Backward Sales?
"Bill" was an SVP in my days as a newbie consultant. He was successful, talented, "wicked smaht," and I noticed one thing early on. He was never in the office past 5PM, and never on weekends. It all seemed to come to him very easily.
I figured out part of it when Fred Reicheld's The Loyalty Effect (a still under-appreciated masterpiece) was published. "Bill" only had two clients, and all his sales were based on repeat business or expansion within the client. Reichheld mapped out convincingly the massive reductions in sales cost and increases in profitability that came from loyal customers.
But that wasn't the whole puzzle. Fast-forward to my current state of semi- (okay, mainly-) retirement.
I've been having a number of phone calls with people I've just met, and something is emerging. In none of these calls are either of us trying to sell anything to the other, it's just curiosity flowing out of an initial connection. And yet inevitably, I'm able to offer some help 80% of the time, and – more surprising to me – they're able to help me in my endeavors over half the time. So, what's going on here?
At the risk of confusing anecdotes with data, here's a grand theory of All That's Wrong With (B2B) Sales.
How it currently works is: we start with a clear product or service offering; we proceed to segment or target some fraction of 8.2 billion people; we then develop ICPs to hone in further; and finally we develop some personalized approach to the target, and – pounce!
My friend Miles Veth runs a lead generation business, and he's very good at it. He gets orders of magnitude improvement in yield rates of meetings from standard emails. Of course, those yields are still kind of low in an absolute sense, like 1 meeting from 1000 emails. But recently he did an experiment.
He started with just his own contacts, and applied his techniques. This time, 24 contacts yielded 4 meetings. A rather staggering increase.
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Anecdotal? Sure. Scalable? I'm not sure that's the right question. Something else is going on here.
Maybe we in B2B sales have been truly getting it all backwards. What if instead of beginning with an attempt to sell something and ending with establishing personal relationships, we flipped the order?
Start with conversations with people we know, with no attempt in mind to sell anything. Let the relationships develop, learn about emerging needs and problems and pain points, and only then begin to envision how we might be of help. in other words, lead with relationships and let the sales emerge not as the end result of a process, but as a happy byproduct of an entirely different process.
That's what "Bill" did. That's the one-level-down explanation for how the loyalty that Reichheld described gets generated in the first place. That's why Miles got such a huge uptick. And that's why my recent ad hoc phone calls have been so rewarding.
Or so it seems to me. What do you think?
Quick Wisdom Quip: Dont' start with the end in mind, or with what you know; start with relationships, and enjoy the discovery journey.? ?
Practical Tip:? Pick your top 100 contacts from your address book; call them up to find out what they've been up to, and ABC (Always Be Curious).
Results driven professional excelling in sales and leadership. 20 years in customer-facing roles, leadership, and sales
1 个月This is why I got into sales, I valued the idea of building relationships, earning trust, and solving complex problems. But I always thought of it as service first, not transactions or commissions. There's so much gold in this article.
Senior OEM Account Executive @ OpenText | Empowering Your Software with OpenText OEM Solutions
2 个月Amen. This is the way.
Stop treating the symptoms. If your small business is hurting, you need to uncover the underlying illness. I will help you do just that. You can have the Healthy Business You Have Always Wanted.
2 个月As a business coach I have always had a different approach (not unlike what you are speaking of). But let me start by saying I do not enjoy selling (particularly when the object of sale is ME). In the coaching world, building trust (sound familiar, Charlie?) trust is imperative. Without it, the process simply does not work! So I adopted the "courtship" approach. It will not work for many, perhaps even for most. It goes like this: 1) Meet prospects where they are at. 2) Offer an initial consult, in which I guarantee actionable results (because my coaching hat is on and in use). Prospects are expected to report on action and outcome (the loyalty test). 3) Agree to circle back (pro bono) if we need to work on establishing baseline trust. This step may be repeated several times, but it is predicated upon evidence the prospect is following through. 4) Sign the agreement and make a difference. As I said, not for everyone, perhaps most. Afterall in my profession, trust is imperative. If I was driven strictly by the sale, I am in the wrong line of work.
Sharon-Drew is an original thinker and author of books on brain-change models for permanent behavior change and decision making
2 个月Charles: Nice hearing from you! And this is an important comment! I do believe we're getting it backward. Indeed, there's still a bit that sales often forgets. Until the buyer gets all the right people assembled (rare, unfortunately), they can't even fully define their problem. Until they try workarounds that don't work, they aren't even considering going 'outside' for a solution. And until they understand the risk to the system (jobs, rules, productivity etc) they can't consider buying anything (unless the risk of a purchase is less than the risk of staying the same, they can't buy). Unfortunately, sales continues to focus on placing solutions. But it's possible to first efficiently, respectfully, facilitate the full set of Buying Decision Steps (there are 13) all folks do behind the scenes, and close more, much faster. I've been trying for 40 years to make sales more relevant by giving sellers the tools to serve and facilitate first. But they're a stubborn bunch who get trained on products before facilitating buying. Unfortunately, the current system will outlive me (I'm 78). So frustrating.