Sales Blog with Sales Tips

Omniscience is a noun defined as a state of having infinite knowledge and understanding. In short, God.

Sales professionals knowingly or unknowingly slip into the bad habit of believing that customers are omniscient. We think our customers know everything about everything. They don’t.

Negotiation 101
This fear puts us at a disadvantage when negotiating. We all know that we can’t effectively negotiate with customers if they know everything. Actually, if we just think they know all the cards we’re holding, we handicap our ability to negotiate.

5 Sales Tips To Kill The Omniscience Myth
The following represent areas where we frequently assume the customer has unlimited information. These are ranked in order of occurrence with the most frequent listed first.

1. Competitors. Admit it. We all think our customers are a Wikipedia of information about all of our competitors. We compete against our competitors every day and yet we have knowledge gaps about them. Our customers are going to know less than we do.

1. (tie) Commissions, costs and profit margins. I couldn’t decide whether to make this first or second so I’m calling it a tie. Our customers do not know, nor would it be possible for them to know, what our commissions, costs and profit margins are.

Every minute there are thousands of sales professionals around the globe needlessly discounting prices because they believe the customer knows all of our financials.

2. How badly we need this order. A good sales professional knows to never act desperate. It sends out the “I really need this order or I’m going to have to live under a bridge” vibe. This scent is definitely a sales repellent.

The only way customers are going to know we really need an order is if we tell them or if we telegraph it by our actions.

3. Our company’s weaknesses. Obviously, we know most of the dirty laundry about our company. We know about the product that doesn’t work when the humidity level goes above 90 percent. We know our service department had a high employee turnover last year.

We even know about our sales manager’s affair with the president’s assistant (actually, the customer may know about this last one since everyone in North America has figured it out).

We know all the bad and the ugly because we work for our company. The customer doesn’t.

4. Strategic accounts. We want all of our customers to know they are important to us. But we also know that not all customers are created equal. On average, the top 30% of our customers account for 60% of our sales and 90% of our gross profit.

We fear that our large strategic customers will become heavy handed with us because of our dependency on them.

Unless we tell or telegraph this information, there’s really no avenue for them to discover how they are positioned in our account base.

We shouldn’t have to rely on a few customers in the first place, but that’s for another sales tips post.

Wrap Up
Our customers haven’t contracted with the CIA. We are not being wiretapped by them.

They don’t know everything.

©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

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Here’s a micro-history of Yahoo:

- Started in 1995
- Initially indexed the web by means of directories (i.e. titles and categories)
- Google became prominent in 2000 with its intuitive text search (i.e. words, phrases).
- Yahoo rented Google’s search engine until they developed their own improved search capability in 2004.
- In 2009 Yahoo began using Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

Result: Even though Google was founded three years after Yahoo, Google is four times the size (by revenue) of Yahoo today.

Core Competency
Let’s face it, if you’re Google, Bing or Yahoo, you need to be really good at searching the web. All three of these companies offer a mishmash of other services, but their search capability is what keeps them in the user’s mind.

Back in the late 90’s while Yahoo was enjoying the number one position as a search engine, Google was quietly perfecting a better way to search the web.

Yahoo neglected to keep a laser focus on their core competency, searching the web.

Sales Tips And Analogies, Compliments Of Yahoo

• We need to be stellar in our ability to sell and service the core products we provide. Remember, that’s probably what got you in the door in the first place.
• Your customers are not permanent. Your best defense against losing them is to stay good at the basics and not make careless mistakes because you think everything is on autopilot.
• Don’t take your eyes off your competitors.  They are constantly trying to “out-innovate” you  in your accounts.  If you can’t do something better in an account, you simply aren’t paying attention to details.
• Your company might currently be the biggest and best in your industry.  However, don’t assume this will continue forever or that your customers will continue to buy from you because of it.

Use Google As Your Sales Template
There’s a reason “google” is now an official verb in the English language; their formula has been profoundly successful in their niche.

They haven’t lost sight of why customers are googling. They don’t take anything for granted. They continue to improve their core competency.

©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

Find a New Sales Job

I was just a sales pup the first time I heard it.

“I hate the salesperson who works for that competitor. She does such a crummy job that she wreaks havoc on the credibility of all sales professionals.”

My sales manager was educating me about how a lack of sales professionalism can hurt all salespeople. I had never thought about how other people in sales could affect the sales profession as a whole.

It’s human nature for customers to take their own experiences and generalize them.

Physicians understand this; the sales profession has some work to do.

Dialed In Doctors
Physicians know that if their behavior is not polished and competent, they not only will compromise their own reputation but that of all other doctors. They can help themselves, and each other, by establishing their profession as one filled with nothing but proficient and qualified individuals.

Dialed In Destinations
Have you ever noticed how courteous and helpful most vendors are at major tourist destinations? They’re obviously getting sales tips on customer service skills.

They understand that seeing tourists as more than just a visitor in their particular store will positively influence the vacationer to visit all of the shops, restaurants and activities in the area.

Everyone wins.

What Goes Around…
Just as with all professions, not all sales professionals are…well…sales professionals.

Manipulation, lying, poor service and poor communication (i.e. being “salesy”) cause prospects and customers to not trust us or want to work with us.

Someone else’s incompetency makes it harder for you to sell – and vice versa.

I’m convinced that one of the reasons for the growth of the Internet in B2B sales is a consequence of unprofessional behavior on the part of some salespeople.

How Sales Professionals Are Seeing The Light
If you’re a regular sales tips reader, you know that I routinely rail against 1950’s era sales techniques. I hate “salesy” – and so do customers. It’s unprofessional.

The awakening emphasis on knowing our customers and their industries is movement in the right direction. Seeking to help customers first and let the selling follow is a trend that is also moving our profession forward.

We all need to see the big picture.

And I think it’s beginning to happen.

We’ll all sell more as a result.

©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

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