Rick Page - Make Winning a Habit [с таблицами]

Obviously, this attitude starts at the top with the leadership of a company and whether or not it has a sales culture. One by one, industries are starting to realize that they need a selling function. Ten years ago it was consulting. Before then, you couldn’t use the “s” word in any of these firms. It was “business development.”

Now, even law firms and medical clinics are realizing that they need a sales function—that business just doesn’t come to them fast enough to fulfill their potential and that even they need to sell value and avoid commoditization.

But not everybody ever imagined that they would be in sales, need a sales training class, or have anything to do with sales. Most universities not only don’t teach it, but most business schools consider it a pedestrian activity (although over 20 million people in the United States alone are employed in sales and probably at least as many throughout the rest of the world).

When we work with firms that are trying to change to a sales culture, the first thing we have to do is take away the old stereotypes — the negative images of selling — and replace them with a vision of selling that is not only acceptable but also worthwhile. Not that the negative images of selling are undeserved. There are a lot of bad salespeople out there.

Most of the bad images people have of salespeople, however, come from those who tried to sell them one thing, one time, and didn’t care about their repeat business. Overselling, high-pressure selling, and all the sleazy images we have usually come from this experience.

But if we define selling in such a way that it’s earning the client’s business by solving his or her problems and serving clients in such a way that they never have a reason to go to anybody else, then most people find the definition acceptable. If we can define selling as outserving and outsolving the competition, most people would accept that — and that’s basically what it is.

If you don’t earn business in such a way that you can meet or exceed your clients’ expectations, you’re not really a sales team; you’re a sales-prevention team. Systematically, you will inoculate your customers against doing repeat business with you.

The real test of selling is whether people will buy from you the second time. You have to do more than just satisfy the client—you have to ensure the client’s return.

Real profitability lies in the second, third, and fourth sale and beyond because that is where the cost of sale is lowest and your pricing can be higher because you have lowered risk and delivered value.

As companies have moved from selling products to selling systems and solutions, their sales efforts have moved from single sellers, who wear all the hats, to sales teams. Team selling consists of two to two dozen people selling to a committee of two to sometimes 200 buyers.

Many sales opportunities will bring a sales team consisting of an account manager, a product specialist (or several), an industry specialist, a technical specialist, a service team, and an executive or two. Since your systems and solutions may now touch multiple departments and, therefore, multiple buyers, all these people may be selling to a committee of buyers.

In team selling, each one of these specialties requires different talents, personalities and competencies, and each team member has different roles and responsibilities.

Soccer or Silos—None of the Above

The real test of selling is whether people will buy from you the second time.

In some companies, the roles and responsibilities of a sales team are clearly defined. In other organizations, including many consulting firms, such roles and responsibilities are not well defined. (One partner described his company’s sales effort as being like five-years-olds playing soccer. We all run over here and kick the ball, and then we all swarm over there and kick the ball. If we score, we all take credit, and if we get scored on, everybody runs away.)

Other firms are so large—and have grown by acquisition — that they sell in silos. Multiple sales reps are often calling on the same account. They rarely talk to each other to share opportunities and contacts and, as a result, quite often end up competing with each other within the same account.

Siemens is a huge multinational company. Actually, in many ways, it is over a dozen companies, each with billions of dollars in sales.

Numerous clients buy from multiple divisions of Siemens—each of which has a separate sales force. This is normally not a problem until the client wants an integrated solution.

To present one face to the client and handle internal issues and communications, Siemens created a separate sales organization called Siemens One, headed by Ken Cornelius in Atlanta.

It was especially effective when the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), after 9/11, needed to increase airport security screening. This meant (the acquisition of) new systems, hardware, technology, and lighting, as well as consulting services.

Siemens One was able to coordinate the sales efforts of several of its divisions and produce a singlevendor solution. Its competitors offered partnerships and coalitions of multiple vendors.

The pain was strategic, and the problem was urgent. Dealing with a single vendor reduced risk and increased accountability in a solution where the political benefits went as high as world peace.

They got the business. They were not the low bidder.

“This approach and success has been repeated dozens of times on large, complex deals for Siemens,” said Cornelius.

Likewise, on a global basis, many times the account is handled by the local country. The result is pricing that varies all over the board for the same business. There is also a lack of synergy in the sales effort, where many times, multiple opportunities could be combined to outflank the competition.

Joe Terry was coaching deals for a client in London and was conducting a strategy session on a $2 million deal for a big-five consulting firm.

Everything had been agreed to, and the contract was waiting for signature. They broke for lunch and returned to hear the salesperson say, “You’re not going to believe this, but our U.S. salesperson in corporate just closed a deal selling a worldwide license for $450,000!”

The U.S. salesperson, with no visibility into the bigger picture, had cost the company millions of dollars in revenue from a prospect that obviously had a high likelihood of buying for hundreds of offices across the globe.

Poor negotiations? Maybe. But the real problem was the lack of teamwork and communication.

One of the first military principles of strategy is concentration of force. Unless an entire global sales team is coordinated and has a unified account strategy, the competition will have a significant chance of defeating you piecemeal. Additionally, procurement departments can outcommunicate sales teams in some situations and shop the same business around the world to get the lowest price. This not only leaves money on the table but is embarrassing to the high bidder.

In order to be most effective, teams need clearly defined roles and responsibilities as to who will do the prospecting, who will lead the account strategy, and who is responsible for providing product information and presentations. In fact, the best strategy is to map your organizational chart to the client’s organizational chart so that each person on your team knows which person on the buying committee he or she is responsible for and has a strategy to win that person’s vote.

At the same time, one of the first principles of best practice is clearly defined account ownership. Whether you have one owner for an entire global account really depends on your size and strategy and whether you have invested in those resources.

Companies that sell in silos should pick one leader of the account. That leader is given control and accountability over that account, and everybody else selling in that account is a member of that team and accountable to that leader.

Other companies define account management as simply caretaking, coordinating, or communicating. They define relationships as being friends, giving favors, and showing appreciation. All this is fine, but we define account management as allocating resources in the most effective way to achieve the greatest account potential whether it is a partnership, dominating the account, or just maintaining it.

In team selling, the biggest challenge is moving individual salespeople from loners to leaders.

From Loners to Leaders

When it comes to managing a complex, competitive sales evaluation, the best practice is one opportunity, one owner. That way, you may be wrong, but you’ll never be confused. And confusion probably will cost you more deals than commitment to a single strategy.

A plan needs to be short enough that the salespeople will use it, but it also has to be powerful enough to win.

In team selling, the biggest challenge is moving individual salespeople from loners to sales team leaders. Salespeople, by nature, are loners. As they started out in business, working for a smaller company without division of labor, they may have had to wear all the hats. Good “hunters” tend to be independent sorts anyway, but as they move to team selling, their job is to lead a team. The strengths that made them good as an individual may work against them in this regard — the first of which is communication.

Salespeople who keep the plan in their head have a hard time leading a team. In order to lead a team with a plan, you have to write it down, and many salespeople don’t like to write. And most have short attention spans. For some reason, they would rather talk about a deal six times than write it down once.

Salespeople are drivers. They work at a high rate of speed and many of them at low attention to detail. Many deal in relationships rather than analysis. In order to get them to lead a team, accountability and discipline need to be driven from two sources: management and the teammates themselves. The vehicles for doing this are the forecast and the strategy coaching session.

Make the Pie Bigger First—You Can’t Split Zero

Major enemies of teamwork in many firms include split policy and fighting over account control. One of the biggest myths of selling and barriers to effective teamwork is a CFO’s opposition to “paying double” commissions — especially for global account managers. This is a misnomer, but once this catch phrase has been set, it’s difficult to change.

Paying more commissions for additional people on the sales team, whether they are global account managers or industry specialists, is simply a greater investment in the account in order to achieve greater returns or volumes.

The real question is whether the benefits of having additional personnel on the account will yield a return to justify the initial expense. We teach people that if they can’t see their way to greater volumes, better margins, or a lower cost of sales through less competition, then they shouldn’t invest in account management strategies for that account in the first place. Instead, they should pursue the business at the individual opportunity level or as a commodity through the Web or through bidding.