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A Magical Selling tale

Written by: Nikki Owen

Article Overview: When I was a little girl I believed in fairy tales, magical kingdoms and a world where all your wishes came true if you wished for something hard enough. It didn’t take long to discover that life has a cruel way of shattering illusions and the adventures of life can cause a cynical hardening of aspirations in the face of adversity.

A Magical Selling tale

As I began my career in sales, looking back I now realize that I was embarking on a rollercoaster ride; moments of exquisite exhilaration heightened by the fear of the unknown, then the sudden free-fall into the gloomy pits of failure.

Yet those tantalizing moments of achievement got me hooked on a lifetime quest to discover the key to guaranteed sales success. All my instincts told me that there had to be an easier way for people to sell more.

I heard this story once about a rich socialite in Paris who needed a hat urgently for an important occasion. Her Milliner arrived at her apartment and within twenty minutes had created an amazing headpiece from a single strand of ribbon. The socialite was enthralled and asked the Milliner his fee; the Milliner replied "1,000 francs". The socialite gasped, "That’s so much money for a piece of ribbon!" The Milliner unpinned the ribbon and handed it to her, "Madam the ribbon is free, it’s the ‘know how’ that you’re paying for."

Serendipity (or was it a thirst for know how?) brought me into contact with Vic Conant, President, Nightingale Conant, and together we undertook a careful study with over 2600 organisations, to identify why some organisations are able to attain sustainable sales growth while the majority struggle in the face of ferocious competition.

Fundamentally we were able to identify that there were 5 pitfalls that many organisations fell into, regardless of the market sector in which they operated and if these pitfalls were avoided then sales increased immediately. (I guess every fairytale has its own version of a wicked witch to fight, otherwise what satisfaction can you gain from a happy ending?)

Grab yourself a cup of coffee, take a deep breath and prepare yourself for some ‘insider knowledge’ that will send your sales spinning higher than you ever dreamed possible …as to the value of what you’re about to read, we’ll let you be the judge of that!

Pitfall No.1
A Poorly Defined Sales Process That Dilutes Sales Revenues

“Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down!”
The Three Little Pigs

Far too often competent salespeople are counted upon to channel their own activities into the areas that will produce the biggest and quickest wins. But, left to their own devices, salespeople generally don’t develop and pursue a formal plan for moving a prospect interaction forward toward a sale. Instead, they end up ‘dancing around’ hoping they will get to their chosen point on the floor (the sale).

This is often fatal, because, as recent research from The Results Corporation Plc shows, the average prospect says "no" seven times before saying "yes" and over 80 percent of salespeople give up after the first "no." When their efforts don’t pay off quickly, even capable salespeople tend to get discouraged. They may spend longer hours struggling to meet their sales quotas, working less efficiently. The details of what goes wrong differ for each salesperson, but the net result is always the same: wasted time which fails to produce high quality sales and consequently, increased cost of sales.

For Sales Directors, this means developing a comprehensive, realistic and step-by-step outline of what salespeople are expected to do. It’s only when such an outline is in place that sales management is in a position to monitor the salesforce’s activity, progress and results. Only then is the stage set for transformational performance improvements.

Pitfall No.2
Lack of Essential Skills Which Leads to ‘Below Average’ Performance and Consequently ‘Below Average’ Sales Results

“Who’s been sitting in my chair – and broken it into pieces?”
Goldilocks and The Three Bears

During the 1970’s and ‘80’s, it was common for large corporations such as Hewlett Packard and IBM to put their new sales recruits through a 12–18 month training programme. Today, salespeople consider themselves ‘lucky’ if they get an initial two weeks of training. Yet sales targets haven’t plunged proportionately!

According to Pavita Walker, Director, Organisation and Leadership Development, Barclays Group, "The greatest differentiator amongst sales organisations of the future will be the ability to build world class capability and skills". Adds Giles Watkins, Global Competence and Learning Manager at Shell Lubricants, "Skills development is critical … once a salesperson is really fluent with what they do, they become more responsive to customers’ requirements."

So, what’s going on? How should a Sales Director reconcile the fact that many organisations today provide less upfront training for their sales staff than in years past with the increasing importance of staff development? The fact is that selling in today’s climate is a profession that demands a wide range of skills that require continual fine-tuning. According to Steven Reinemund, CEO PepsiCo Inc. "To have growth in products you have to have growth in people". Yet training alone does not guarantee peak sales performance. This can only come from ongoing coaching from sales managers and those organisations that have a strong coaching culture attract and retain the best salespeople.

Pitfall No.3
Failing to Focus Sales Representatives’ Activity Which Reduces Efficiency and Consequently Results

“Although he worked hard, times were bad and he became very poor”
The Elves and The Shoemaker

Maximising a workforce around one common goal that creates value for the customer, the organisation and the employee is the only way to focus the activities of a sales team. Time is a huge constraint on salespeople’s activities so that when their manager asks them for more, it’s no wonder that they buckle under the sheer weight of overwhelm! Frequently there are two main pitfalls that even experienced salespeople can fall into in terms of activities.

First, they simply aren’t doing enough and secondly, but equally important, salespeople often aren’t clear about how to identify the prospects most likely to have a genuine need for their product or service. Salespeople who lack a disciplined, future-oriented plan for generating new contacts and sales, often find themselves spending more time attending to ‘urgent’ activities rather than ‘important’ activities that will develop their business.

Pitfall No.4
Allowing Self-Limiting Beliefs to Constrain Salespeople’s’ Performance Which Causes a Reduction in Sales Results

“Why, I’m a swan!”
The Ugly Duckling

Like everyone, salespeople hold stubbornly to private beliefs about themselves and the people they work with…beliefs that can have an enormous impact, either positive or negative, on their sales performance. Yet while most Sales Directors grasp the concept of activity management, skills and knowledge development far too many feel powerless to help their salespeople turn their negative beliefs into positive ones. Those who do tackle beliefs and are able to change their representatives’ self-limiting beliefs into empowering ones have found an unbeatable path to success.


Pitfall No.5
Failing to Choose and Develop a Sales Leadership Team That Nurtures and Develops Their Sales Representatives’ Potential

“Immediately, the witch flew into a great rage and cut off Rapunzel’s hair”
Rapunzel

The single most common mistake that organisations make is promoting their number one sales representative into the role of sales manager, thereby depriving themselves in a single stroke of their best producer and hamstringing their salesforce with an ineffective manager. The skills required for managing, mentoring and developing sales teams are totally different from those for selling. As a result, it’s not uncommon to find newly promoted sales managers who regret having taken a management position and may even leave to get back into sales.

The majority of sales managers say they do not have sufficient time to train and develop their sales teams. They are so focused on sales results and so accustomed to achieving success through their personal pursuit that they overlook their greatest potential source of power: the power to increase sales performance by developing their people.

Even when they do recognise the importance of developing their representatives, many sales managers find that they lack the skills and resources to do it effectively. It then becomes easier ‘not to bother’. To make things worse, most sales teams consist of a number of individuals with differing levels of experience and ability, so the whole issue of team development becomes too daunting to contemplate. Giles Watkins, Global Competence and Learning Manager, Shell Lubricants believes that the best people to start developing are sales managers, their coaching then produces a multiplier effect.

A COMMITMENT TO EXCELLENCE

Organisations and salespeople who have one hundred percent commitment to doing whatever it takes to elevate their sales to a whole new level are the ones most likely to succeed. Trying to operate a sales organisation without total commitment is like trying to drive a car without fuel. Every organisation has the potential to harness the power of their salespeople just as surely as oxygen pumps life into the human body.

… For a moment the handsome Prince stood gazing at the beautiful golden – haired girl, wondering how he could break the spell. Stooping he kissed her; instantly Princess Aurora opened her blue eyes … they lived happily ever after and had many children, all who grew up to become successful sales representatives.

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Article Tags: careful study, cup of coffee, exhilaration, fairytale, fear of the unknown, ferocious competition, headpiece, insider knowledge, lifetime quest, majority struggle, market sector, nightingale conant, pitfall, rollercoaster ride, sales revenues, sales success, serendipity, socialite, vic conant, wicked witch



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