Story Telling for Selling

Who's for Dinner?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture yourself as a lion ­ strong, fearless, head of the pride, and all the business issues that you face daily as either antelopes or squirrels. Even when a lion is dying of hunger, he won't give chase to any of the many smaller animals as a source of food.

Even though, squirrels are nearby and they would offer a quick & tasty snack. The lion has no interest. Why? Because he knows that if he did make the effort to catch one ­ there is still always an outside chance that he would fail ­and one small squirrel snack simply wouldn't sustain him.

However, no matter how weakened by hunger, should the lion spy an antelope in the distance, the very sight of it will move the lion to action ­ and even though he knows that a failed effort could be the end of him, the lion commits to the hunt. ­

As even if there is a slight chance of success, he¹ll give it his all ­ because a succulent antelope will fill his belly for weeks to come. The greater reward is worth it, and so the lion begins the process of single-minded focused effort that is required to make a successful killing.

A mind focused upon a single antelope is what characterises successful businesspeople. Have you identified your antelope? Or do you chase squirrels everyday wasting energy and effort at the expense of hunting more fulfilling Antelopes?

Bullseye!

There once was a warrior who prided himself in being the finest archer in the land. 

One day he came to a village and saw a bull’s eye on a tree with an arrow sticking out right from the center.

“Whoever shot that arrow must be a fine marksman” said the warrior to himself.

He hadn’t gone much further when he saw another bull’s eye, and another, and another – and all of them had arrows right in the center of the target.

He found the village elders and said “Whoever that marksman is I must meet him, ask him to meet me today, in one hours time by river."

He waited by the river but the only other person there was a small child playing on the bank. She came over to where he was standing. and asked “Are you waiting for someone sir?”

“Run along little girl, be on your way.” said the warrior. The little girl continued, “ I was told to meet someone here and you look like you are waiting."

The warrior looked at her and said, “It is true I am waiting to meet the great archer who is responsible for shooting all these perfect shots I see all over the village.”

"That would be me.", said the little girl. "I made all those shots.”

The warrior looked down at her and said, “Tell me how exactly you got a perfect shot every time?"

“That’s easy” replied the girl “I just point my bow very straight and let the arrow fly then I draw a bull's eye where it lands."

....and that's how the process of sales forecasting began

The Great Maldini and the lesson of the Wheelbarrow

Upon completing a highly dangerous tightrope walk, in appalling wind and rain, over Snake River in Idaho, 'The Great Maldini' was met by an enthusiastic fan, who urged him to make a return trip, this time pushing a wheelbarrow, which the spectator had thoughtfully brought along.

The Great Maldini was not very keen on the idea, given the terrible conditions, but the supporter pressed him, "You can do it - I know you can," he urged.

"You really believe I can do it?" asked Maldini.

"Yes - definitely - you can do it, I know you can do it" the supporter gushed.

"Okay," said Maldini, "Get in the wheelbarrow..."

Maybe you have your very own enthusiastic supporters? Enthusiastic customers and prospective clients who encourage and cajole you with all the right words, but do not back them up with action

Perhaps you have clients who think nothing of asking you to spend days writing a proposal that they have little intention of reading?

Possibly you have customers who expect you to travel miles to their office and then cancel at the last moment?

Conceivably you have prospects who promise they’ll get back to you and then you never hear from them again?

‘Ah yes’, you say, but that’s what clients do. They’re the rules of the game. The customer is always right. Really? Who wrote the rules? My suspicion is those rules were written by a customer – a rather selfish and inconsiderate one. Who said that we can’t have different rules?

Has your product or service such little value. Have your time, knowledge, experience and insights no worth? If these people see your efforts, your product and your schedule as something so unimportant they can discard you, it means two things: one, they don’t value you and what you have to offer; two, they’ll do it again. 

Ask yourself. When you make a sale, what sort of return on investment does your customer receive? Unless you’re selling snake oil, your customers are getting a return on investment several times what they paid. So what gives them the right to treat you like dirt? Who trains them?

Newsflash! You do!

Every time you agree to write a proposal without a clear commitment as to what happens next, you devalue your expertise and you send a clear message to your prospects that it's ok not to give commitments

Every time you show up on a prospect’s premises without a clear agenda, you are teaching the prospect that your time has little value. Like you had nothing else to do. 

Every time you discount your price you teach the prospect that pressure gets rewarded. If you yielded last time, what’s to say you won’t yield next time?

It’s just as David Sandler says …. “You cannot get mad at a prospect for doing something you didn’t tell him he couldn’t do.”

If you want to be treated like a run-ragged, low margin, subservient vendor, its simple - act like one. Do whatever your prospect tells you to do and never ask for a commitment in return.

If on the other hand you want your prospect to treat you like a valued business partner, the answer is simple - act like one.  Play a little ‘hard-to-get’ and see where it gets you. If your prospects see you as someone who is in demand and who is respected, they will be drawn to you. Again, it’s human nature. People are attracted to people who are popular – they don’t want to be left out.

In a way, any sales negotiation is a bit of a balancing act. Oversell and you put them off, undersell and they miss the benefits. Just remember you’re not on your own, your prospect is balancing too. But remember he mightn’t know so it’s your job to tell your him to ‘get in the wheelbarrow’ – he’s not going to volunteer to get in.

 

Forecast Phobia

Research by Gemma Briggs of the Open University in the UK found that talking on the phone about spiders causes more driving errors among people who are spider-phobic than among people who are not, indicating that the emotional aspects of cell-phone conversations may affect drivers' ability to control their attention. In a study of 23 people operating driving simulators, the spider-phobics had an average of about 6.5 driving errors when conversing about spiders, compared with 4.5 for nonphobics.

The lesson is this for Sales Managers is - don't talk to your salespeople about their forecast while they are driving! 

You could be responsible for a nasty accident!

The Promiscuous Nature of So-Called Partnership

I’ve never been to Ronda (Spain). From what I can see online, it's a stunningly beautiful place. So when I decided I fancied visiting the place, my first task was to find a hotel. Being of a somewhat lazy disposition, I decided to let google do the searching for me.

Low and behold the first site to grab my attention was Trip Advisor, which offered a plethora of hotels I could choose from. The top rated hotel (by feedback) was the Hotel San Gabriel.

I entered the dates that I wanted but was disappointed to get a message telling me that rooms were not available for the dates I have selected. Trip Advisor then offered me rooms in it’s other ‘parter’ hotels in Ronda.

I really like the look of the Hotel San Gabriel, so I decided to try their own site. Guess what? – plenty of room available. It certainly redefined the meaning of the word partnership for me.

Then I began to wonder........in the technology world all the big vendors have their own, often overlapping, network of partners.

Are these real partnerships working for long term mutual gain and support or are they of the promiscuous ‘Trip Advosor’ type.

I’m OK with the latter – just don’t call it partnership.

 

St Patrick - Salesperson Extraordinaire!

If you want the change the behavior of your sales team and close more sales, you might find some lessons in the work of St Patrick who successfully changed the behavior of an entire nation

This famous Irishman brought Christianity to our land drove the snakes out of the country and is widely accredited with using the shamrock, now Ireland’s national symbol, as a tool to explain the holy trinity.

Only, St Patrick wasn’t Irish, he hailed from Wales. His name wasn’t Patrick either (his name is derived from the Latin ‘Patrician’). He never drove the snakes out of Ireland, as there were no snakes in Ireland (if there were, he also cleaned up all fossil remains). The use of the shamrock to explain the trinity was an 18th Century fabrication and Christianity existed in Ireland before he arrived here.

But of course something doesn’t have to be a fact for people to believe it is a fact.

Read on

 

Caveat Vendor (Seller Beware)

If you think that decision making is a straight process in an unstraight world, you’ll fail more often than you’ll succeed.

Many years ago I sold into a well know manufacturer of mobile phones, pagers and walkie-talkies. One of the major projects I remember my customer undertaking was the outsourcing of their entire logistics function to a third party vendor.

Late one evening I was chatting to Philip, their head of Supply Chain & Logistics who confided in me that he had chosen a vendor to outsource his logistics to. The particular vendor wasn’t well known in this part of the world, but was the market leader in the Far East.

As I was going to have to work with this vendor to supply my products, Philip spent some time assuring me why this vendor was the best for his company and mine. Before parting he asked me to keep the information confidential as they were still in negotiations with several vendors. The fact that he had made his decision before the official decision made been made wasn’t lost on me. But what happened next astounded me.

A few days later I received a call from Philip telling me that there was a change of plan and they were no longer going with the Far Eastern company. Instead they were going to work with FedEx.

When I enquired what was behind the change of heart, Philip confided that when he told his Managing Director of his decision, his MD asked him if he wasn’t making a career limiting decision.

“What do you mean? Philip asked his MD.

“Well”, responded his MD, “when something goes wrong and some important product that we need goes missing, as it inevitably will, and emotions are running high, someone will ask “who lost it?”, “who the hell are they?”, “what the hell are we doing using a company no one has ever heard of…. Are they reputable… why were they chosen? ‘Why didn’t you select a vendor we know?’ and the next question will be ‘who the hell selected them anyway?’

So, Philip informed me, we’re going with FedEx. Everybody knows who FedEx are.  I won’t have to justify them to the organisation. Nobody can tell me that FedEx aren’t a professional outfit.

“But”, I protested, “I thought the ‘Far Eastern’ company was the best fit for your particular needs?”

“Life’s not that simple”, Philip retorted. “I’m not going to take the hit to make someone else’s life easier”

‘Wow’, I thought to myself as I walked to the car park, ‘so much of selling has nothing to do with products or solutions’

Fast forward to late 2010. It was reported recently that Ireland’s Health Service Executive (HSE) awarded a multi million Euro contract for legal services to legal firm Arthur Cox.

So what? you may ask. Well, the under bidder, a consortium of medium-sized solicitor firms, are deeply upset.

The consortium - Wallace, Kelleher, Tobin & Lee – claim that their pitch was queered by the presence of one of Arthur Cox’s senior partner’s (Eugene McCague) on the board of the HSE.

Despite the consortium being ahead “by a distance” on the only objective criteria – price. When the subjective criteria were taken into account Arthur Cox beat off the challengers by scoring 680 points to the consortiums 675 (a 0.5% winning margin).

On the subject of the potential conflict of interest, a spokesman for the HSE said “that if any contracts with as much potential for conflict of interest ever came to the board, Mr McCague would withdraw from the room and take no part in the decision”

Any claim that the potential for a conflict of interest is removed because Chinese walls’ exist or a ‘conflicted’ party ‘leaves the room’ when a decision is being formally taken is disingenuous at best.

Given the choice between the familiar and the unfamiliar most people will favour familiar.  This is obvious, when you think about it.  It’s the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know syndrome. We all gravitate towards certainty. Familiarity is just a signpost on the road to certainty.  Thus, in the case of the consortia, they were naive to think that they even stood a chance if they could not tackle significant conerns not addressed by Arthur Cox.

In a previous article If you can't even speak about money, don't expect to see any in sales process I made the point that sales effectiveness is not just about your ability to ask questions or make great presentations, similarly, your ability to read the political and decision making landscape is also critically important to your success.

There are several lessons for sellers in the Cox/HSE situation.

Lesson 1: If you expect the decision making of any organisation to be fair, straight or logical then you’re going to lose more that you win. To expect otherwise is naïve.

Lesson 2: The sales process almost always favours the incumbent. This is especially true when selling to an organisation that is risk adverse.

Lesson 3: Given the choice between a lower price (especially when the money is not their own personal funds) and a perceived lower risk, risk adverse people will always go for lower risk. To many people, a cheaper price may be even interpreted as an additional risk fact.

As for Philip, FedEx, and the logistics company in the Far East? Philips Company pulled out of Ireland several years ago. Philip is now CEO of another multi national corporation. Both FedEx and the firm from the Far East are all doing just fine.

 

 

 

New research on forming habits

Productive habits are the backbone of effective selling behavior. New research by Psychologist Phillippa Lally of University College London suggests that habits take a lot longer than the 21 days that previous research claimed.

Lally asked 96 undergraduates to form a habit in 12 weeks by repeating daily a healthy behavior such as drinking a glass of water with lunch.

Her research showed that forming habits took on average nine and a half weeks (I wonder if Mickey Rourke or Kim Basinger were amongst the undergraduates?). Some took several months to form a habit.

The good news is that missing one or two days of repetition will not impede the process.

Do you have a Jimmy Hendrix working for you?

Back in the early 80's, every Saturday night without fail, my friends and I would 'frequent' a nightclub that was ambitiously called 'tingles'. It was little more than a bingo hall with a couple of strobe lights and a few coloured filters that helped distinguish it, by a very fine line, from a 1950's 'country' (i.e. culchie) ballroom.

Memory can play tricks on the mind, but I recall the jubulent response from 'the boys with long hair' anytime Jimmy Hendrix was played. It didn't have to be 'Hendrix' of course. Anything by 'The Quo' or AC/DC would suffice.

In an instant, a swarm of spotty faced teenagers would gather in a circle and in a bid to outperform Hendrix, played  their imaginary 'guitars' with a  gusto that would have seriously impressed the great man himself.

With hair flying and a faces like constipated gerbils, the young rockers would ditch all self consciousness as they plucked, flung and fretted their virtual instruments with feckless abandonment.

I seem to recall performing an aria or two myself. I remember being really impressed with how I performed to 'A Whole Lot a Rosie'.

Afterwards, I struggled to understand why my fingers wouldn't work when I tried to get to grips with a friends Gibson. Why wasn't I able to perform in the real word what I had clearly mastered in the virtual world.

I don't know about you, but I see a lot of people in the selling business who are virtuosos in their own mind but perform like well dressed heffalumps in front of a prospect. Any pressure from a prospect and they wimp, cave and crumble. They act like like those 'talking' dolls where you pull a string and out pours the latest digitized buzzwords created by some back office product marketer.

Is it their fault though? Is the hiring and recruitment process to blame?

Aren't most interviews little more than 'air guitar' auditions?

What do you think? 

What do you have to do?

Paul Lanigan, Sandler Training

I just heard a business consultant give the following advice;

Thank your customers, regularly.

It's hard to argue with this. The subtext is that you should be grateful for their business and you should demonstrate that gratitude.

I'm not suggesting that you don't thank your customers. That would be crazy.

The question you should really be asking yourself however is;

What would you need to change about your business and how you engage with your customers so that they are thanking you.

Think about the advantage that would give you.