Why selling software is the best business education going.

Selling software at the enterprise level has to be one of the best business educations anybody could ever ask for. This is part of the reason that I wrote New Economy Selling.

I really want to share this message with people.

In fact, I would bet the knowledge you will gain of business management, fiscal responsibility and corporate policy would be equivalent to those with MBA’s from the best Ivy League schools. The best part is that you’ll learn in with REAL customers in REAL WORLD situations…not in some case study. (Even though many of them are based upon real world examples).

Perhaps that is why so many of today’s Fortune 500 executives came from the ranks of major sales. This is education that will offer your tremendous experience and confidence that simply can’t be learned in a classroom at University.

When I think of the things I’ve learned from competitive selling situations, in conversations with senior executives at very large companies, I feel lucky to have gained the business knowledge that I have. You can too. This is even truer today.

Should you choose to move out of a direct sales role one day, you will have gleaned a powerful base of business expertise that is second to none. The best part is that you will be able to converse with most people who do have a business degree.

In today’s marketplace, that kind of real world know-how is in high demand and pays very well. Those “C” (CEO, CFO, Etc.) level people running today’s leading organizations are known as bright leaders and powerful dealmakers who know how to negotiate and get things done. That’s why they have the roles they do. This is a reputation and skill set I believe very strongly one can develop in the software sales game. The future is going to bring more consolidation, mergers and challenge to the general business environment.

What you learn in I.T. sales will arm you with the tools to handle those situations with speed, confidence and the knowledge necessary to ensure success.

You know that feeling. And it often comes down to a feeling. A feeling that you have done a good job promoting your company’s services or wares during a customer-facing interaction. So what…

The reality is, it doesn’t matter one bit if the person or people you were speaking to aren’t just as engaged in the dialogue. The only way you’re going to gain any traction in the most important moment of selling is whether or not the person or people you were communicating with have that same feeling. Therein my friend, lies the rub. This is where real selling takes place, I believe.

If the person on the other end of the phone or across the table isn’t at least as excited as you are… you’ve wasted your time. If you can’t combine your product knowledge with the ability to get the prospect engaged in the same dialogue which will help them solve their business problems and frustrations, then you have failed. With the sales people that I have managed and currently manage in my day to day sales operations, the message is the same - If you can’t confirm that the prospect wants to achieve a goal or solve a problem with your solutions… then you have done nothing but what I call “bring the coffee and donuts” to yet another wasted human interaction.

I think this the same situation with so many sales I.T. organizations today. It is a pity that there is so much “waste” in the sales efforts of people who call themselves ’sales professionals’. While I agree that there is a huge responsibility on the part of organizations to ensure that people carrying the ‘bag’ have the right mix of know-how and sales ability… the sad truth is that most I.T. organizations don’t have a clue how to market and sell to their ideal customer profile.

In New Economy Selling, I discuss how to solve this multi-decade old problem.

Sales rarely happen without many things taking place on both the buyer’s and seller’s side.

Most of the research in the domain of sales indicates that there is usually a series of repeatable behaviours that occur each time a sale is won (or lost). This suggests that if one could become more aware of those steps, then it would be easier to sell.

I am suggesting here that if you are selling any kind of IT solution without some kind of process or awareness into how your buyers are buying for you, then you’re not truly a sales professional. Instead, you are merely an order taker. There’s a big difference between those two kinds of salespeople.

The point of having a sales process is so that organizations can mitigate revenue risks and have a more systematic approach to revenue creation. The effect is a better understanding of when and why sales could close. This is often referred to a ‘revenue reliability’.

Simply put, a sales process is a series of repeatable steps and behaviours that marketing and sales people do to move a sales opportunity forward or disqualify it completely.

Typically those steps would include, but not be limited to something like the following:

Lead -> Prospect -> Opportunity -> Evaluating -> Negotiation -> Win or Loss

Some of the better known software as a service offerings include A key element of a sales process in my opinion is the focussed use of a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool. There are MANY reasons why organizations should use a CRM tool like Salesforce.com and Entellium, not the least of which is to track and manage a sales process..

Having sold, implemented or participated in designing sales processes for Salesforce.com and others, I can say without hesitation that the benefits were nearly immediate.

If your organization doesn’t have a sales process or you are considering joining one that doesn’t, I can almost guarantee a frustrating relationship between you and management. Even a simple sales process with key criteria for each step is better than nothing.

There are many good off-the shelf sales processes in the marketplace. Some of the better, more well known ones include: CustomerCentric Systems, Solution Selling and Miller Heiman to name just a few.

There’s an adage which states, “If you don’t know how you got where you’re at, you’re still lost.”

The same is true about being in this fantastic profession of sales without a sales process. So the next time someone asks you about your sales process, make sure you have an answer.

If you have been in involved in any facet of technology the last 30 years - you will know there’s always someone in the mix who’ll buy anything new. But those people only account for about 20% of the total buying marketplace.

They are the early adopters and they should not be the focus of your entire sales efforts. The ones to really focus on are the late adopters - the people who will consider buying something once it’s been around a while.

However, there is an even more important component to late adopters and that is HOW they buy. Even though you may be selling a “new” technology, late adopter buyers out there don’t buy the same way early adopters do. This is where most sales managers fail to help their teams properly segment selling behaviour.

All of this thinking comes from one of my favorite books, Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey Moore. It is one of the recommended 10 resources you’ll learn about in New Economy Selling. You must read this book.

Anyway, my point is this - if you can’t learn how to sell to late market buyers, you will meet with limited success. Here’s a basic premise in Moore’s book, which is even more true today with the Web 2.0 movement than when Moore wrote the book: Late market buyers need help seeing how they will use your products and services. Early market buyers have already figured it out. Early market buyers are not as loyal and don’t often make the best customers to build a business around.

Selling to them is more like order taking…like a transaction. Late market buyers…late adopters are loyal and less likely to switch vendors. If you can learn how to sell to them, you will be more successful and so will your company.

Why? Because they make up 80% of the buying market place. Now, what if you had 9 other critical resources like this to help you improve your sales?

You can - I’ve got them listed in New Economy Selling.

In fact, I recommend that sales managers stop reporting revenue production as a comparison to other reps in the region or company. Instead, I strongly suggest that managers track specific metrics for reps as period over period performance. This is so much more motivating for sales people and more meaningful in managing performance metrics. Comparing a reps performance to the overall team average offers little in the way of value for performance management. There is too much discrepancy from rep to rep and from territory to territory. An this way (rep to rep comparisons) is more work (and one of the reasons I say managers should not have more than eight direct reports), but it is worth the effort.

By the way, add-on products and services are one of the greatest things about being in the software business. I don’t know of any other industry where it is easier to capture incremental revenue from existing customers. This is because if your company is listening to customer needs (and not developing stuff that only the developers think is cool), you have the almost perfect business model. Sadly, most companies don’t do this and is a key contributor to their ongoing pathetic sales performance. They instead allow developers to built the stuff the developers think is cool and then wonder the market doesn’t buy it. Guess who gets the blame? Yep - the sales force.

Essentially, you’d be enjoying the unique position that established individuals in enterprise software sales do every day. Your business would be on autopilot. Don’t laugh, because this is possible. I have seen it many times and it is where you want to be. If you don’t believe me, ask any of the big wheels at Microsoft, Oracle, i2 Technologies or Accenture. They will tell you that this is the kind of scenario you want to develop for yourself. Why? Because it is far easier and less expensive to develop ongoing revenue from an existing customer base, than it is to sell into a cold one. To put it very clearly, cold calling is dead.

However, you will only get to this level of achievement if you think of your territory as a corporation of which you are the president and CEO. That’s right, you must think about this career now from the top down from now on. To take this analogy further, you are actually going have employees of this ‘corporation’.

Make no mistake, there are going to be people working for you and they will be held to a higher standard of performance. Accountability is a good thing. Who are these people you ask? They are your systems engineers, field representatives, inside sales people, partner managers, regional office administrators, and senior managers, pre-sales people - everybody who works with you to meet your quota.

Now this is going to be a mental challenge for some people to accept. But remember what we discussed earlier, if you’re going to succeed you are going to have to challenge fundamental thinking. For example the manager or VP of sales that you report to currently is now an employee of your ‘corporation’. Yes, in this new way of operating they are going to theoretically work for you. Why? Well, first of all don’t forget the first chapter!

Companies in the coming years are going to have to support sales more than any other business unit of their organizations if they want to last.

Companies that don’t listen to, answer to and live for their sales organizations are never going to rise above mediocrity. In fact they will probably vanish.

If you are going to be successful in this new era of enterprise sales, you are going to have to challenge traditional thinking. Old school thinking just doesn’t cut it in IT. Specifically, you are going to have to think in a new way about the employee-employer relationship. Traditional HR departments aren’t going to like this. Don’t worry about them - they won’t get it.

Sadly most HR departments in technology still haven’t earned their place at the table and should stick to filling out benefit forms and writing job descriptions. The mechanics of the relationship between employer and employee will still exist - don’t get me wrong. However, YOU are going to have to think about the way you operate from a different perspective if you are truly going to be successful over the long term. In this industry, you really don’t work for anyone but yourself.

The basic idea that a product or service needs a skilled sales force to sell it, is still the same. Nothing has changed there. Unless you’re an independent contractor, you will still technically be an ‘employee’ of a company. However, the shift in thinking that I am suggesting you adopt comes from the perspective that you must treat your territory and accounts as is they are truly your own - like you had to pay for them when you began with the company you sell for. You have to believe that you literally own them as if you have a right to sell them.

What I mean here is that we need to start thinking about territories or account lists almost like a franchise before we can make one phone call or send even one letter to them. To ensure that you take this perspective seriously, I would like to suggest the following exercise for you. At the beginning of each quarter, figure out what you want to earn. Calculate your commissions as exactly as possible. Then, write yourself a check for that amount and put it in your wallet, day timer or tack it up somewhere that you’ll see it everyday.

Think of this as having to make payroll every month for your own ‘personal selling services corporation’. I promise you will take your daily activities much more seriously. Knowing that you have an outstanding check out there (even if it is only to yourself) will help ensure increased focus and reinforce that you work for yourself. I do this at the beginning of each quarter and find it a terrific exercise for affirming my commitment to this profession as that of a ‘business owner’.

Now I realize that you might be uncomfortable thinking like this. Maybe this ‘business ownership’ model is too extreme for you. I understand that. Don’t worry; at first I felt that way too, until I realized that I needed a better way to increase the intensity of my efforts.

What I am trying to promote here is a kind of ownership and commitment to your sales territory as if it was a business that could one day sell - just like a real business with its own payroll! I want you to imagine that 2 -3 years from now you have squeezed every bit of new revenue from all the accounts in your territory and now the referrals and upgrade business is starting to happen consistently. This would be the result of your professional sales and account management activities.

Don’t you think somebody would want a well-developed territory (read: ‘business’) like that? God forbid you should one day leave the company you work for. Surely, other sales people in your company would be fighting for your territory (which has happened many times in my career). If your region really was an independent business, it would be worth significantly more than when you started working it. Now, every year those happy customers upgrade their installations to your company’s current offerings, add a few more users and purchase more services and add-on products from you and the company you sell for. Talk about a great investment! This is how some of the best sales managers I work with manage their teams.

I’m going to finish this train of thought in a second post… stay tuned!

Probably one of the easiest ways to tell successful sales people apart from the failures is to pay attention to how well they listen to prospects.

Chances are good that people who do most of the talking are also people who don’t make money in sales. 

You just HAVE to let prospects do most of the talking.  Stereotypical hard sell behaviour is a surefire fire way to lose a sale. The two key objectives that must be on your mind the entire time you’re talking to a prospect are:

1. Understanding the prospect’s situation and concerns;

2. Focussing on helping the prospect improve their situation (with your offerings)

The reality of New Economy Selling is that we are more “buyer facilitators” who need to think about helping as much as we do selling. 

Because good listening doesn’t mean as much paying attention to the words that come out of your prospects mouth, as it does HOW they come out of their mouth.  Most communication is non-verbal in fact.  Be aware of those non verbal cues. 

One of the worst things I hear sales reps do over and over is what I call “stepping on the prospect” during conversation.  This is where the prospect is trying to complete a thought or sentence and the sales person immediately starts talking.  This is a quick way to get out of alignment with a prospect. 

Let people finish their thoughts, because most folks hate having someone else finish a sentence for them.

When you DO talk, do not drone on and on.  Share one or two ideas and then ASK FOR CLARIFICATION.  Say, “Did I explain that clearly?”

A great way to improve your listening skills is to take notes while the prospect is talking.  Some people have argued with me that it’s impossible to take notes and listen at the same time.  I disagree - the two actually reinforce each other.  This doesn’t mean that you’re writing ALL the time the prospect is talking, but you should be writing something down at least 20% of the time.

Lastly, it is important to clearly and succinctly summarize the KEY points …the RELEVANT points of the conversation.  Once you’ve done these things, then you’ll be in a better situation with the prospect to introduce your products and services…NOT BEFORE.

In my book New Economy Selling, I have provided a proven conversation flow for achieving the highest possible level of conversation success.

~Brooks

When was the last time you wrote a thank-you note to a prospect that you had a meeting with? Whether it was face to face or over the phone, a thank you note should go out.   It should be very brief, like this:

[name],

Thanks for taking the time to speak with me today.  I appreciated learning more about your situation and will be in touch with the materials we discussed.

Regards,

[signature/ web links, etc.]

The approach helps put you in a stronger position because it shows you understand the common courtesies of business by increasing the chances of your prospect remembering you. 

Why bother?, you ask.  Well, let me ask you this question: What do you think happens in the prospects mind after you hang up the phone or leave their office? Do you really think they keep thinking about you and your company.

In this overloaded information world, the answer is of course ‘no’.

Even more importantly, I suggest that you send another follow up letter AFTER sending out the above message to outline the conversation which took place, the value they said they could gain from a partnership with you and next steps. 

Make this investment in treating your prospects feel like professionals - it’s just good business.

~Brooks