TheSalesBlog

Review: Topgrading for Sales

I have long been a fan and proponent of Brad Smart's Topgrading approach to hiring. Whether or not you achieve the 90% A-Players of which some adherents boast, it is a thoughtful and effective approach and it helps eliminate haphazard hiring practices.

Brad Smart has joined with Greg Alexander of Sales Benchmark Index to write an indispensable guide to applying Topgrading practices to the sales force. The books is, of course, titled Topgrading for Sales: World Class Methods to Interview, Hire and Coach Top Sales Representatives.

First, one of my favorite mistakes:

Your sales candidates are experienced at selling, and the product they are selling in the interview is themselves, so their product knowledge is better than yours. They understand buyers like you, because they've worked for sales managers. They know the sales manager's motivations and needs, and they try to manipulate the interview to hit his or her hot buttons. Sales managers are frequently  . . . well. . . desperate. If their territory is growing or they are replacing an underperformer, they are eager to get someone on board.

If half of the mishires I have personally made had sold their prospective clients as aggressively and passionately as they sold to me during the interview, they would not have been mishires--they would have been superstars.

This thin little book is deceiving; it is really 54 pages of explanation as to the process (and I would recommend purchasing the original Topgrading), and 51 pages of Appendices. For my money, the Appendices alone are worth many times the cost of the book.The Appendices include all of the tools you need to Topgrade, including a scorecard, key accountabilities, a career history form, an interview guide, and a reference checking guide.

I recommend (demand, really) you add it to your book shelf and your toolkit. Also visit the Topgrading for Sales site, Brad Smart's Topgrading site, and Greg Alexander's Sales Benchmark Index site for more information.

Seth on Pricing Pressure

Seth Godin has a new post entitled No Such Thing as Pricing Pressure. To paraphrase his point, in order to get out of the commodity box you have to increase the value you create for your clients and prospects. And I mostly agree.

In business-to-business sales however, it gets a little more complicated. What if, for example, your client is Wal-Mart and the value they create for their customers is lowest price? The strategic choice they have made as a company is to compete on price. So what kind of value might they expect from those who sell them their goods and services? (I write this knowing that some of their service vendors create tremendous value by helping Wal-Mart with their legendary operational efficiencies, which contribute to lower price, without actually having the lowest price. I don't yet know of any of their suppliers who provide products that compete outside of price). If your value proposition is in direct conflict with your customer or prospects, you have a recipe for a short relationship.

For more on understanding your prospect's strategy choices, read The Discipline of Market Leaders.

Seth's proposition is also complicated (at least in business-to-business sales) by the fact that many of your clients may not have the capacity to increase the value they deliver to their clients (they may lack the management resources, the ability to innovate, or the ability to execute a different value proposition). In the value chain, if your customer is competing on price, you are, eventually, competing on price. Unless  . . .

Combating the commodity trap requires a serious rethinking of how we sell (with skills I am calling 4GS--4th Generation Sales). In order to increase your value, you must me able to reach into your client or prospect's P&L and show them how your product or service improves their ability to perform better for their stakeholders (it may be spending on your product or services saves money elsewhere, it may help them to innovate, it may be help them to better serve their clients, or it may include helping them compete and win in their space, etc.)   

Let Seth's intentionally provocative post provoke you think about how you raise the bar on value creation.

 

Outcomes and Immediate Feedback

Too much of the common wisdom about sales planning has more to do with researching the prospect than actual call planning (and too often, research paralyzes a sales rep and robs them of the time they should be pursuing prospects).

Real call planning is about determining the outcome of the sales call before making it. To be successful, you need to ask and answers these questions:

1. What are my desired outcomes for this sales call?: This can include acquiring information, obtaining access to others within the prospect's company, etc.)
2. How will these outcomes advance the sale? A well crafted outcome must include an agreement and a commitment that advances the sale. Even though you may not be closing the sale, you must close every sales call with an agreement and a commitment that moves the sales forward.
3. What value will the client receive during the sales call? In order for a prospective client to give you their most precious resource, their time, they have a a right to expect something of value in return. They expect it, and you have an obligation to deliver it.
4. Can I reasonably expect the client to agree to the next step? If you cannot reasonably expect the client to agree with the next step, you need to revisit your outcome and the value that you believe you have created. It is helpful to have a number of potential agreements that advance the sale to ensure that you have the greatest chance of successfully gaining a commitment to move forward.

The great value from planing the outcome is that it allows for immediate feedback. A client's refusal to move forward with the outcomes that you defined prior to the call indicates that the call has failed. If the client agrees to move forward with your predefined advance, the call was (more often than not) successful.

Define the outcome! Create real value! Advance the sale!

5 things I have learned at Toastmasters (so far)

I love Toastmasters, and I have wonderful club.  From watching others, I have picked up five essential skills for public speaking (I am sure there are more to come):

1. Energy-Passion-Commitment
2. Strong Opening Headline or Question
3. Common Human Experiences or Aspirations work well
4. Unique Human Experiences or Aspirations work better
5. Tell Great Stories!

Who does your sales methodology serve?

One reason I remain agnostic about sales methodologies is that two key constituencies are often ignored. The first is the customer. How is the customer served by your sales process? Does it take the prospect as it finds them, considering in what stage the buying process the customer is presently engaged?

The second constituency is the sales rep themselves. Does the sales process logically and naturally link together activities that lead to a sale? Or, is the process designed for sales management?

Guru Rankings

John Moore at Brand Autopsy points to this new Guru Ranking on the Wall St. Journal. For my money, Tom Peters still tops the Guru list.

Interesting that we have no sales guru on the list.

Micro Persuasion on Deliberate Practice

Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion has a nice post on Deliberate Practice, attributing it rightly to Dr. K. Anders Ericsson from Florida State University.

I have long been a fan of Dr. Ericsson's work, and in the past I have corresponded with him regarding the value of deliberate practice for sales professionals. My favorite quote from Dr. Ericsson is from Fast Company Magazine:

So does experience matter?
"Just because you've been walking for 55 years doesn't mean you're getting better at it."

Just because you have been selling for many years doesn't necessarily mean you are getting better at it--and you may be getting worse. Deliberate practice means practicing in such a way that you concentrate on the  distinctions that lead to improved performance (Ericsson says most people can only do so for about an hour at a time).

Here is a short explanation of deliberate practice.

Resources from Jill Konrath at Selling to Big Companies

Jill Konrath at Selling to Big Companies has some excellent resources available on her blog here. I really enjoyed the Ebook Prospecting is Changing by Nigel Edelshain from Sales 2.0.

Nigel's Ebook is great, but I can't resist this quote:

Sometimes you will just have to “Cold Call” If you don’t have a referral to an executive then you may have to “cold call”. You can make a “cold call” less cold by doing your homework on the forces acting upon the executive. Once you have your message tailored as much as possible then“cold calling” is really about polite persistence.

Prospecting!

This past weekend I spent some time with my Brother-in-Law who sells software to hospitals. It's a complex sale with a relatively long sales cycle (measured in years). He attributes his success this year (on target to smash his quota) to the simple fact that he spends the majority of his time prospecting.

Do I even need to add a comment?

Seth Godin's Best Ever Post

This is Seth Godin's best ever post! How much time and trouble we would all save by simply choosing which bell curve we intend to pursue. The difficulty lies in accepting the fact that the act of choosing one curve, means abandoning the other.