Imagine a sales meeting, wherein a client is aware of every information about your product, every sales technique you would use to get the order, every discount model, and every mind-game trick that you may have. Imagine, the client controlling your actions and making you feel that they can look straight through you.
There are a lot of things that have contributed to the ways the buying process has changed in the last few decades, but the most important of them would be:- Internet: and the relevancy of networking, discovery of info and content, online forums that now serve as reference points, etc has had a phenomenal impact on the way sales used to have an advantage in information asymmetry or the way sales techniques were used to close deals (all out in the open now).
Add to this – the lack of evolution in sales processes across the world – mostly in the sales-driven companies that mattered. The very behavior of such practices across these organizations led to an environment wherein people empowered themselves with every kind of info to negate the kind of negative-value sales-reps were adding to the deals/decision making process
The very power of knowledge/information along with the kind of networking strength with early adopters, gives today’s clients the edge and the abilities to decide and always have an upper-hand in deal making situations.
The age old sales techniques like – smooth talking, buttering up the conversation/client, consultative selling, coercive selling, discounting strategies to close deals, conversations to wrong-foot the client and close deals, etc are extinct. At most times, these techniqes are a reason behind sales reps losing deals and client. The whole concept about “up-selling” has also now gotten regulated and controlled by clients themselves.
So if you are a sales-rep and you are standing compromised in-front of your client, would you be seen as an Old, flabby, non-athletic, paunchy person? or would it be better if you atleast have the body of an athlete that’s young, maintained, muscular, toned, and could run the marathon?
If you already know the answer, then the following needs to be done:
– Forget the age old cliched sales techniques. In today’s open-info world, you are a facilitator in the buying process at first, and then you can graduate into someone who needs to have strong and impeccable business sense to suggest the “quantum” of your product that needs to be used for a certain delta improvement in productivity/revenue at the client’s end
– Reinvent yourself “every-day” (this is key) and understand business requirements of your clients in your domain. Read more about the analytics in business that could be a point of discussion during your meetings with your clients. I always like discussing a good topic with someone who knows what he/she is talking about, and then I would listen to additional inputs from the same person. So if you really want to “sell”, then get yourself prepared for having those conversations
– Ditch every coercive technique you might have learnt, and every smooth talking ways you might have mastered. Those techniques might be useful while you bargain in your own domestic buying process, but they scare away clients who will see you as a repulsive being, who cannot be trusted and have no respect for their business or their team
– If you really want to run the marathon with your clients, then let them see that evidently throughout your Account-planning process. They need to know that if they run the marathon with you, you will be there throughout, and not run away right after the deal is inked. Some of the best sales-reps follow-through with their clients throughout the process wherein the solutions are implemented (How many times have you not heard of clients complaining that the sales rep promised something and I am being given something else now?)
– Understand priorities and the importance of such priorities with the group of people you would be meeting at the clients end. Motivation and power factors, alongside other important issues at clients end need to be studied and then that should reflect in your conversations, presentations, etc. Challenges that they face in internalizing a deal or a decision is a strong factor for your closure. Don’t you want to do something constantly to improve their chances internally for a closure?
– Stop being defensive about what you can do or cannot, since they are aware. At most time, your openness to discuss the parameters of improvement that can be implemented in the product you want them to buy can also help them see that you are strong enough to make those changes knowing very well that limitations are a part of every product at any stage
– Participate in all required/related forums, networks, etc wherein your clients might be present for information. It is always better to know their queries, worries, troubles, and opportunities and be respected as someone who has the required expertise to provide insights without being directly involved in the sales process.
I already have many such examples in forums like – Quora.The idea of a compromised salesman is haunting, and it can also have a humbling effect on anyone who feels that he/she has the charisma to sell anything under the sun. Those days are gone when you would use tricks and be termed as a sales magician.
In today’s world, wherein there are questions whether field-sales makes sense or not and if companies should invest in internal-sales teams, it is pertinent that we evolve the sales function into a much stronger and defined entity, rather than hold on to the already extinct philosophies that need to be put into coffins sometime soon.
The new age sales rep might actually not be compromised. He/she is just not that “ordinary” sales rep anymore.