part0014

During the course of my mentoring, I’ve met some highly intelligent people who run their own businesses, but I’m often amazed at just how many seem to have no sales expertise or processes in place, or understand the basic psychology of selling. They then wonder why they’re not able to sell their products or services. When I question them as to who’s responsible for their sales division and what experience they have, they usually reply along the lines of, ‘I’ve employed Bob to do that’ or ‘We take it in turns’. This tells me straight away that they’re lacking some very basic understanding of what skills are required, but it still often leaves me flabbergasted.

As I’ve previously explained, your values are the foundations on which you can successfully build your business. The talent you’ve recruited should all be aligned to these values so that everyone, across all divisions, is aiming for the same outcome. Your salespeople in particular have shown they have an abundance of ‘intelligence, energy and attitude’ (the IEA bundle) and if you’ve followed my recruitment process (Chapter 7 ) you already know they’re aligned to your foundations and values because:

This is a good list of the personal characteristics a great salesperson should possess. If Bob is more likely to take a ninety-minute lunch break, is slapdash about the office with an untidy desk and never stays a couple of minutes beyond 5pm, then perhaps he’s not the one who’ll go the whole way for the business. And I don’t blame him for that, if nobody has ever explained to him the vision, mission and values that underpin the business. Or, perhaps you’ve hired that seasoned sales professional with years of experience, who sounds and looks slick on paper, but is probably simply biding their time until they can take early retirement. I mean no disrespect to these people. I have to say, however, that in my experience, the graduate intake we employ meet all of our IEA criteria. They are all prepared to go that extra mile, not simply because they’re hungry for success themselves, but also because they’ve invested in the values and beliefs of the business. Plus, they know that the more successful they are in sales, the more people in the business will participate in its success.

Interestingly, many of our own sales personnel are young, former sports professionals, so not only do they care about their physical well-being, their mind-set is attuned to pushing themselves to the limit. They possess a state of mind which is intrinsically linked to maintaining their energy levels, an important asset to a salesperson. Good degrees of intelligence are also vital so they can relate to, and understand, the product or service which they can then convey to the customer with authority. The people we employ in sales tend to fall into the top 30% of the population, based on their intelligence test results. We value them highly and we pride ourselves that they work with us. We actively want intelligent people who aren’t afraid to challenge the status quo – because they’re naturally and positively disruptive.

Our nurturing process is central to our sales team training. Unlike many businesses that hold a sales meeting on a monthly basis, we schedule meetings weekly. In my opinion, monthly meetings aren’t nearly as effective because whatever is discussed and agreed is easily forgotten four weeks later. The majority of our weekly sales meeting sessions are devoted to role play and this is a key training tool that underpins our products and services; it’s an activity that keeps us all aligned to our core principles. It’s not simply an opportunity for us to have a kick about and have fun (although we do have a lot of fun) and nor do the team roll their eyes and think it’s all just a waste of time playing pretend. Our sales mastermind sessions, as we call them, are rooted firmly in the experience of the business of selling to our customers. It’s a safe environment in which team members can voice their concerns or address issues they’re facing, such as not being able to convert a lead into a sale. It’s the ideal scenario to role-play problems, and to find solutions as a result of interplay, devil’s advocacy and collaborative thinking. We rarely leave a role-playing session behind without a solution that our sales team can then employ with real customers. So many business leaders underestimate the value role play offers as part of their sales training process, or they don’t believe it will deliver measurable outcomes. I disagree, and profoundly so, when the alternative I see all too often is a bog standard, tick-box exercise and answering multiple choice questions.

Our salespeople love to rise to the challenge role play presents and, for us, it’s a positive investment in our future sales growth. Our energy meets their energy, head on, our desire to disrupt fuels their disruptive capabilities, our passion for learning feeds their need to learn, our values are theirs, and theirs are a reflection of all that we stand for as a business. Jointly, we discover new things about ourselves, our business, our processes and our customers, and we do that weekly, which I believe reinforces our collective will to excel. If more businesses would only adopt this as part of their sales process, I’d guarantee they’d see more opportunities to grow, to move forward and, ultimately, sell more products, faster.

It’s simple: rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Our business relies on being able to demo our products and services, and so our salespeople must be prepped well enough to demonstrate 100% familiarity, expertise and authority without a moment’s hesitation. The last thing a customer wants to see is a salesperson fumbling around with a piece of kit, or trying to get the product to work properly if it all goes south at the most inappropriate moment. I’ve always admired presenters on live TV shopping channels who’ve been handed a whiz-bang food blender only moments before they go on air, but nothing goes to plan. No whiz, no bang. They’re not even sure how to turn it on, and in all likelihood it’s not a food blender at all but a fancy solar-powered paint stripper. My point is, sales teams need to know their product inside out, to the very last detail, so that when they’re asked a technical question by the customer, they can answer immediately and with authority. Their fluency will allow them to explain all the features and benefits, but also the value it represents to the customer. That’s why we rehearse, rehearse, rehearse so that the demos can run without a hitch. They’re allowed to get it wrong in the training room, where it’s safe to do so. In front of a customer, the demo has to be spot on. The more you demo, the more you sell. For example, some of the products we demo have an 80% conversion rate.

I’m passionate about sales and getting it right. There’s a reason why I’ve left sales to the latter part of this book: my belief is that, if you don’t connect all the dots in your business, beginning with you, then your business won’t grow. Once you start to see how all the dots fit together by aligning your vision, mission, values and strategy to your processes, you throw your business the lifeline you’ve been looking for, and you will start to see growth. Where there’s no sales process, however, there’s no means of tracking, converting and measuring results.

If your sales derive from B2B, don’t even think about prospecting if you’re not willing to embrace a growth mind-set mentality, because cold calling (as it used to be known) isn’t for the faint hearted. Whether your team is using the phone, direct mail, knocking on doors or, more likely these days, selling via social media platforms, you need to know which is the most effective method and the one likely to convert from a lead-in activity. We’ve created KPIs for each activity we use most frequently that carry a valuation in terms of effectiveness of the activity as follows:

In this way, we can track our leading indicators and prospecting activity. For example, our sales team also use Soapbox (see Chapter 7 ) to reach leads when they’ve not been able to make direct contact via the phone. They create and send a short, snappy personalised message to the lead along the lines of, ‘Trying to get hold of you. Would like to talk to you about these three things and I can save you this much.’ Using Soapbox is a highly effective tool as it allows split-screen technology so that the salesperson can remain in view while posting up a visual. They then email the visual to the lead in the knowledge that video content is the consumed media. For the social media savvy sales graduate, this is second nature selling. Our salespeople will also front a Soapbox video for evergreen content that they post on our social media pages (LinkedIn/Facebook), which will include their direct contact details for follow up. We encourage them to be prolific in their output and, in many cases, certain salespeople become synonymous with a particular product (a fast-growing trend in prospecting).

Where possible, engage leads in conversations to discover what their priorities, needs and demands are. The more you can learn, the more you can qualify the lead as a potential customer that will convert into a sale. It might seem laborious, but it works. The fact is that you’ll save time in the long run with all the knowledge gained from qualifying, and you’ll know how to pitch better. As a result, your conversion rates will improve. You will also be able to measure and track progress with a greater deal of certainty.

Most salespeople struggle at this point because they don’t know how to handle an objection. They don’t realise that, in fact, an objection is also a signal for buying, which explains why 99% of salespeople capitulate after five objections. Once a salesperson can identify what those objections are, they will use them as weapons to strengthen their hand, and if necessary, deal with them for as long as it takes. In such a case, your salespeople will be elevated into the top 1% of sellers because they’ll go beyond those five objections and get to close the sale. How is that possible? By understanding the principle of ‘feel, felt and found’. For example:

The top salespeople will also find it useful to isolate any objection with ‘Is that your only objection?’ If the customer continues with more objections, then each can be dealt with individually until, eventually, none remain. Ultimately, your potential customers will respond more positively when they’re handled with empathy, sensitivity and understanding. An aggressive salesperson is likely to end up arguing with the customer (never do this! ). Such an approach is highly likely to result in a no-sale and no future order enquiries from the prospect. A sales process and methodology eliminates this risk and instead facilitates closing the sale. That’s why I emphasise the need for recruiting, nurturing and training the right salespeople, and why rehearse, rehearse, rehearse through role play is a crucial tool.

Having successfully fielded any potential objections, it’s likely the customer is interested in moving towards a purchase, but often they want to negotiate a better deal before they sign a contract/part with money. This is the point at which the inexperienced salesperson can fail in their attempts to close the deal. While the topic of how to negotiate well in order to win good business could fill an entire book, the outline below shows the key skills we expect any good salesperson to possess (bearing in mind they’ve already been through a thorough recruitment process and participate in weekly meetings in which role play and rehearsal have a huge impact on their outcomes). Without the correct level of IEA, this is when I often see many SME sales divisions making a series of common mistakes and failing to close a successful deal. The last thing any of us want to do is leave hard ‘cash on the table’ to win over the customer, yet I’m often staggered by how many salespeople believe this is the right way to go. As a very last resort, maybe, but when you start taking cash out of sales as standard practice, the business will inevitably falter. From the outset, you need a negotiating strategy that your salespeople understand and stick to.

The first and lazy port of call for salespeople will be to knock off a percentage of the price (a discount), even for first-time buyers. Anyone with any degree of buying savvy will go for a cheeky 10% off any price. It’s the salesperson’s job to show the prospect that they’re paying for value and to counter the discounting disease as means of securing custom. Any business owner who believes that it’s a good idea to discount on that basis needs to reverse that picture and think in terms of the actual hard cash they’re giving away. For example, if your product or service is priced at £10,000, then a 10% discount is £1,000 in your customer’s pocket, not yours. However, the customer can still be satisfied when the perceived discount amounts to 10% but when the direct cost to the business is minimal. For example, offering the equivalent of £1,000 in maintenance/support or training that would normally command far bigger margins, but in real terms costs significantly less to provide. It’s a big value win to the customer and minimal cost to you if training is £200 to provide in actuality. To operate in this way, salespeople must be prepared in advance, both with their offer and how they deliver it, which is when the meticulous rehearsal and regular role-play sessions come into their own. They need to be able to act with authority and on their intuition in order to leave as little, or no, cash on the table. I’m happy to credit this technique to the book Give and Take by Chester L. Karrass in which he advocates that if you do need to give anything away, always ensure you can loop back to value. If you do have to give something, make sure it has a high perceived value to them and low cost to you.

One of the biggest problems with salespeople is they don’t do this last step and they’ll do anything to avoid the rejection that comes with a ‘no’. The most basic part of this should be: so what happens next towards confirming an order? Very often, business owners tell me with frustration that it progresses only as far as what I call ‘the cup of coffee’ meeting which invariably results in salespeople saying ‘they’re getting back to me’. That’s usually because the salesperson has a fear of rejection, or lacks the right mind-set, training and the necessary IEA to close.

Assuming they’ve gone through the pre-qualifying process, there’s no reason not to ask the customer plainly, ‘Can we have your order?’ At the very least, any inconclusive effort needs to be followed up with a firm plan of action, such as contacting the customer again the next day and heading off any attached fear of rejection. Even then, if the response is a most definite ‘no’, it’s far better knowing now than three or more meetings later, when it’s plainly obvious there’s no business to be had. However, if handled correctly through a rigorous sales process, it will all link together. Therefore, if the salesperson doesn’t qualify correctly, they’ll face more objections further down the line. If they don’t handle objections well enough, they’ll find it hard to close because the conversation has looped back again to those objections and they won’t need to negotiate, let alone close.

That is the beauty of having a sales process: it might seem to involve a lot of up-front time and energy on your part to get to this stage when all you want to do is sell, sell, sell. However, while there is no such thing as a 100% conversion rate, you’ll want to get it into pretty high figures so that your business can grow, so why wouldn’t anyone want to give it their best shot? It certainly won’t happen by chance or by charm alone. Your salespeople must be ready, primed and have the right balance of IEA to achieve results and get anywhere near step five of my process, again and again.

At the top of your funnel, as shown in the diagram, are your leads, wherever they come from. They may be from your own prospecting from marketing or they may be from referrals. However, as they stand, they’re just leads and nobody can be 100% certain which way they’ll go. Only by qualifying will the salesperson know if the prospective sale has the potential to sink or swim. With a swimmer, it becomes an opportunity to which a value and timescale can be assigned. Our standard is to aim for 20% or more of all leads to become opportunities based on the following judgements:

Obviously, not all leads will convert into immediate opportunities for a variety of reasons, but those that you have qualified as having real potential can be placed in the ‘opportunity pipeline’ where each has a value. For example, at any one time, you might have ten companies where each represents an opportunity of £50,000 and so you now have a £500,000 pipeline. The next big conversion rate is in translating that from an opportunity to a ‘won’ conversion rate. Again, this is a percentage (our standard target conversion rate is 50%) and it depends on how good your salespeople are at objection handling, negotiating and closing. Any positive result that emerges from the funnel with a confirmed order is the ‘won’ rate. For example, with our 50% conversion rate, we’d expect, for every ten opportunities, five will be ‘won’ and five will be lost/deferred to a later date. Using your own funnel it’s possible, therefore, to view what’s happening, and where, within the process.

In the top segment, there’s a tap which represents the lead to opportunity conversion rate. Below that sits the opportunity pipeline with another tap which filters down into your opportunity to win conversion rate. In monitoring the flow of leads into the opportunity pipeline, you can determine where bottlenecks are slowing down the process that feeds into the ‘won’ segment and where you need to turn the taps on full. It’s a constant process of evaluation and manipulation. Over time, you can turn the taps to increase the conversion rates within the funnel that can create a paradigm shift in your business fortunes. Knowing which areas in the pipeline – prospecting, qualifying, objection handling, negotiating, closing – need attention is key to understanding the numbers critical to the business’ growth forecasts, and in knowing the velocity at which the pipeline is functioning. There’s not much to celebrate and get excited about if a £10m pipeline is going to take ten years to convert. That’s the beauty of the qualifying stage.

Everything I’ve described above is all well and good providing you follow a process along similar lines. However, unless you utilise a CRM (customer relationship management) system, believe me, things will soon begin to get a bit messy. In fact, I think CRM is a misnomer because, for me, it’s a sales enhancement tool . I know that some business leaders go pale about the gills when I mention this, a bit like they did when I talked about embracing vision, mission and values, but once they understand there is a real need for it, then the colour returns to their cheeks. Their major fear is that it sounds expensive and needs all sorts of fancy software and data input. Which of course it can, at the high end, if you have the resources (and need) for it, in which case, go for it. But free online resources, such as Trello, are just as good, or it can be as simple as creating your own spreadsheet, as long as it’s maintained and updated daily. I’m so often staggered at how many businesspeople don’t actually know what their salespeople are up to because they have no process and centralised, standard cross-company system. They literally prepare and send quotes from their own computers without any reference to each other, or even the business owners themselves.

Any form of standardisation and centralised CRM tool you can implement, which can be viewed and analysed in real time, offers an instant snapshot of where the business is right now and, perhaps more crucially, where it’s heading and how fast it’s growing. Being able to look at it and talk about it in your weekly sales meetings with the best talent you’ve recruited along the lines I suggest above, you’ll be confident knowing that you have employed good, sharp salespeople who will manage the funnel effectively and productively without wasting valuable time and effort in chasing dud leads. This integrated process must stem from the business leader’s own growth mind-set as this connects all the dots that ultimately lead to sales growth. Because if they’re not selling more every month, every quarter, every year, they’re not going to grow. One aspect of my mentoring business owners that I enjoy is seeing the pennies drop in their minds after I’ve helped them realise why their business is failing to grow, mainly due to a massive hole in their sales process which they’ve never really understood, or applied with any meaningful practice. Without a proper sales process that can convert, measure and track actual sales, there is no business. Having a process in place literally can reverse a business’ flagging fortunes.

CASE STUDY: DANNY

When entrepreneur Danny came to me for advice, he was selling automation system components into the offshore oil and gas industry. Leading from the front, he’d sold these systems globally into an industry he had already worked in as an employee for other companies for ten years, so his knowledge and experience was second to none. Deciding to go it alone, he had set up his own business and had seen some strong growth over his first two years. By the third year, however, the company had slumped from a £2m turnover down to £1.7m and now it was getting bogged down with incorrect orders, late shipments and disaffected customers.

To counter the decline, Danny recruited two additional salespeople in an attempt to reorganise and regenerate the fortunes of the business. After six months, the new salespeople were still struggling to make any real difference to the bottom line and Danny was on the verge of firing them.

Seeking my advice and insight into his business, we lifted the bonnet on the sales department and immediately discovered the problem. Danny had always been a lone-wolf salesman in his previous employment and had brought the same ethos into his own business. The main problem we identified was that all his systems were ones that he carried in his head and there was no such thing as a defined process in place. So the business lacked any clarity in respect of quoting systems, there was no CRM in place and no pipeline visibility at all! Little wonder that the new sales recruits stood no chance of success, or of measuring their performance. The first thing we put in place was an inexpensive cloud-based CRM system that still managed to deliver huge value to the business through sales visibility and formalisation. As a result, Danny was able to advise and coach his small sales team around their pipelines and he could also identify problem areas by having a daily dashboard of:

Activity
Conversion rate of leads to opportunities
Conversion rate of opportunities to won deals
Pipeline values
Sales booked

As a result of implementing a methodical sales process, in the fourth year Danny saw a his turnover increase to £2.5m and by the fifth year this further increased to a whopping £4.1m and 20% net profit (EBIT), despite very challenging trading conditions in the oil and gas sector at the time.