Has Selling Lost Its Way?

I recently did an interview with Jonathan Farrington from Top Sales World and he published it as the article featured on the front cover of Top Sales Magazine. This magazine is a brilliant publication and everyone in sales should subscribe here for FREE.

Jonathan asked me what I thought was wrong with sales and here is my response.

Amidst all the chest-beating of ‘crushing quota, crunching prospects and smashing the competition’, there is a silent reality that cannot be ignored... the rate of sales failure in B2B selling is trending worse and in some industries, it’s not uncommon for 70% of salespeople to miss their numbers. Sales leadership is spread thin and at an all-time low with a lack of investment in people while increasing the levels of pressure to perform.

Failure and frustration is bringing out the worst in sellers.

We operate today in the age of the empowered buyer where they easily source their own information, create competitive tension and seek greater value from every supplier relationship. On the other side of the equation, sellers are being forced to contend with reduced deal sizes and thinner margins, longer buying cycles due to the rise of consensus-based decision-making, differentiation being dismissed, decision-makers numb to the sales outreach, and with skepticism concerning seller ROI claims.

When you add to this the need for sellers to masterfully blend digital, social and relationship-based selling practices; it can be overwhelming. On one hand the busy fool syndrome abounds, and on the other an alarming level of passivity where social brand building and digital-only outreach seems to dominate. Today more than ever, anyone who neglects the phone in their sales cadence is choosing to fail.

Sellers have lost their way because they’ve forgotten that it’s really all about the customer – their needs, their agenda, their business case, their preferred channels of communication. Timeless value must be combined with modern techniques to break through and succeed in helping customers; saving them from their apathy.

JF: What do you mean when you say “sellers have lost their way”?

Many have lost their way because they lack discipline and purpose in what they do. Without these two things we just drift and can easily descend to seeing customers as a means to our own ends.

Sales managers and salespeople need to embrace positive values where they serve in the best interests of others.

For sellers to get themselves back on track, they need to stop pushing buyers and instead adapt to the three big expectations they have today: 1) Know me before you’ve even met me; 2) personalise my experience; and 3) anticipate my needs. This means we must do our research to understand their industry, their organisation and the individual roles we engage. By doing this we can be relevant and provide genuine empathy and insight.

The root cause of sales failure is poor intent and poor execution. Too many sellers fail to truly believe in what they’re selling and their lack of belief feeds the beast of low activity levels. When they do step-up to build pipeline, they avoid human-to-human interaction by focusing exclusively on digital (email and marketing automation) and social (LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.). When they do have real conversations, their conviction is weak and their ‘value narrative’ is well below what is needed. Too many conversations are seller-centric, rather than buyer-centered.

JF: What’s your advice for sales success today?

Time is the most precious resource of anyone in sales. Sellers need to target and invest their time based on absolute clarity concerning the ideal customer profile and the buyer personas within those organisations. This is essential for being able to develop understanding, empathy and insights when opening a relationship. Opening, rather than closing, is the most important phase of any sales process.

Having the right narrative that talks the language of the executive decision-maker makes all the difference. Leaders care about results and managing risk, and they want to know the financial gains, percentage improvements and the lift they will see in KPI metrics. It needs to be evidenced and backed with relevant customer stories that put them in the picture and create emotional resonance. Once you’ve nailed the right value narrative that’s tailored for the target buyer persona, you then need to break through for a conversation.

This is where the right combinations are essential because the people we need to engage are deadened to much of the amateurish outreach that bombards them. Executive decision-makers don’t value what most sellers seek to provide... information about their products or services, wrapped in the sales clichés of ‘solutions’. Customers are busy and stressed, yet often ignorant about opportunities to improve. We need to break through their apathy to create ‘conversations of value’ well in advance of seeking to position value from being a customer of our products, services or ‘solutions’. We need a hypothesis of value for every conversation but recognise that only the customer is qualified to call something ‘a solution’ and to quantify the business case value to them and their organisation.

The big mistake that most sellers make is seeking to lead with a ‘relationship sell’ rather than lead with value for the buyer in an initial conversation. New potential customers are not lonely and bored, looking for a new friend to help them ‘while-away’ the day. I’m not saying that relationships don't matter, they always will, where there is complexity or risk for the buyer. But relationships need to be earned. If the buyer perceives that they are transacting a commodity, then the seller is in deep trouble. This is why McKinsey predicts that 85% of B2B transactions will be done without human intervention in 2020.

All sellers need to operate smarter and, once equipped with a ‘value narrative’ that resonates for the buyer, the fastest path to sales success is through referrals and trigger events because they create trust and context. Use social for research to find introductions and context for engagement. Also leverage digital and marketing principles to intelligently build a brand and automate sales activities in CRM, LinkedIn and other platforms.

JF: How much of what you recommend is old school versus new school?

It is timelessly important to focus on the customer and on what they are seeking to achieve in their world. Think about your customer’s customers, and the pressures their business is under to survive and prosper. Lead with a narrative that is all about them and provides empathy, insight and market intelligence from which they can benefit but without crossing any kind of ethical line with their competitors. An old school truth is that only the customer is qualified to call something a solution and only the customer can define value. It is essential that we go beyond our own products and services to understand the customer’s industry, company, role and personal context when we engage.

New school is in the way we engage and leverage technology to create higher levels of efficiency and effectiveness in outreach. My new book, COMBO Prospecting, is the result of 4 years research and the wisdom of more than 100,000 sellers globally who actively engaged with my blog. The bottom line is this: Only combinations of outreach break through. Phone alone will fail, email alone will fail, social alone will fail. But if you phone, leave a voicemail, send a text and send an email all within 90 seconds… the buyer thinks,

‘Holy blazing beepers Batman, my pager is melting-down… she is determined and won't give-up! It seems like it could be relevant. I may as well reply right now.’

They may not call back right away but email response rates lift dramatically; and when they email a reply… you call and create human-to-human engagement. Human engagement and blending with technology is essential today. IQ and EQ have always been important, but now TQ (Technical Quotient) is a prerequisite for avoiding disruption in a sales career. Blending old school value with technology for productivity is essential.

Thanks Jonathan Farrington for allowing me to reproduce the article here. I discuss the future of sales in my new book, COMBO Prospecting, published by The American Management Association (AMACOM) and you can purchase it here on Amazon. 

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Photo from Flickr: Rachel Titiriga - Lost