QuotaCrush

As the political landscape heats up here in the U.S., I am reminded about a classic sales mistake:  bashing the competition.

As I’m watching the election campaign heat up, I amazed at how many people feel the need to bash the competition in order to build themselves up.  Seriously, you can decide that a certain candidate is not the right choice - but I challenge anyone to find a candidate for president that wasn’t honestly thinking that they were not doing the right thing for the country – even if their method you oppose.  You may decide John McCain is the wrong choice, but regardless, he is a treasure to this country for his service and his drive in making this a better place.  Likewise, you can hate Obama’s need to raise taxes, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t trying to better our country in his own way.  I’m proud to call both men my countrymen – even if I do have an opinion as to who would do a better job.

Recently, my boss told me that “I needed to just talk to him straight – and didn’t need to sell him.”  My wife often asks me to stop “selling” her.

Is it possible that after selling for my entire career, that I don’t know how to conduct a transaction that doesn’t involve selling?  Are all of my conversations conducted using my sales skills?

Anyone else have this issue?

While it may seem obvious that you should never vomit on your prospects, its a very common move that sales people make.

No.. I’m not referring to actually spewing your chewed Shakeshack burger onto your customer – but spewing WAY too much information.  

The easiest thing to do in a sales call is to just talk and talk and talk.  Yet – this rarely leads to a sale.  When you are more focused on getting all of your points out, and less on what the customer wants to hear – you are essentially losing lots of opportunities to learn what the customer needs – and responding to that need.

I’ve been loving watching the Olympics this past week – which is new for me.  Usually, I’m fairly ho-hum on watching the Olympics, but this year I’ve really enjoyed it.  Not just the Americans, but everyone who is performing and trying their best.  In a discussion about the amazing run of golds by Michael Phelps, someone quoted a business book (they didn’t say which one) that had a quote:  “Words are words, excuses are excuses, but performance is reality”

This is VERY true in sales.  In the end, it doesn’t matter how many words you use, and how many excuses you may have for NOT selling, or getting that meeting, or closing that deal.  In the end, its all about your performance.

While this sounds harsh and cold, its the true reality.  Nobody gets paid, the lights don’t turn on, and the coffee doesn’t brew unless sales makes the deals.   We are the front line, and while it may seem heartless when a sales manager or COO or CEO says, “what have you done for me lately?”   Its the reality in running a business and its all about delivering results. 

I also answered this question recently on LinkedIn and thought it made sense to add to the blog.

What is the best way to sell enterprise software?

What do you think are the pros and cons of each of these methods:

1) Promoting Features the client will find advantageous
2) Devising Operational Solutions to solve a business problem
3) Advancing Strategic Enablers to change the way the client does business

Are there appropriate situations for using one method over the others? What alternate approaches might be helpful in facilitating software sales?

My Answer:

I answered this question recently on LinkedIn and thought that my answer spoke directly to some of my recent posts – so I thought I would re-post it here:

Wow… I have to say that I never expected to have so many people ask me about my post on not logging into the software.     My wife, in particular, lambasted me in promoting some sort of used car salesman technique as if I’m trying to pull something over on the customer.

I would NEVER promote selling a customer that doesn’t need your product.  I believe that you always sell the right solution to customers – always be genuine.  You first should identify if the customer needs the product.  If he/she does in your eyes, and you honestly feel that you can bring about an improvement in their life/business/etc.  then you can and should continue.

What I’m proposing from that point on, is a technique to get them to understand your point of view on how you can help them understand that best.  My technique is to sell to the value of the product rather that focusing on the features of your product in detail.  (and to be more clear on my never logging into the software post - what I was referring to was that salespeople that have deep understanding of their product can very easily fall back into the feature sale rather than the value sale.  If you have the luxury of using sales engineers to deal with details, then the salesperson is FORCED to sell on value because that is all they know in detail).   

My recent post The Genius Behind Never Logging Into The Software I Was Selling, has generated a great deal of off-line discussion.  I wish much of it was captured in the blog itself – so I’ll try to capture some of it and put it in here.

Certain individuals seemed to miss the point – somehow interpreting what I was saying as promoting a sale that was ingenuine.  In fact, I’m promoting just the opposite.  I’m promoting the fact that what you need to sell is the value of your software, and if YOU understand the value ABOVE the noise of how the software does it – then you will actually be better at finding the proper solution for the customer – and identifying IF they need it at all.

If you can sell the customer on WHY the software makes sense for them, and you’ve spent the time to understand how the software does that, then you can certainly will have an internal champion.  If the customer is “closed” in terms of value – then actually completing the close becomes much easier.  They become your internal sales tool, because THEY will look for ways to overcome the objections.