Is Your Sales Process Obsolete?

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  jscheib04/05/07 Report as spam
  1

  Embrace Technology in your sales process

  I couldn't agree more with this article regarding the sales process. Back in the "industrial age" sales people could obtain an appointment and meet with a prospect and provide them with their company information in hopes of making a sale. As you stated, prospects in today's "information age" have already printed out your company info, your competitor's info and made a decision whether they are going to "buy" your product before you step foot in their lobby or office to "sell" them your product.
  
  It is unfortunate that sales managers and organizations continue to teach salesman the sales step process and especially have them waste their precious time making "cold calls"! Companies of all types need to embrace technology and work smarter, not harder in providing "technology driven-marketing" programs for their sales people in order to generate leads and most of all eliminate stress! Companies and sales people need to focus on marketing the benefits of their product and not the features. Customers today really don't care about how great your company is and that you have been in business forever, etc., they want to know how your product or service is going to benefit them and make their job(s) easier. I also agree with you that if a mid-level manager has time to meet with you, they have nothing better to do, and they are not the ultimate decision maker.

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  Franketh04/10/07 Report as spam
  2

  A short from the past

  Good article that shows the need to recognize that it is the customer that ultimately makes the decision and that it is its process that is important. The author also indicates, quite rightly, that the sales approach must change in-line with the customer?s position in its decision. I guess this will be discussed in a later article. The article makes it clear that it is important to recognize that the customer?s decision effectively dictates the so called sales process and in doing so is conforming to the movement towards reality in business practice.
  
  I also note that the author says the role of the salesperson is to facilitate the customer rather than sell. I believe facilitation is the right approach, but it is important to remember it is still selling, just a different form to the more conventional, or at least the tradition the author compares his approach against.
  
  It may be of interest that this approach was first published back in the late 1980?s by Chiltern Consultancy International. Their approach was based on a customer decision process, or model. The idea was that the selling approach changed to meet the customer?s decision position. In fact the company marketed a sales training program to accompany the methodology called, believe it or not, Facilative Selling. They were running this programme right up to the late 1990?s in a number of international companies. Not sure the company continues to exist. I guess this means it takes time for companies to learn.
  
  As I say the lessons in the article are still relevant, and dare I say needed. Partly this is because as I said they instil a sense of reality in sales practice. Which conform to the more recent trend towards Pragmatic Sales Management, or PSM.
  
  Great to read.

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  dave@...04/10/07 Report as spam
  3

  The Opposing Camp Weighs In about Customer Centric Selling

  While what you write is true to an extent, it is not true about all products, services and companies.
  
  Point 1 - While many products and services are simply being bought, not sold, there are still a great number of products and services that are and will continue to be sold. These include complex products and services as well as high-priced products and services and customized products and services.
  
  Point 2 - While it's important to consider how the customer wishes to be sold, a salesperson can't abandon a selling process while the customer/prospect uses one salesperson against the other to commoditizes the offering. The salesperson still requires a road map and my process, introduced in Baseline Selling, identifies points in time, as opposed to sequential steps.
  
  Point 3 - If salespeople waited until prospects were ready, they would be in competetive situations always - "I know what I want, now I just have to decide who to buy from." While they may know what they want, without a salesperson to ask the right questions, they may not know what they need!
  
  Point 4 - While some prospects will simply say "yes" at closing time, most won't, even when they're ready. They need to be closed. Effective salespeople help prospects make decisions to buy what they need. Left to their own devices, prospects often fail to act at all.
  
  Point 5 - While the economy won't come to a standstill, if everyone in sales moved to the customer centric model, there would be an awful lot of expensive, complex, custom-built products and services that would be sitting on shelves, with salespeople no longer able to demonstrate their value.

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  profmurph@...04/10/07 Report as spam
  4

  Huh! Sorry to be ignorant.

  Your message to the ignorant: "I?ll leave you with this hint: the sales process should match the way that the customer wants to buy ?not the way you'd like to sell." Please enlighten us as to exactly how the customer, actually prospect, wants us to sell to them? Outline a strategy that replaces the basics of business selling, I want to know...
  
  In your brave new world of selling, I guess there is no more prospecting since customers know it all, no more approaches since they will not see you, forget presentations since, again, the prospect knows it all, no point in carrying order forms since the prospect is not going to buy from me. Oh the Hell with it, I am going to work for WalMart.

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  mstevens@...04/10/07 Report as spam
  5

  Sales PROCESS Obsolete

  I think this is the key to the article and the point of the article. The idea of PROCESS. For many of us PROCESS is what we were trained in, for good and bad. PROCESS is easy to teach and check up on. The challenge is that sales has always been about relationship. I had a client say to me, the most important thing to me is can I work with you and is there trust.
  
  One thing I have found recently, especially in the Web 2.0 world is a 'I'm smarter than you mentality.' Like sales is some sort of codex to be unlocked and then people beg you to sell to them. If you all have found it I would love it, but the fact is nothing substitutes for rolling up your sleeves and talking with people over email on the phone or in person, and I don't think that matters whether you are a service or product provider. Yes you have to be flexible in what tools and PROCESS you use as a sales professional, but you still have to grid it out. I think this article is warning us not to work against ourselves.

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  bnetgeo04/20/07 Report as spam
  6

  Sales Process - Engage the customer

  Any more if I can engage the customer quickly, I figure I must be talking to the wrong person! Available time is a disqualifier in my world.
  
  As for the premise that you need to alter how to sell to customers these days is bull. Human nature has not changed and its people that buy products. First and foremost when you start off you need to establish a relationship, albeit fragile. Sales people need to be camelions...change your verbage, presentation and attitude to match the prospect and market. If you are calling the same kind of person, learn their pain. Its still works after 20 years.

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  Franketh04/23/07 Report as spam
  7

  That is the point bnetgeo

  I think bnetgeo best makes the point. Good sales people naturally reflect of the customer and adapt. They match how the customer is approaching the decision they are trying to make.
  
  That is why these sales processes based on selling steps are largely ineffective and unrealistic. They are looking to standardise, mechanise, something that by its very nature is inconsistent in some way or another.
  
  The author of this article is, I think, is trying to reflect this. I do not believe he is pushing an extreme customer relationship approach. If in fact I think he is trying to introduce pragmatism in to an aspect of sales that is at best inappropriate.
  
  In fact many companies are becoming ?customer obsessive?, and I did not say that, but Prof. Kaplan who?s research indicates that it causing many companies to trade unprofitably with a number of its larger customers

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  GlennC103/20/08 Report as spam
  8

  Sales practitioner?s role

  I think the author point of view makes sense if you assume the sales practitioner?s role is simply to facilitate opportunities and not to create them. In some sale environments this is indeed the case, however more and more today sales organizations need to take responsibility for creating new opportunities within there territory. This requires the skills and tactics that result in the suspect or prospect comprehending new possibilities that would result by engaging with this vendor. So it is wrong to examine the sales process as a stand alone course of action ? the sales process is one of the element in the ?sales chain?. The ?sales chain? is defined all the elements of the process that enables sellers to identify, engage and reach agreement with buyers of their products and services.