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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It’s a common NFL rite of passage during summer training for a rookie player to carry the shoulder pads of a veteran player who plays the same position.

Dez Bryant, a rookie wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys, recently refused to carry the shoulder pads of Roy Williams, a veteran wide receiver. A local Dallas survey revealed that 25% felt Dez did the right thing and 75% thought he should have carried the pads.

It was all a tempest in a teapot, but there are some powerful sales tips underlying what happened.

How Do We Want To Be Treated?
People treat us in a way that mirrors how we expect to be treated.

We all have people in our lives whom we know won’t take any of our guff (my wife would be my example). Other individuals are needlessly flexible when it comes to our stupidity.

B2B relationships are no different.

I’m With Dez
Personally, I agree with Dez. His small rebellion let it be known that he was there to work and didn’t wish to participate in the hazing rituals of college fraternity boys.

Wade Phillips, head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, will never remember whether Dez carried Roy’s shoulder pads. However, he will remember his performance on the training field.

Roy Williams has not been a standout performer for the Cowboys and has been a disappointment to the team. I suspect the head coach would have preferred Roy to spend less energy on Dez – and more on Roy.

Training Our Customers
We have to train our new customers in how we expect to be treated, just as Dez schooled Roy. We’re rookie sales representatives in their eyes.

• How far will we allow a new customer to push us?
• At what point does our ROI (Return On Investment) become insufficient?
• Where do we draw the line when it comes to concessions?
• How long will we wait to get our invoices paid?
• What’s a realistic limit on the number of “one-off’s” they have us chasing after?
• Do they respect us and treat us appropriately?
• etc.

Sales Tips On Training New Customers
We train new customers in how we expect to be treated by how we respond to the kinds of issues noted above.

If we respond quickly and decisively, there is no prolonged tug-of-war. Boundaries are clearly and immediately established.

If we respond slowly – or not at all, we’re telegraphing to our new customers that we’ll accept low commissions, slow payments, unreasonable amounts of handholding and a host of other problems. Just like children, once they learn what behaviors are tolerated, it’s challenging to turn things around.

We don’t need an account base filled with customers that we allow to unjustifiably jerk our chains at every turn. Fortunately, we have the ability to stop most of these problems before they become established unproductive patterns.

©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