Sales Blog with Sales Tips

There is a truth in the buyer-seller relationship that is rarely revealed by the buyer and frequently goes unseen by the seller. The recognition of this truth will cause us to worry less about losing customers. It will also give us more confidence when pricing.

First, A Couple Of Notes
Before we dive deeper into this topic, I want to quickly mention two unrelated items:

1. I’d like to give a big thank you to all of the regular readers of this sales blog. Your feedback is motivating, educational and inspiring.
2. If you are getting these sales tips by going directly to the blog website, take a few seconds to sign up and get new posts sent to you by email or RSS. Go to the bottom of this post to see how.

Now, Where Were We?
There is a secret that buyers will seldom confess to us. It has to do with personal value or human capital that we bring to the buyer-seller relationship. I learned about this classified information on an occasion when I fired a high maintenance, slow paying, low volume, no profit customer. You know the type.

You’re Fired
I fired this customer by using a “dull pencil.” Using a “dull pencil” simply means the opposite of using a “sharp pencil.” I increased their pricing, hoping they would jump ship – my ship. They complained, but didn’t quit buying from me. I increased their pricing again; they kept buying. I increased their pricing a third time. You guessed right. They continued to order from me.

I finally had to call them and kindly ask them to buy from one of our competitors – please. I even suggested a competitor.

A Light Bulb Goes On
I hung up from that phone call and asked myself, what is going on here? I concluded that they hated the idea of having to source and qualify another supplier. The pain of finding a replacement supplier was greater than the pain of my increasing prices. Buyers generally dislike finding a new supplier when the one they have is working just fine.

Finding a new supplier is not easy or simple. They would have to interview suppliers, establish credit, start a new relationship from scratch and train the new sales professional on their purchasing department’s paperwork gymnastics.

This was not going to be easy or fun for them. They would have to exert themselves.

Truth Revealed
It is costly and time consuming for companies to change suppliers. Especially strategic suppliers.

As sales professionals, we often perceive that we are on the brink of losing all of our customers. Not true. Our customers are much stickier than we think. We don’t need to worry about customer attrition nearly as much as we are inclined to. We can also charge higher prices to many of our customers because they know the costs of changing vendors.

It’s their little secret.

Further reading:

• Bad Accounts are Like Weeds
• One of My Most Startling Sales Tips [Why and how to get rid of bad customers]

To receive this sales tips blog by email click here to receive by RSS click here. ©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

I’ve seen many sales professionals whose primary sales improvement technique was to rely on the power of positive thinking.

How successful do you think they were? They weren’t.

Positive Thinking As A Sales Tool
While positive thinking is a necessary ingredient in sales, it is only that, an ingredient. The central problem with using positive thinking as our principal selling utensil is that we may begin to believe it represents the entire recipe for success. Or so we think. No more worries. We’re on track to make things happen. We can go home, relax, and wait for the phone to ring. We might even add a short and insincere prayer to our positive thinking, just to make sure we have all of our bases covered.

Why It Doesn’t Work
This kind of delusional thinking doesn’t work because we’re not doing the concrete things that need to be done to make a real difference – information gathering and relationship building with our customers.

Positive thinking can make us feel great; it’s an opiate. However, we all know that deep down there is no substitute for time invested and hard work. When we worship at the alter of positive thinking the only thing we accomplish is to rationalize why we’re not doing what we know we need to do.

Where Have All The Positive Thinking Sales Gurus Gone?
The positive thinking sales gurus from the 70’s and 80’s have gone away for the most part. And fortunately, they’ve taken their NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) buddies with them. I have a previous sales blog on NLP; see link below. Things that don’t work usually disappear.

The Reality: We Pull Ourselves Up By Our Own Bootstraps
The knowledge and experience gained from our sales successes create a foundation for our sales growth. It’s called confidence. We have to earn it the old-fashioned way – working hard and working smart. Positive thinking should be nothing more than an accessory in our sales tool kit. And it works best when it’s based on a bedrock of sales skills and sweat.

Further reading and an industry magazine link:

• Neuro Linguistic Programming: Can this help us in sales?
• If you’re in industrial distribution sales (e.g., tools, fasteners, abrasives, construction and electrical/electronic equipment), click here to receive Industrial Distribution Magazine at no charge.

To receive these sales tips by email click here to receive by RSS click here. ©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

We don’t spend enough time discovering the responsibilities of the people we sell to. Buyers, decision makers and purchasing departments are tasked with far more than just sourcing and buying our products and services. The Internet can take care of those simple needs. The people we sell to have additional burdens we need to consider.

The Buyer’s Job
We can sell more effectively if we better understand the job of buyers. Seeing their job as one-dimensional is not the hallmark of a sales professional in 2009. Below is a sample list of eight of their “to do’s.” Read this list. Afterward, I’ll give you an important idea on how you can turn this information into increased sales.

A Buyer’s “To Do” List
Have you ever considered that buyers, decision makers and purchasing departments have the following headaches?

1. Total Inventory Costs. Service levels have to be maintained while keeping inventory levels as low as possible.
2. Alternate Suppliers. In order to keep things competitive and maintain backup sources, there must be at least one viable and tested redundant supplier for every critical product or service.
3. Customer Satisfaction. Buyers are at least partially responsible for their company’s customer satisfaction.
4. Supplier Relationships. It’s a partnership, and the better it is, the more effective buyers will be.
5. Supplier Reduction. Fewer suppliers means greater efficiency.
6. Supplier Metrics. That’s right; our performance is being measured.
7. Total Supply Chain Management. Not only do buyers have to purchase a finished product, they are also expected to monitor it from conception to delivery to their door.
8. Quality.  The purchasing department will be the first one called if the quality is not up to snuff.

The Question
The following is a question that will build your relationship with buyers. It will also enable you to get the information you need to provide the value they are looking for.

“What are the key metrics you and your department are measured by when purchasing the products/services that I provide?”

Sales Blog Epilogue
This question is especially effective when dealing with purchasing departments versus individual buyers. The information you gather from this question moves you far beyond just filling a temporary need buyers have for your product or service. It allows you to see behind the curtain and discover information that directly affects who they select as suppliers.

Further reading:

• Customers in 2008 vs. Customers in 1993. Are they really different?

To receive these sales tips by email click here to receive by RSS click here. ©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

One of the things about sales that makes it both difficult and interesting is the paradoxes. Paradoxes are things that appear one way but in practice behave just the opposite. An example would be, “The best things in life are free.”

First, Some Preliminary Information About A Current Sales Paradox
We all know the difference between transactional and consultative selling. Transactional selling typically involves very short sales cycles and minimal customer relationships. Selling a car is normally considered a transactional sale. Consultative selling is just the opposite. It usually requires a long sales cycle and  deeper customer relationships. Selling commercial real estate would be an example.

All of us sell somewhere along the continuum of transactional to consultative sales.

The Paradox
The following may sound completely counter-intuitive, but many sales professionals tend to turn to transactional sales techniques, regardless of what they are selling, during both recessions and boom times. That’s right. We frequently default to task oriented transactional selling during good economic times and bad economic times. This is true whether we’re selling mops or Boeing jets. And it’s never a good thing to become a pure transactional sales professional.

Why Does This Happen?

• During the boom times, like we experienced in the late 90’s, most of us found that we were very successful in our sales.  Who wasn’t?  We also had very little time on our hands. The reason we had such limited time is that we were busy taking orders. As a result, many of us spent insufficient time building partnerships with our customers. Whether we’re selling widgets or space shuttles, this is transactional selling. We’re simply reacting to our customers.
• During recessionary times the orders aren’t coming in so easily anymore.  What does any good sales professional do when this happens? We prospect. In fact, we can become somewhat obsessed with prospecting, to the point where we are merely going through the motions and treating it like a task.  We’ve replaced quality with quantity. When we treat contact with prospects like a task we become mechanical. This absolutely kills our ability to initiate and nurture relationships. We have, without even realizing it, turned into transactional sales professionals. We can do this even if we are selling products and services that usually require long sales cycles and highly developed relationships with customers. In a way, we panic.

Sales Blog Rx
What we sell will affect the types of transactional or consultative sales techniques we use; there is no black or white here. It is a continuum.  However, regardless of what we are selling, we never want to become a pure transactional sales professional. We are selling in a recession currently and our natural reflex is to pound the phone and prospect like a machine. This can be ineffective and frustrating for sales professionals on many levels.

Our heads are screaming to work fast and take shortcuts right now.  We need to prospect, but we also need to qualify our prospects carefully and spend the necessary time to develop a relationship with them.   This will set us apart from the multitude of sales calls the prospect is getting from our competitors. It will also enable us to plant the seeds of relationship that are essential for a partnership.

Further reading:

• Transactional Selling Versus Solution Selling

To receive this sales blog by email click here to receive by RSS click here. ©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer