Tell - don't sell

Peter Urey explains how to get past a stalemate when moving beyond box-shifting

Fifty-four per cent of top performers in complex solution sales are telling - not selling.

The 20 per cent who deliver 80 per cent of the revenue are working on the client's business - not spending hours building a relationship in it.

Corporate advisory and research firm CEB asked how it was that after the 2008 financial crisis, when most sales results went off a cliff, some people actually grew their revenue. CEB interviewed 6,000 salespeople, chief executives, buyers, clients and third-party consultants, and reached some startling conclusions.

First of all, relationship building is not the path to results. They focused on high performers (producers in the top 20 per cent by results) and discovered that in complex solution sales the winners had moved beyond relationship roles and were operating as commercial guides and mentors.

They drill down into ways the client might create greater value by selling more or cutting costs. They see the wood for the trees better than the client and steer their decisions accordingly.

Then there is solutions fatigue. The most successful recognise that after 15 years of conventional approaches reiterating rapport and unmet needs, clients have become immune. They no longer have the will to answer every vendor's question: "What keeps you awake at night?"

Why bother with best guesses? Top performers and buyers both recognise that for most of the time any answers given are just guesses anyway. People who get buried in the narrow focus of their daily operations tend to lose sight of the wider strategic vision. They thus become unreliable witnesses.

And if you get cosy, you'll be exploited. Those achieving above-average results relying on the old model were less successful. Sales staff can "go native" once they embed into a client, delivering high levels of customisation at a heavy discount.

Clients want sales leaders to talk to them with authority and insight about the dynamic forces at play within the global economy and their sector. They are looking for professional guidance and commercial acumen to steer around obstacles and towards opportunities. So give them that.

Make sure the marketing vision dovetails with sales proposals. The winners invest time and effort in analysing their own and the competition's strategic marketing research. They absorb - rather than discard - the big-picture thinking behind corporate decisions to build solutions for identified markets. They operate as entrepreneur CEOs.

Further, the expectation is that the salesperson has a well-reasoned response to the three questions any business must keep asking itself: where it is, where it should be going, and how it will get there.

This approach, developed in Japan, is known as hoshin - leadership by compass. Typically, it has been used at the strategic board level, but it can be applied in high-value solution sales proposals too.

The process relies on facilitated breakthrough workshops that challenge convention to create the moment of insight - generating the "aha!" moment.

Hoshin puts great emphasis on preparation: analysing share data, trend reports and insight from commentators and third parties. Fifty per cent of planning time is devoted to identifying the biggest obstacles. An appreciation of the commercial landscape is the basis for guidance.

The most stimulating part of the process comes by generating ideas with input from product marketing, IT, finance and any contributors that can deliver a fresh perspective. The objective is to craft a small number of potential options, before putting them to the test.

The idea that gets presented to the client must help them sell more or cut costs; gain widespread support; be supported by data; be easy to implement; and not be easy for competitors to copy.

The confidence borne out of doing a thorough job of researching and planning the sell, starting with a long view of industry trends, ends with: "Why couldn't we see that ourselves? Tell us what to do next." This works.

Chart: In complex sales, tellers beat sellers

Copyright Fearless Consulting 2014 (All rights reserved)

Peter Urey is a management consultant at Fearless Consulting