ITS MUCH EASIER TO TELL THAN TO SELL – SELLING TAKES TIME

ITS MUCH EASIER TO TELL THAN TO SELL – SELLING TAKES TIME

Any seasoned sales professional will be quick to tell you it’s much easier to tell than sell. They’ll also tell you it’s much easier to teach than to coach. Selling (rather than telling) and coaching (rather than teaching) require more listening, more probing and more evaluation. Each of those skills take time. And yet, one of life's great lessons is that people rarely resist their own conclusions. In fact, they dwell on them so often, they begin to believe the conclusions they have drawn – whether an opinion, hearsay or fact – with a passion. 

 Again the professional will tell you that if we want to influence thinking, we need to take the time to draw out the person whose thinking we're trying to influence and whose behaviour we're endeavouring to change. 

Most consultative selling requires the salesperson to hunt out new business on a regular basis. On this occasion, let’s call them XYZ company, the company management had developed a strategy to have their ten representatives make 10 new business calls a week. After 3 weeks they had collectively contacted over 300 prospective businesses and were really enthused by the results. 

 Three weeks later, that figure had grown to over 500, yet very little was sold to these new contacts, and overall sales were down from their regular customers because of the effort they had expended developing new business. At about that time they had the foresight to call on a sales specialist consultant.

DEVELOP A PLAN - ALLOW MORE TIME FOR THE SELLING PROCESS

Within the first few salespeople he interviewed, he quickly realised that everyone was focused on contacting new business, but because of the time and effort required to make the 10 additional new calls each week, the interested prospects were given the information they needed with little or no follow-up. 

 There was a lot of activity and little productivity. 

 Within days he completed his interviews, made a few calls with a few of the salespeople and came up with a new strategy. 

 It appeared that around one quarter to one third of the new prospects contacted were good prospects. In other words, one in three or four were selling possibilities. The new strategy was to reduce the number of new calls a week from 10 to 6 and then include 2 follow-ups a week from the 6 contacted. That meant more time to work at selling the 2 follow-ups each week.

Within months, each salesperson, on average, was writing in excess of one new business sale a week. The existing customers were buying more than in previous years, amounting to a growth in sales in excess of 30% on the previous year with the same salesforce. 

 The only difference was that the sales team members were encouraged to take the time to explain, to listen, to probe and to evaluate before they put forward their submission. In other words, they simply began to sell rather than tell. In the process they wrote business dollars rather than engaged in business activity.

WHO'S IN CONTROL OF THE SELLERS CURRENT SALES BUDGETS?

If so many of our salespeople don't even apply (what most would call) the basics of all basics, by setting and monitoring their own sales goals and targets - rather than just having them set for them by their managers and employers - what hope is there of realigning this new quick-fix mentality. At the very least, each seller should at least be given the opportunity of jointly discussing each monthly goal or target.

Unless the seller is given some degree of ownership of the goal, the final performance (although acceptable to management) will usually fall far short of the capability of the seller.

With that comes a further drawback. If the seller has his or her goals set for them, they may also either buckle to the pressure and/or frustrations caused by someone else setting their goals for them. That frustration may show up in a number of different ways.

The seller may simply become disgruntled with the company and leave, or if not tackled with the appropriate wisdom or quickly enough by the management, that person may just leave the sales profession for good. Either way, no-body benefits and the total investment of time and cost associated with equipping that person with company and product knowledge is lost overnight.

#EasierToTellThanSell, #SellingTakesMoreTime, #Selling, #Sales, #PeterCollins, #PeterCollinsProfitMaker, #ProfitMakerSales

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This Article is by Peter Collins - In a sales career spanning more than 50 years, Peter Collins has focused on helping and bringing out the best in others - whether it involves training or mentoring salespeople, managers, business consulting to SME’s. Since the 1970’s Peter has built a reputation as a Nationally and Internationally Published author, and of the 130 books he has written over the past 48 years, Peter has 65 Business Books to his credit, (but he is mainly known for one book based on the Audio Tape series of the same name, Over 50 Ways of Closing the Sale). Peter also has written 23 Christian books. One of Peter's books, How to Play the Guitar sold almost 2 million copies in the late 1970's and is still selling well through second hand online marketers worldwide. In his personal life, Peter has been sought after as an encourager and motivator that has given of his time and talents freely despite his busy schedule. Subsequently, he has assisted churches, pastors, community and charity groups, as well as individuals through his teaching, training, development and on-going mentoring. 

? Copyright Peter Collins, Profit Maker Sales, Sydney, Australia, 2002, 2007, 2011, 2015, all rights reserved.

Peter can be contacted through his website – profitmakersales.com

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