New Sales Simplified

I learned a lot of valuable points from another book from the same author, “Sales Management Simplified”, so I decided to give this one a shot. While I have to say that many of the points from the previous book I read were repeated, and (like many books nowadays) certain chapters presented quite vague ideas that could’ve been formulated in a few sentences, “New Sales Simplified” became another valuable source of practical ideas.

I’m always very careful about authors writing about sales who start their books with a phrase such as “I’m going to share a secret that would boost your sales by XXX% in a month”. Weinberg, on the contrary, starts by stating that there’s no magic bullet. He highlights that new sales success comes from executing the basics well. Given the fact that for many years in my career I worked as a salesperson, I couldn’t agree more. As usual, I’m going to share key insights from the book.

Sales is a numbers game

Good things tend to happen when talented and capable salespeople get in front of prospective customers. However, there’s, unfortunately, no secret trick that can guarantee success. And the only way to increase the probability of hitting your numbers is to increase the number of activities. More emails sent, more calls scheduled and conducted, more customers contacted, etc. Salespeople have full control over their volume of activity. The author describes how he has been working with hundreds of sales reps in all kinds of organizations and his experience, the top-performing salespeople were always the most active.

Not so sweet 16 reasons why salespeople fail in new business development

It was very interesting to spot that the author starts the book not with a to-do list, but instead with a don’t-do list. He highlights 16 reasons why sales reps he encountered do a poor job of acquiring new business and growing existing accounts. The list is pretty essential and self-explanatory:

1. They haven’t had the experience to sell or don’t know how
2. They’re too patient or too slow and are always waiting for something — training, materials, good conditions, etc.
3. They’re prisoners of hope. They stopped doing new business or working on new opportunities because they hoped that a few deals they discovered would close soon.
4. They’re bad at storytelling and lack the skills to connect the story of their product to the client's challenges
5. They have a poor target account selection which leads to a lack of focus. It’s hard to achieve good results when the list of prospects is infinite and poorly chosen.
6. They’re late to the party. Since they haven’t been proactively working with their list of prospects, they’re reacting to the request for a proposal that their competitors helped to write.
7. They have a negative attitude and pessimistic outlook
8. They’re guilty of fake or pitiful phone efforts
9. They’re not likeable. People don’t buy from those whom they do not like.
10. They are not capable of conducting an effective sales call
11. They spend most of their time babysitting their existing accounts instead of proactively searching for new business
12. They’re busy being good corporate citizens. They attend every possible meeting, their CRM looks perfect, etc.
13. They don’t own their sales process and default to the buyer’s one
14. They don’t use their calendar and don’t put blockers in it
15. They stopped (or never properly started) learning and growing
16. They’re simply not built for sales

Leadership needs to provide clarity on their sales strategy

A critical factor for sales organizations to continuously acquire new business is clarity. The goal of any sales representative is to take a clear sales strategy provided by leadership and execute it perfectly on the market. Leadership needs to provide clear answers to the following questions:

• What product does the company sell?
• Why does it sell it?
• Which markets does the company pursue, and how should it position itself in those markets?
• Why does the pricing model work for the value that’s being created?

Salespeople should not come up with the answers to these questions themselves — they should get answers from management, clarify any specifics if needed, and go out there and sell.

A three-step tactic that’s driving new sales

To drive new business, the company should execute the following three steps.

1. Targets should be created: The finite list of prospects that salespeople can focus on.
2. Weapons should be deployed: from sales stories and proactive telephone calls to case studies and references.
3. The attack plan should be executed

If the company is doing a poor job at acquiring the business, it’s always about one or all of these three steps. The author stresses that selecting target accounts is a rare opportunity to be strategic in sales and that even the best talent would most probably fail if too much time is wasted focusing on the wrong targets. Usually, the best results come from focusing on a vertical market or the same type of accounts.

Segment your accounts

A critical component of a successful sales strategy is providing the team with a clear understanding of which accounts to target. A simple approach to segmenting the existing list of accounts is shared by the author. All accounts need to be grouped into four categories:

1. Largest accounts (from the dollars spent perspective, not from the company size standpoint)
2. Most growable accounts
3. Most at-risk accounts (with the highest probability for the company of losing their business)
4. Other

As a part of this exercise, some of the accounts may end up in more than one category. But in any case, reviewing such a list would allow the management to choose which category should be prioritized at any given moment and translate that priority to the team.

Aim for as high a level of contact as possible in the client’s organization

It is often the case that sales reps are reluctant to contact C-level or VP-level executives when reaching out to new prospects or existing customers. They’re concerned that these folks have more important things to do than talk to a potential solution provider and disturbing them would only lead to frustration and would close the door for the potential opportunity.

The people who get to that level in the organization are usually pretty smart and care about the big picture. They would be interested in a solution that would help the organization to achieve its goals faster, better, and more effectively. If the solution the sales manager is offering would address the company’s pain points, many would be open to having a conversation. And even if they’re very busy indeed, if one manages to get their attention, they would most definitely be able to direct the salesperson to the right individual in their organization.

Work on your sales story

A sales story is probably one of the most important sales weapons. Prospective customers and existing customers are highly unlikely to be interested in what your company does. They care about what it can do for them. A successful story is based on the following three blocks:

• The client’s issues addressed
• The offering (what you sell)
• Differentiators (why the company’s product or service is different and better than any alternative)

Leading the story with the client’s issues helps to get their attention. Once you have it, you already have the non-verbal agreement to showcase what you sell and present your product most compellingly. A well-prepared sales story that is tailored to the customer’s needs contributes to the salespeople’s level of confidence, which then helps them to acquire new business and grow existing clients.

Develop a power statement

A power statement is the salesperson’s answer to the elevator pitch and value proposition. It serves as a quick two-minute overview of their sales story. The elements of the power statement include a headline, a transactional phrase that is used to grab the contact’s attention, a description of how the client’s issue is removed and the result is achieved, the actual offering, and differentiators.

Do not jump to a pricing conversation too soon

Junior sales reps often make the mistake of making a price offer soon after the conversation is initiated and before the customers’ situation, pain points, challenges, and demands have been fully uncovered. Yes, the client may reply with “OK, I’ll take it”. But the reps then limit their ability to potentially uncover a larger deal. For example, the customer might’ve initially looked for a solution for only one team in their organization. But if the rep had dug deeper, they could’ve discovered that the leadership would be open to rolling out the solution to the whole organization, should several critical conditions be met. Only when one is sure that all the details about the client’s business have been uncovered, should the pricing conversation be initiated.

Cold calling is a necessity for salespeople

Even the most experienced salespeople would rarely say that they enjoy making cold calls. But what differentiates them from their less experienced and less successful counterparts is that they understand the importance of making these calls and their impact on the result. A common mistake is to try to sell your product or service during a cold call. In the majority of cases, this would not bring results and would be a waste of time. Instead, focus the cold calls on achieving one of the two following goals: Scheduling a sales conversation or Arranging a face-to-face meeting with the target account. That’s it!

Several tactical tricks were highlighted by the author in this book that I enjoyed a lot:

• Open the call with “Let me steal a minute”. By saying this phrase, you do not excuse yourself but acknowledge the person was not expecting to talk to you but you won’t take much of their time.
• Work on your tone. Do not try to sound too formal or too respectful. The person on the other side of the line would feel that you sound fake and would not take you seriously.
• Script the most critical points of the call to make sure that you’re delivering your message consistently to every prospect you contact.
• When introducing yourself, use the phrase “I head up…” (for example, I head up East Coast North American customer success motion, I head up night support shift, etc.). No matter your formal position, you head up something for your company.
• The three magic words to schedule a meeting are “visit”, “fit”, and “value”.
• Make the calls every day. Do not skip. Practice leads to confidence. Confidence leads to success.

See the voicemail as a campaign

Many people tend to underestimate voicemail. They call it outdated, ineffective, and not worth their time. Start looking at the voicemail as a campaign. Prepare different messages and leave them regularly. Be consistent. When leaving the message, ask for a callback, but also clearly state that you’re going to call back yourself to highlight the seriousness of your intentions.

Structuring the calls increases the chance of winning

Preparing a good structure for your call enhances the chances of winning and protects you from talking too much or starting to sell too early. The author highlights the following phases of a successful call:

• Building rapport and identifying the buyer’s style
• Sharing the agenda and getting the buy-in
• Seeking input
• Clearing the customers’ issues (addressing ongoing challenges with the product)
• Delivering the power statement
• Asking probing questions
• Selling
• Determining the fit and handling objections
• Defining and scheduling the next steps

Discovery precedes presentation

Building up on the idea that it’s important to not start selling too early, the author highlights that any presentation of your product or service only needs to take place after you’re asked the right amount of discovery questions. By doing that, you would increase the probability that your presentation would be tailored to the client’s needs and would resonate with them. The following components of discovery are named:

• Personal questions
• Strategic and directional questions
• Specific issue-seeking and opportunity-seeking questions
• Sales process questions

Make sure that you listen carefully to the answers the client is providing. Take notes, look interested and ask how the client has already tried to address their challenges and why it didn’t work. Many deals go dark when they’re blind-sighted by some factor that hasn’t been discovered in the early stages of the sales process.

Write an individual business plan

Salespeople who write their plans are usually more successful. They document their goals, plans for growth, things they would like to achieve, and more. The author presents a basic structure of an individual business plan:

1. Goals — What the person plans to achieve in their career, in the company, in this role, this quarter, etc
2. Strategy — What steps are they going to take to achieve these goals
3. Actions — Specific activities that would lead to successful execution of the strategy
4. Obstacles — What might stand in the way of success
5. Personal development — How the salesperson is going to grow

It’s important to review the individual business plan regularly and confirm that you’re doing all the activities planned.

?–?–? principle

A simple but effective principle to get the wheel turning and maintain sales momentum is to divide a salesperson’s time into three logical buckets. One-third of the time would be spent on hot opportunities. Another third on working on the deals that are currently active. The last third on the proactive pursuit of the deals that are not active.

As you can see, the core idea that unites all the points presented here is that sales are more about doing and taking daily incremental actions. None of these are rocket science — the key factor is consistency. As highlighted above, sales is a numbers game. As long as one gets their number of activities high and the efforts are targeted at the right customers, it would only be a matter of time before success shows up.