Chapter 2 - The Broken Model

Page 3 of 3

How Sales Managers Perpetuate Dysfunctional Selling Practices

Most sales managers were salespeople at one point in time. They have been operating on the same traditional buying and selling practices as everyone else. What they often fail to realize along with the rest of us is that the business climate as well as the most effective buying and selling practices have changed.

Today, the number of calls and appointments made don't translate into sales. While it is an easy metric to track, if your efforts aren't resulting in sales, it is simply activity with no results. Pushing salespeople to consistently court buyers who aren't ready to buy is not going to work either. Accepted sales "wisdom" tells you it's all about persistence. While it's true that persistence is paramount to success, persisting to do the wrong things has no real purpose. Traditional sales theory (especially around prospecting) simply does not apply in today's business environment.

Most sales managers (and salespeople) also operate under the misconception that the product with the best features or lowest price will succeed. Most managers don't attach enough importance to the CUE with which you enter the sales process. Finding opportunities and failing to turn them into business is worse than not finding an opportunity at all because of the cost of participation.

There are many other factors at play that create such a misguided buying/selling relationship. We have marketing departments that that waste our time with unqualified leads. We have CRM software that we were never properly trained to use and we have unrealistic urgency pushed upon us that leads to more frantic and disconnected sales effort.

Most studies reveal that we spend less than two hours a day actually selling. The rest of the time is spent on ineffective prospecting, working with CRM systems that aren't working for us, forecasting sales, and sitting in meetings, among others. The two hours that we do spend selling are primarily wasted on unlikely opportunities, trying to force-feed our expertise to prospects or inefficiently drafting responses and communications. We are spread too thin which has in part led to our inefficiency and lack of success.

The good news is that the practices, tools and techniques needed to correct the situation are readily available.

I'd like to recap the outcomes the Passive Pipeline will deliver;

Successfully obtain prospects that want and prefer to do business with you, before you ever speak to them.
Directly manage your prospect's buying and selection process with exclusive authority.
Know who is in a position to buy before the client tells you or anyone else for that matter.
Create at least five times the opportunities you are capable of generating with your current efforts.
Effectively establish yourself as a sought-after expert in your field.
Obtain the most comprehensive set of demographic and contact data possible for your market.
Execute the most precise and effective prospecting efforts your peers or clients have ever seen, without ever picking up the phone or asking for the "person who handles such and such".
Build a highly visible list of professional references which will make any competing sales person wonder why they even attempted to take your commission.
Save hours (days in some cases) every week in building your business with exponentially better results.
Locate and be introduced to the people you want to do business with and present them with a "billboard" of your credibility before ever interacting with them.
"Own" your territory in a manner that was never before possible.
Be the first person into every deal you work.
Close more business, make your boss smile, frame your next W2 and steal your competitor's commission!

Here are two very different approaches to courting a prospect which summarize the ideas presented in this book:

With the traditional model;

A salesperson has a list of companies to call and dial furiously to make just a couple of connections. Ninety percent of the people you reach become irritated and make a mental decision not to work with you. Maybe two or three agree to an appointment. Of these, few have any buying authority. You may spend months trying to convince them to buy your product or service when the people with authority don't have a need for your product or don't even know you've called. However, you may find a legitimate buyer with a genuine need, but you are the ninth vendor they have spoken to. This is not a sales model I choose to participate in.

The Passive Pipeline Model;

A buyer finds you because you have established a presence through your Passive Pipeline. The buyer contacts you. You have now entered the sales process on an equal footing with the prospective client and you are no longer perceived as a salesperson. You help the buyer manage the purchasing process, you provide them with useful information and you begin to mutually explore solutions with them.

The buyer is thrilled and satisfied to be working with you. The sales cycle is shortened and if by chance more vendor quotes are required, they are simply accepted as a matter of process. Other vendors and salespeople are being measured against the standard that you have set.

In addition to this buyer, thousands of other potential prospects are finding you through your Passive Pipeline. You are seen as a professional and you have the luxury of only working deals you have a high probability of winning.

Final Thoughts Before We Move On...

I'm going to get off the soapbox now and detail exactly how you can start using technology to make today's selling climate work in your favor. Much of what you will read in the next few chapters will be entirely new to you. You may start to wonder why these techniques have not been made available before. Let me address that now.

These are not new ideas. They are proven and they work. Many top performing salespeople, real estate professionals and internet businesses are using them today with exceptional results. The concepts we will explore have simply never been widely applied to professional selling.

Great authors, speakers, and sales coaches of our time simply are not in tune with the new resources available to us today. They are superb in teaching the human aspect of selling, closing, prospecting, time management and so on. I am not in any way discounting the excellent speakers and authors out there and I think we should continue to rely on the best of them for guidance. I simply think we need to augment these teachings to match the pace with which the business climate is changing.

These are uncharted and unfamiliar waters to most people in the sales industry. Human nature often resists change in favor of what's comfortable and familiar. The sales world is no longer a comfortable place. Chances are you aren't satisfied with your current selling situation or you wouldn't be reading this book.

No one has ever found success by doing the same things tomorrow that resulted in mediocrity today.