Why Customer Service Destroys Salespeople By Mark Hunter

One position that has not been impacted by the economy is sales. Ask any CEO and you will hear that one of their biggest issues is finding and retaining good salespeople.

Something happened on the way to a sour economy: Too many companies learned the hard way that their salespeople didn't know how to sell. Instead, their salespeople were good at taking orders and providing customer service.

There is nothing wrong with this approach, as long as the marketplace is always going to serve up new customers and keep current customers in business. Does that kind of marketplace always exist? Unfortunately, no.

As a sales consultant who works with a wide number of companies, I am not surprised with the current state of sales. In the past 20 years, books and soothsayers have inundated us with advice saying that the best way to grow your company is through great customer service. (Think of companies like Disney, Marriott and Honda, just to name a few).

These are certainly great companies, and I'm personally an avid customer of each one. However, if great customer service is all that is needed to win, then why is each of these companies struggling in today's economy?

I don't offer up this example to generate an in-depth discussion on economics and market share. Rather, I put it out there to say that customer service alone is not going to help a company achieve its growth targets. It is essential for salespeople to be focused on selling as their first priority and providing customer service as their second priority.

Selling is about digging in and working with customers to help them see needs they didn't realize they had. It's about helping customers see how the solution for which they are looking can be found in what you are offering.

Selling is not about sitting back and taking orders based on what the customer wants. If that's selling, then there really is no need for a salesperson. The entire process could be done on the internet or over the phone. I know that observation just hit a sore spot to many of you reading this. Possibly, you've watched your industry be decimated by the power of the web. Nowadays, many customers can get what they want, when they want it and how they want it, all through their computer.

If your job was lost because of the internet, then let me share something that you may not like to hear, but is simply true: you weren't selling; you were merely taking orders. I am not putting myself on a pedestal, because one of my first sales jobs I thought I was a salesperson (at least, that's what my business card said). In reality, I was doing nothing more than going around to grocery stores and taking orders from store managers. I wasn't selling. I was conveying information and providing customer service.

Today's economy is crying out for salespeople. Are you someone who is willing to be assertive in making phone calls, meeting with customers, and spending time doing what I refer to as the "deep-dive" with high-potential prospects to secure the really big business. If a salesperson is not willing to go face-to -face with a customer, then they have absolutely no right to be in sales.

The only thing they are doing is hurting themselves and their employer. The fastest test I know to measure a person's aptitude towards selling is to ask them to explain in detail how they develop leads and handle cold calls.

When a company looks to outsource the lead generation process, or spend so heavily in advertising to try to create enough leads for everyone, then they are setting themselves up to fail. Over time they will wind up with a sales team focused on capturing the easy sales. They do this by making everything a customer service moment. This is akin to a pro-athlete thinking because they are a professional, they no longer need to stick to a physical workout program.

When a pro-athlete stops their conditioning program, they may not experience a falloff in performance immediately. Over time, however, the decline will be evident. The same is true for salespeople who are not routinely in the game of prospecting and developing new customers. They will lose their edge. The decline will be so slow that they won't realize it is happening, let alone why it is happening.

Each client with whom I have the privilege to work hears this message: The responsibility of finding and retaining new customers is the responsibility of every employee. Salespeople by the very nature of their position must take the lead and be assigned weekly, monthly and quarterly goals of prospecting calls they must make.

Management owes them the tools that encompass an effective sales process. This process must include employees outside of sales whose primary responsibility it is to provide customer service. After all, salespeople should focus first on selling. They need the time to achieve this realistic expectation.
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Mark Hunter, "The Sales Hunter", is a sales expert who speaks to thousands each year on how to increase their sales profitability. For more information, to receive a free weekly email sales tip, or to read his Sales Motivation Blog, visit TheSalesHunter.com.

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Send a Price Quote To Me! By Dan Adams

The phone rings. It's a new customer you have never met saying, "I need a quote tomorrow morning on your highest-quality product. Can you get that to me?" How do you respond?
Let's consider two options a rep can take:

Option A, "The Special Assignment Option"
Rep "A" will rush back to her office, yell for her specialist and burn the midnight oil churning out a fifty-five page response. She may toss in a brochure, include a national discount, mail it to the customer and cross her fingers.

Isn't this what a typical/average rep does? In the workshops I conduct I call this the "Special Assignment" option which is a euphemism for a rep in a precarious employment position.

My advice to Rep "A" is, "Don't be a quote machine." Special Assignment reps seem to adhere to the motto: "When in doubt, quote!" Most companies do a great job teaching reps their administrative duties, namely, how to produce bids.

They generally don't do a very good job teaching high-quality consultative and strategic selling skills. Speaking from experience, after my initial sales training I could churn out bids better than anybody. The quotes were usually numbered with a letter suffix.

I would start out with "A", and the quote would get altered so many times that if I was lucky enough to get the sale, the final quote would end in "Z". It was of no value to quote this way.

Ultimately you will probably have to generate quotes, but it should be at the end of your sales process. In fact, you should adopt the mindset that you will "never" quote.

Instead, as a courtesy to the customer who is trying to put together a budget, you can provide budgetary letters and use the opportunity to act as a consultant to your customer.

Of course, you will have to provide a detailed quote eventually, so the "never" isn't etched in stone. Nonetheless, you want to put it off as long as possible.

A superstar knows it is never in her best interest to provide formal pricing early in the game. Rather, her goal in pricing is to delay for as long as possible.

Rep "B" understands that providing a formal price one week into a seven-month buying process is futile. After all, at that point it is unlikely that she knows exactly what the customer needs or whether in fact her solution is the right one.

Let's assume that you do understand your customer's needs and believe that your solution is right for your customer.

Even so, if you provide detailed formal pricing now, in months 5, 6, and 7 you will have to provide pricing again in response to additional customer requests. At that point you will be competing against yourself and your prior pricing bids.

Option B: The Superstar Approach
When faced with the "give me a quote" customer demand, Rep "B" asks herself: "Why do my customers need this quote and where are they in their buying process timeline?"

Then she says to her customer: "Sure! Happy to assist. Can you share with me why you need a price quote now, and where are you in your overall process of evaluating potential solutions?"

The two most logical responses from the customer would be:

1. "I need a formal quote for the budget",
or:
2. "We want to look at pricing and your competitor has given us a formal bid."

Let's take a look at how you would address each response:

1. Budget Response:
You are on the left side of the Trust Triangle. Your goal is to gain trust, NOT to dump a formal pricing contract on them. You should use a delay strategy to position yourself as a true consultant by creating and driving a formal pricing process.

How do you delay providing formal final pricing?

Position a "formal budgetary price letter quote" (at list price with all options) in lieu of a formal quote. Provide the customer with reasons why providing formal pricing now is not in her best interests.

* A quote is a formal contract with legal implications and is only valid for 60 days. "Ms. Customer, there are legal repercussions. A quote is a formal legal document valid for only 60 days. Our respective lawyers would have to review it. Are you at that stage?"

* Providing a formal budgetary price letter quote prevents the budget shortfall headache. This is the headache you will cause your customer to endure if you provide formal discounted pricing now only to find out that it's not enough to cover their desired solution in the future.

Perhaps the future will bring budget cuts, potential price increases, new product updates or unanticipated options.

"Ms. Customer, you have not finalized your exact solution and required options. If you take a formal bid to your CFO now, you'll be stuck with that number.

Given potential price changes, new product announcements and budget cuts, you may be unable to obtain your preferred solution with the options you desire."

While deferring a formal quote at this point, the superstar begins positioning her ability to assist the customer with a formal pricing process which she will need to solicit price quotes from all vendors.

2. Time To Get Formal Pricing:
If you customer states that it is time to get formal pricing you can respond by stating: "I'm happy to provide the pricing you are requesting.

In order to provide a solution that will meet your needs both today and in the future, I must first understand your project timetable, your business (if you don't already know it), your short and long-term challenges, opportunities, goals and objectives.

Without that information, I cannot prescribe a mutually beneficial solution that will meet your needs today and into the future."

The superstar knows that providing formal pricing without this key background data would be like making an appointment with a doctor and greeting her by stating, "I want surgery. When can it be scheduled?"

Serve As A True Consultant: Drive A Formal Pricing Process:
Significantly, the superstar will use this customer request as an "STP", or a Superstar Turning Point - a chance to distinguish yourself as a true consultant. A superstar is always looking to help her customer avoid headaches.

For example: bids are not apples to apples, bids arrive from different vendors weeks apart, bids arrive months before a decision is made, bids do not include key options, the solution does not meet future needs, etc.

You must help your customer avoid difficulties by helping her establish a fair and formal bidding process. This way you begin to enhance credibility and position yourself as a consultant and trusted advisor.

You may say, "Ms. Customer, sounds like you need pricing from all the vendors you are currently considering. Let me say, respectfully, that I think you will bring on a major migraine if you request quotes from vendors without an established bidding process. I can help you avoid that headache."

One key service you can offer your customer is to insure the proper timing of her pricing process. That is, she should understand that most bids are only good for 30-60 days, and the pricing process belongs at the very tail-end of the buying process, not at the beginning or middle. You need to step up and assist her with this key information.

You may also offer to provide templates for a Request for Proposal cover letter and a detailed Generic Bid Specification so the customer will have an apples-to-apples comparison of the various options.

If she balks, mention occasions where other customers tried to simply ask for bids and were burned by the chaos. In those instances the vendors played games, the customers did not get what they wanted and nobody won.

For example, "You know, the CFO down the street just did what you are planning to do. After she received the three quotes, she spent hours on the weekend trying to compare the bids.

It was a huge headache for her." Then offer a chaos-free example or two of how things worked out beautifully using your RFP and cover letter templates.

I hope this helps when you receive those calls from customers who want a bid immediately.

Good luck, and Close 'Em.

Dan Adams
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Dan Adams is a popular professional speaker, author, and consultant who draws upon more than 25 years of experience in the field of sales and marketing. Having honed his sales skills selling multimillion dollar solutions for Fortune 500 and high technology companies over the past 25 years, he founded a sales consulting company called Adams & Associates. Visit him at TrustTriangleSelling.com

-Have you had any experience along these lines that you'd like to share with your fellow sales professionals? Leave a comment below.

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Time Management Techniques for Salespeople By Brian Tracy

In 1928, the magazine Sales and Marketing Management surveyed American Businesses to determine how efficiently salespeople were using their time.

They discovered that the average salesperson in America was only working 20 percent of the time, approximately one and one-half hours per day. This finding caused bells to go off throughout the sales industry. The idea that salespeople were only working ninety minutes per day became the emphasis for improved training, better time management skills, better supervision, and better control of the activities of salespeople.

Double Your Sales

In my sales programs, I teach what I call my minutes theory. It is based on a simple equation. If you are in sales today, 100 percent of your sales and your income are generated by the number of minutes hat you spend face-to-face with prospects and customers. If you want to increase the number of sales or the amount of money you make, you must increase the number of minutes that you spend in actual selling activity, face-to-face with people who can, and will, buy from you.

My theory says that if you double the number of minutes that if you spend with customers, you will double your income, even if you do not improve in any other area of sales. If you manage your time as the top salespeople do, so that you are spending more time with customers, your sales will increase immediately.

The Job of the Salesperson

Let us begin with the job description of the salesperson. The job description of the salesperson is to create and keep customers. The measure of effectiveness of a salesperson is how many new customers she creates, or resales she generates, in any given time period. Everything else that salesperson does is secondary to creating and keeping customers. Therefore, the only time a sales person is working is when he is face-to-face, head-to-head, and knee-to-knee with a prospect or customer.

Begin with Clear Income and Sales Goals

Achieving Peak Performance and excellent time management in sales begins with your setting clear income and sales goals for yourself. The act of sitting down and deciding, in writing, how much you want to earn, and how you are going to go about earning it, makes it far more likely that you will achieve those goals than if you didn't set them at all. The goal-setting exercise I am about to share with you has led to the doubling and tripling of the incomes of many salespeople. It is powerful because it is simple and easy. You can learn it and apply it immediately.

Determine What You Will Have to Do

Once you have broken your income and sales goals down into monthly, weekly, daily, and hourly amounts, you then define these goals in terms of the activities necessary to achieve them. The critical element in this calculation is the factor of control. You cannot control your income or your sales on a day-to-day basis.

They depend on too many other factors. But you can control your activities. You can determine and control what you do from morning to night, and as a result, you can indirectly control your income. If you engage in the activities necessary to make sales you want to make, you will inevitably achieve your sales goals.

Get Better at What You Do

Once you have determined your sales goals and worked out an activity schedule for each day, you immediately go to work on yourself to upgrade your skills in your key result areas. One of the best uses of your time is to get better at the most important things you do. Your goal is to upgrade your skills so that you achieve more and better results in a shorter period of time.

Action Exercise:

Take charge of your sales career today; resolve to double the amount of time you spend face-to-face with prospects and customers.
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Brian Tracy is one of the world's leading authorities on personal and business success. His fast-moving talks and seminars are loaded with powerful, proven ideas and strategies that you can apply immediately to get better results in every area. Visit the Brian Tracy web site.

-What are some strategies and or tools you find helpful in better managing your time as a sales professional?

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