Service Cloud; we enabled Facebook Messenger as a channel and WhatsApp as a service channel, put the Channel Menu on our website and made sure we had the right touchpoints for everyone to do their jobs as well as they could.

The importance of empowerment and ownership

Of course, we couldn’t do any of this globally without our teams being able to act quickly. This comes down to empowerment and ownership and having the right groups of people focusing on outcomes for customers – again, something that stems from our culture.

Our Australian sales team was focusing on what they needed to do for their B2B and B2C customers; our UK team was focusing on what they needed to do on a direct-to-consumer basis.

Importantly, the teams had to have some autonomy to make decisions and move quickly, which our culture and leadership supported.

The changes we’ve had to make to the way we operate haven’t just been done to deal with the pandemic. They’ve been done for the long term, too.

The vast majority of our activity was on the roadmap for the future. Twelve months ago, I could never have imagined we’d have gotten there so quickly.

Find out how other sales leaders are driving business resilience and growth by downloading the fourth edition of the State of Sales report.

Hear more about how Fisher & Paykel redefined its global sales approach in our on-demand webinar Unpacking the State of Sales: What are the next steps for sales leaders? Hear from the best in the business, including sales expert Tony Hughes and Salesforce ANZ Chief Commercial Officer Ian McAdam.

Read more from Salesforce:

Six Traits Of Great Sales Reps

It’s time for sales leaders to rethink how they lead

Introducing the 50 Pro Sales Tips for 2020 eBook

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The following ten laws must be observed.

1. Gather all necessary intelligence before formulating strategy. 

Never act without thinking and assessing all of the available accurate information. A strategy is only as good as the information that leads to it. Being an excellent climber is of no benefit if your ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. Social research tools such as Linked are essential.

2. Be first and set the agenda. 

Being strategic is best achieved by arriving first and setting the agenda with senior stakeholders. Truly understand the organisational dynamics and winning agendas aligned to the biggest problems or opportunities. Influence the requirements toward your own unique value and set an agenda that disadvantages the competition. Focus on helping them define the very value you bring and set an agenda around the importance of managing risk.

3. Start high in the account and be a domain expert business person. 

You will always be delegated to people you sound like. Be a business person rather than a sales person by discussing their industry and business challenges and opportunities. Ensure your LinkedIn profile supports this and be equipped to discuss how your have helped others to overcome similar challenges or realize significant opportunities. Have proof of your claims. Avoid discussing features and functions of products, services or solutions.

4. Find and influence the ‘puppet master’. 

This will be a senior person in the background who seeks to avoid meeting with sales people. They will only engage if they believe you have gravitas, relevant insight and genuine value. Initial influence or establishing credibility can often be achieved indirectly through third-parties, and this is why your LinkedIn credentials and network are so important.

5. Understand the informal power-base and politics. 

The organisational chart can be misleading and it is essential to understand the power-base and influence-dynamics that transcend the visible structure. Relationship mapping is an essential part of opportunity and account planning… you cannot formulate effective strategy or align with the ‘power players’ without it.

6. Align to serious problems, significant opportunities and winning agendas. 

The only person who can call it a solution is the customer. Problem solving must occur before solution selling, and the size of the customer’s purchase order is directly linked to the size of the problem being solved or the opportunity being addressed. Understand the business-case and real value of investing in your product, service or solution. Only the customer can quantify the value.

7. Think before acting and be patient and strategic. 

Tactical mistakes can usually be recovered but strategic errors are often fatal. Never be afraid of waiting and always be willing to invest in gathering additional information. Do not confuse laziness, inaction or procrastination with being strategically patient. Be humble and seek advice while thinking through the potential consequences of actions. Only birds are good at ‘winging it’.

8. Identify and manage risk. 

Bad news early is good news. Risk resides in what you cannot control and especially from ignorance. In the software industry risk resides in demonstrations and ‘reference sites’. Across all industries, risk also resides in people and competitors. Anyone on your team afflicted by arrogance or an inability to listen and be briefed represents enormous risk. Beware therefore of your own executives who seek to interact with your prospect because they can easily say something damaging or introduce unwanted information. Existing customers are the greatest potential sales resource if they act as positive references but they can easily be a liability in highlighting your deficiencies and this is often the case the lower you interact in an organisation.

9. Anticipate competitor moves and set traps. 

Know your competition and their methods of operation so that you can constantly change the rules. Do not allow them to use your weaknesses against you. Instead set traps for them and ensure you have set an agenda focused on your unique value. Ensure the customer publicizes your winning selection early and widely therefore making it difficult for competitors to interfere once they deduce they’ve lost.

10. Confidence is the paradise of fools. 

Confidence is usually the feeling you have before you understand the situation. Avoid arrogance and complacency. Be positively paranoid (competitively aware) yet not defensive or cynical. Take nothing for granted and validate any assumptions. Respect the customer and their power of choice at all times. Never underestimate the competition or the way in which circumstances can alter through changes in personnel, market conditions, acquisitions, and myriad other factors.

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• 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)

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