Sales Blog with Sales Tips

Unintended consequences are things we don’t intend to happen. The federal government is infamous for this.

An example. The federal Cash for Clunkers program resulted in a net increase in car sales of only 125,000 cars – at a cost to US taxpayers of $24,000 per vehicle (see Further sales tips reading below).

I don’t mean to pick on the federal government (well, maybe a little bit), but the truth is that unintended consequences occur in all areas of our lives. They also, as you have already guessed, occur in sales.

Unintended Consequences In Sales Are Accidental, But Avoidable
We’ve all seen salespeople heading toward a customer three-car pileup with the best of intentions. You might see the danger ahead, but they’re completely unaware of what lies in front of them.

While they don’t mean to blunder, they could have avoided the unwanted problems by thinking ahead. By projecting where their current course of action is leading and consulting with the more senior members of their team for advice, a customer car wreck might be averted.

6 Common Unintended Consequences In Sales

1. Overdoing the “friendly” part of sales can frequently backfire on us. Customers hate disingenuous people. Customers realize you don’t care about them that much.

2. Asking prospects intensive qualifying questions can put them on the defensive. No one likes being backed into a corner. This occurs so frequently that I’m planning on writing a sales tips post about it in the upcoming weeks.

3. In order not to offend customers, we frequently don’t introduce additional products and services to them. “This customer is buying $35,000 per month from me of product X; I don’t want to rock the boat by pushing for more.” This guarantees they will be looking at your competitors to find other products that you’re afraid to sell them because it might be offensive.

4. Pushing for a close is so 1950’s. Again, no one likes being backed into a corner. When this happens, customers bring out the heavy artillery loaded with plenty of objection bullets.

5. Don’t most of us already know that talking badly about the competition always cheapens us and ironically gives more credibility to our competitors?

6. Selling to a non-decision-maker (e.g. recommender, information gatherer) makes us feel good because it’s easy and we feel we’re making real progress. Nothing could be further from the truth. We’re in fact wasting our time and alienating the real decision makers because: a) They don’t think we’re smart enough to figure out who the real DM’s are, and b) They think we perceive them as unimportant.

Sales Tips Wrap Up
I’ve identified six of the most common unintended consequences in sales. Believe me, there are a million more. Unintended consequences are costly to us. They are preventable if we take the time to stop and think where we are heading and frequently collaborate with the more experienced members on our team.

Further sales tips reading:
Cash for Clunkers Results Finally In

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>©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

Scott Sheaffer’s New Book, “Comatose Management”
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Six Short Stories of Destructive Management Practices, Volume I
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Available in printed and Kindle edition on amazon.com
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The customer you start with is the customer you end up with. We have to establish rules, boundaries and limitations with our new customers immediately after consummation of the relationship. Like spoiled and ill-behaved teenagers, if we don’t follow common sense “parenting” principles right from the start, it’s hard to cure customer problems later.

Areas Where We Go Wrong
Here is where I see sales professionals get in trouble right from the outset with virginal customers:

1. Pricing. Train your new customers about your pricing; you aren’t the cheapest in town. You probably never will be, and there’s a reason. If price is their only concern, they need to look elsewhere.

2. Payment. Instruct your baby customers on the fine art of paying their bills. Let them know right from the first order that you are not intending to finance their business with your accounts receivable – and lost commissions.

3. Products. Educate your customers early on about your broad line of products and services. Let them know you intend to fill all of their needs with your products and services and won’t tolerate cherry picking.

4. Decision Makers. Help your newborn customers learn that you will be contacting decision makers at all levels of their company. Dealing with just the purchasing department won’t work for you.

5. Communication. By example, teach your newbie customers that you will return emails and voice mails within 60 minutes. You expect them to respond quickly to you as well.

6. Relationship. It’s impressive that one of the decision makers you’ll be working with at your newfound customer is a manager/director/VP/president/CXO/Intergalactic Lord of Nations/etc. However, you don’t really care about titles when it comes to how they treat you personally. You’ll treat them with respect, but you expect complete reciprocity in this regard. Can we say boundaries?

The Dance
When we initiate a relationship with a new customer, we begin a dance. A more sterile description would be to say that we are testing one another. A little push here. A little give there.

Sales Blog Epilogue
Confidence, authenticity and assertiveness will “break in” those fresh customers in all the right ways. If you let them grow up to be a teenager with a handful of bad habits and attitudes,  it will be difficult to fix the issues down the road.

The customer you start with is the customer you end up with.

Further reading:

• Ask Yourself, Am I a Pricing Wimp?
• Wrestling With Fear in Sales

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>©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

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“Scott, I really like your sales blog and the people in my office do too. The reason I’m writing is to ask you about something a lot of my customers are doing. They are eliminating vendors by just picking a number of us to get rid of. One will say they’re getting rid of 25% and the next will say 60%. I’ve lost three good customers because of this. What’s going on and what do I do? I feel like throwing in the towel. Bryan K.”

You’re Not Alone
Bryan, thanks for this excellent question. First, I want to tell you that you are not alone in your concern. This trend is rampant and is being encountered by many of your peers. I’ll provide some ammo below on how to fight back.

What you’ve asked about is called supplier reduction or vendor consolidation. It’s been around for years, but has become popular lately. It’s a process in which companies segment their buying areas and limit the number of vendors or suppliers that can service each of those areas.

Why Companies Implement Supplier Reduction Programs
Reasons for initiation of a supplier reduction program run all over the map.

It’s trendy. Who doesn’t want to be doing what his or her CEO is reading about in the Harvard Business Review?

It’s metric heaven. That’s right; everything has to be measured these days. I’m not sure the information is actually used, but it’s measured nonetheless. What Purchasing Manager can keep track of hundreds, or even thousands, of suppliers? You may have noticed that some of your customers are providing you with a supplier performance report. Reports take time.

Having fewer suppliers means lower administrative costs. Companies hate their own purchasing departments. All they do is spend, spend and spend. On top of that, they have to be paid a salary to buy things. If the number of suppliers is reduced, the company can shrink the size of the purchasing department.

This next one is nothing but simple math. If a company is buying $10,000 per month from ten suppliers and reduces the number of suppliers to two, they are now buying $5,000 (versus $1,000) per month from each of the remaining suppliers. The company now has much more leverage over the survivors.

We’re in a recession. Companies want to rely on suppliers that are financially stable and well run in their eyes. Small suppliers are finding it hard to make the cut in this environment. Heck, people are buying Fords because they think GM is wobbly. It’s tough out there.

Sales Tips For Selling In A Supplier Reduction Gone Crazy World
Remember, there is nothing new under the sun. This concept has been around for a long time and there are things you can do to respond.

One of the first things you can do is wait. Recent research has shown that the pendulum is starting to swing the other way. Many companies went a little too far in their reductions. Too much of a good thing, I guess.

Be proactive. Instead of waiting for your customers to tell you how you’re doing, you go first. Create your own performance reports and meet with the customer once a quarter to go over their results. There are numerous software packages available to help you with this.

I’ve always preached cross-selling. If there ever were a time to cross-sell, now is it. The more you sell to your customer, the less likely they are to give you the boot. They will ultimately depend on you. If you’re a shrink, a patient who is dependent on another person is a bad thing. If you’re in sales, customer dependency is great.

If you work for a big established company, then make sure you advertise that. If you don’t, then make sure you look professional and stable.

Ensure you are investing 80%+ of your time with your customers that are providing 80% of your income. Now is not the time to be messing around with high-maintenance low-volume customers.

Sales Blog Epilogue
Thanks again for your question, Bryan. You don’t have to be a victim of this trend. Use the sales tips above and get back in the game.

Further reading:

• 8 Reasons To Think Twice Before Selling To Really-Big-Companies

>You can automatically receive Sales Tips Blog by Scott R. Sheaffer >by email< or >by RSS<.
>Follow >Scott R. Sheaffer< on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.
>©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

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Always being the “nice” person and never creating any waves with your customers may not represent the best sales tips for your success.

Allow Me To Give You An Example From Hollywood
Freddie Prinze, Jr. is a well-known actor. Everyone likes him and he has stayed out of trouble. The same can be said for Nick Lachey, a well-known singer who used to be married to Jessica Simpson. He is also well liked and I’ve never seen him featured in a police mug shot.

So What’s The Problem?
The problem is that these two individuals are invisible. Name a really good piece of acting or bad piece of acting that Freddie has produced recently. Bought any Nick Lachey CD’s lately? Neither have I. Name even a bad song that Nick has produced in the last year. Can’t do that either.

These people are well liked, but they are invisible. Nothing about them stands out, good or bad. They’re not people you want to avoid, nor are they celebrities whose careers are of interest to most people.

These two “nice” guys take few risks with their careers. They like driving in the middle lane doing five mph under the speed limit. Consequently, they are consistently under the radar. This is bad for both celebrities and sales professionals.

Don’t Make This Mistake In Sales
“Nice” sales professionals are easily dismissed by prospects and customers because they don’t want to create any unrest or discomfort for anyone.

“Nice” sales professionals “share” customers with their competitors. They wouldn’t want to do anything to upset anyone. They treat their competitors with a little too much reverence.

“Nice” sales professionals are afraid to ask hard hitting qualifying questions that need to be asked regarding budgets, decision makers, competitors, etc.

“Nice” sales professionals don’t challenge customers with new ideas. As a result, customers never get fresh perspectives or new solutions on problems they are facing.

“Nice” sales professionals never try to up-sell, cross-sell, whatever-sell because they don’t want to push the customer too much. The customer could get offended.

“Nice” sales professionals always give the biggest discount possible on everything they sell because they want to be liked and feel secure in an account.

“Nice” sales professionals never seek out real decision makers because it could cause problems with recommenders and information gatherers.

Sales Tips For Success
Playing it safe never works in the long run. Take some risks. Shake things up a bit. Stand out and be memorable. Exude confidence – customers love it. It’s better to be memorable and selling, than “nice” and poor.

Invisible sales professionals only exist in a prospect’s business card file.

Further reading:

• Be honest with yourself. Are you afraid of your competition?

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©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

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Are you satisfied with your sales results?
Kay Ray can show you and your team how to reach
your objectives and unlock the door to success.
thekayray.com