For those of you who haven't read any of my previous pieces, my mission when founding Culture Sells was to unify sales representatives, sales managers and home office partners in order to foster greater synergy and create environments where sales teams can thrive and excel.
Today’s topic is Part 2 of Take Your Time, Do It Right, where I cover off on some key skills and behaviors that all sales representatives are expected to bring to the table as part of their commitment to their organization, their customers and most importantly, their chosen profession.
These skills and behaviors are what I consider core selling competencies and I refer to them as the “blocking and tackling” of sales. These are universal skills and fall outside of the actual sales process or sales model, which may differ from person to person, company to company and industry to industry. In Part 1 of this article, I covered off on Organization and Preparation. Today, I’ll discuss the other two competencies that were introduced in Part 1, Product Knowledge and Account Management and Development.
Product Knowledge: It may sound obvious to even say this (or write it), but Product Knowledge is critical to achieving and sustaining success in sales. Your customer may know more than you about the entire spectrum of their business, but no one should know more than you when it comes to the specific area where your product or service is involved. I don’t know about you, but I experience a feeling of calm come over me when I’m talking to a salesperson who is clearly knowledgeable yet has the ability to teach me without coming across as condescending, pedantic or excessively in love with themselves.
Your goal is to provide Depth versus Breadth. You are a Specialist, not a Generalist.
You need to be the subject matter expert and the customer needs to know it. Not in an overly egotistical way – but in a way that inspires confidence and comfort. Think of a surgeon who’s discussing with you the plan for a major procedure you’re considering. You don’t need to know about every step and every technicality that’s involved. You just want to know that the person you’re trusting with your health is appropriately confident, highly skilled and can relate to your concerns, fears and needs. When your customers ask you detailed questions about the specifics of your offering, comfort them with proven, incontrovertible facts and figures, not by “thinking so”, not by being “pretty sure”, not by just spewing out something that you heard a colleague or competitor say somewhere along the line.
Be accurate. Be sure. Be brilliant!
There will most definitely be times when you have to get clarification or confirmation on certain details and we’ve all heard the axiom about how it’s better to say “I don’t know” than to disseminate misinformation. That’s very true…to a point. But if you have to reach for a lifeline too often, your credibility and the value you provide begin to wane, especially given the amount of information a customer now can access on their own.
When does “I don’t know” from a rep turn into “I don’t need you” from a customer?
Know your product, Know your market, your competitors, your customer’s business, their competition. This is how you can separate yourself from the pack.
Another way to distinguish yourself from your competition is to make your audience think. Challenge your customers’ assumptions, but only if you can back up your point of view, and be sure you’re prepared for the debate that will follow. Tell them something they don’t already know if you really want to grab their attention and make a positive difference for them and their business. Think of the comparison between a boring, predictable conversation at a party versus having a chat with someone you find to be genuinely thought-provoking.
Interestingly, data shows that brand/product/company loyalty is driven as much by how you sell as what you sell. Customers aren’t looking for a friend when they have an important decision to make regarding a large purchase. They need a guide, a trusted advisor, a consigliere. And the close and enduring business relationship, on which we sometimes mistakenly place all of our focus, is actually the offshoot of this benevolent expertise and counsel, rather than the main act itself.
Again, as in previous articles, I’ll harken back to my upbringing and what I witnessed with my dad, the Super Salesman. His product knowledge was off the charts, for his brand and for the numerous competitors he had. He was a former mechanic who had been recruited over to sales, so he really understood the inner workings of the equipment and could translate that knowledge into benefits his customers could grasp and align with. He was the person everyone called when there was a tricky or obscure question to be answered or a unique application for which a machine needed to be designed, or spec’d. You may not have the hands-on expertise that he did, but you can get it. Be curious. Talk to the support teams and others involved with your offering so that you can understand things from a more global standpoint and share those insights with your customers.
Are you seen as “the authority” when it comes to knowing your product and market?
Account Management and Development: I sometimes hear Account Management and Account Development discussed as separate entities. However, in my opinion, these two descriptions go hand in hand rather than functioning independently, and a truly holistic approach is best when approaching your accounts.
We’ve talked about the sales ecosystem from the seller side, the Holy Trinity of sales representative, sales manager and home office partners who are all integral to the selling process. But there’s also a buying ecosystem on the customer side. This ecosystem is comprised of all the decision makers for a particular deal, as well as everyone with whom you’ll interact along the way. It can be multi-layered, multi-leveled and it provides a multitude of opportunities to succeed or fail.
I sometimes picture the total account matrix as a tightly-woven grid of infra-red sensor beams (you know, like in the Mission Impossible movies) which must be navigated with extreme caution along the way to success. And since you have to make it past gatekeepers and other challenges at every level, a video game mindset can be an asset for the tasks of gaining access and infiltrating the account. Keep trying until you figure it out, but you only get a finite number of lives in each game.
The expression, “be nice to the people you meet on the way up…” is certainly a cliché. But, like so many annoying clichés, it holds a large dose of truth, which is why it became a cliché in the first place. For this discussion we can modify the expression to, “be nice to the people you meet on the way in…” since, as salespeople, we have to sell our way into and out of the offices/accounts we visit. And there are many things not visible to the naked eye that come into play when doing this, so beware. You are “on” as soon as you walk into that account, or sooner. Maybe the person who just stole your parking spot outside is one of the key decision makers for the deal. Or, maybe they’re a relative or close friend of a decision maker. Be kind, friendly and professional with everyone you meet in and around your accounts.
You’ll need to tailor your content for each type of audience that you meet along the way. In order to do this, you need to understand their role in the organization and/or in the purchasing decision. Don’t get highly technical with someone who has more of an administrative role. Don’t go too highbrow with someone whose interests are more basic. Find something about your offering that will appeal specifically to them and make them want to be a part of the solution. What’s their WIIFM?
As the solutions we sell become more complex or more disruptive, the number of people involved in the decision also increases, which makes developing an account properly even more of a survival skill.
Looking back, my dad was making the “total office call” before that was a movement, a concept or even a buzzword. Everyone in the account was his customer: from the receptionist to the executive assistant, from the loading dock foreman to the purchasing agent to the C-suite. And in the Mom and Pop businesses that were his customers, he was practically part of the family (insert your favorite “New Yorker with an Italian surname/Mafia” joke here). He knew his clients’ children’s names, birthdays and interests. Hell, he didn’t even know that about me, my brother or my sister! And there was rarely a time when we went out to dinner or to a movie without him running into a customer of his. Even the ones to whom he hadn’t sold anything in years greeted him like they had just spoken yesterday. They recalled him as an integral part of the wise buying decision they had made. He remembered what kind of equipment he had sold them, right down to the minor details, and he could describe the particulars of their business needs to a T. And this was before we had CRM systems to track and house all of this information. He brought passion to his work with his customers and they felt that commitment.
Do you know your customers inside and out? Do you make them feel valued?
Take time to raise your game. Take time to get organized. Take time to do the prep work. Take time to learn all you can about what you offer your clients and everyone else within their company. Doing so will make your calls more inspiring for your customers, and you may find yourself more inspired as well!