Another clear signal of how well the economy is doing is the real estate market. Not only have home prices soared in appreciation, many folks are buying second homes. Lakefront homes, mountain ski condos, ocean cottages are all the rage. People and companies are spending lots of money on lots of different things. All is well in the sales commission world.

But what happens when the next recession or market correction happens? As a sales leader, are you prepared to weather the storm? Now is a really good time to carefully review your sales team roster and assess what you have or don’t have in terms of experience and make up. How many of your sales reps have sold through a recession before? Does your sales team as currently constructed have the necessary sales grit to make it through a severe market downturn where the lavish spending spree dries up? Because it takes a whole different level of sales determination to sell through a recession.

I’ve always preferred hiring “street smart” sales reps. They have a blue-collar edge about them. They tend to have that Tom Brady chip on their shoulder determined to prove every year that they should have been drafted in the first round rather than the sixth round (yup, he was the 199th draft pick with six other QBs being chosen before him). The street-smart sales reps have an innate ability to smell out the money. They hate wasting their time and ruthlessly qualify out of deals that smell bad.

These types of sales reps are not afraid of asking the tough questions. This sales rep archetype absolutely holds the customer accountable and insists on mutual respect and incremental commitments throughout the sales cycle. They tend to build long lasting, successful relationships with their customers as they earn real trust through their business integrity. I’ve found that the higher you go into the customer’s executive ranks, the more important that no bullshit sales approach resonates to the customer. They appreciate honesty. They value business integrity. They need to trust you as a sales person to buy from you.

This was the foundational sales model that I used to sell with when I was an individual contributor. I would tell the customer “no” when it needed to be said. I would honestly let the customer know what our software could and could not do. I never got defensive when the competition came up. In fact, I embraced a competitive differentiation conversation with the customer because I truly believed that we had the best overall solution. I prided myself on rarely discounting on price. My job was to build and prove out the value of our solution compared to alternative ways of solving the customer’s business problem. If the customer insisted on a discount, then my sales mission had failed.

Are you ready as a sales leader for the next recession? Do you have the right sales team composition to make it through? If you have any question marks or concerns, now is the time to start upgrading your sales team roster or helping the current team develop new sales skills that are essential for successfully selling through a recession. It’s like they say in Game of Thrones (GoT), “Winter is coming!”…are you ready?

Good selling!

The post How Do You Sell Through a Recession? first appeared on True Sales Results.

The post Sales Enablement Mastery first appeared on True Sales Results.

The movie won numerous prestigious awards including: Oscar and Golden Globe Best Supporting Actor awards for Melvin Douglas, Golden Globe Best Actor award for Peter Sellers and others. Perhaps the most telling award was the 2015 winner of the National Film Preservation Board. The National Film Registry selects 25 films each year showcasing the range and diversity of American film heritage to increase awareness for its preservation.

The movie is based on the book “Being There” by Jerzy Kosinski. The premise of the satirical book and movie is that a completely sheltered gardener (Chance) has spent his entire life sequestered in an affluent family’s estate tending to their garden and watching TV. He has no formal education at all and his total life experience is gardening and TV. He can’t read or write. When the old man of the estate dies, Chance is forced into the outside world which he has never experienced.

By chance (pun intended), Chance meets some highly powerful people after they accidentally hit him with their car while backing up and insist on taking him home to recover. They mistakenly hear him say that his name is Chauncey Gardiner when he says that he is Chance the Gardener. He is referred to as Chauncey Gardiner thereafter. They take him for an affluent and successful man because his clothes are the expensive hand me downs from the rich old man he worked for and lived with his entire life.

The satire and humor is subliminal in that these rich, powerful folks start to consider Chauncey an amazingly brilliant man due to his simple expressions. He equates everything to a garden because that is all he knows. The rich family that has taken him in are friends with the President of the United States. They introduce Chauncey to the President and he asks Chauncey his opinion on the economy.

Chauncey’s response to the President is just one of the many priceless lines of dialog in the film: “It’s like a garden. As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden. Growth has its seasons. There will be growth in the spring.” From Chauncey’s simple allegory, the President quoted him in a speech to the nation on the state of the US economy.

Then everyone starts wondering who this economic genius Chauncey Gardiner is. He is invited on talk shows. He is consulted by other powerful world leaders to offer economic advice to them. His favorite response to any question is: “I understand.” The humor stems from the fact that he has no understanding of these complex issues and his only frame of reference is tending to a garden his whole life and watching TV shows.

So, watch the movie as it is an all-time classic that still stands the test of time some 29 years later with brilliant acting performances and script writing. But remember my admonition to you is: be careful who you consider to be an expert. “I understand.” I engage in a ton of “so called” expert communities and there are far more Chauncey Gardiner’s out there posing than real experts.

Good selling!

The post Don’t Trust Chauncey Gardiner! first appeared on True Sales Results.

It makes me want to jump out of my seat and scream: “WTF, you never lose a deal over a single feature! You were simply outsold.” And IMHO, this is an epic sales leadership/sales coaching failure. Sales leadership is fundamentally responsible for training and coaching up their sales reps on competitive positioning. No software product will ever have all the features that a customer wants.

Your job as a sales rep is to help the customer understand the value of your overall solution. And that includes differentiating your solution from the competition. Most importantly, that involves seeding and influencing the customer’s decision criteria. This is basic sales…sales 101 if you will. And yet, I constantly hear sales leaders making the lame excuse that they are losing deals over a feature. Really?

I would submit the following challenge to all technology sales leaders out there…you should never accept losing over a feature. Not ever. And you need to take ownership as the sales leader of the failure on your part to train and coach up your sales reps so they don’t ever tell you the reason that they lost a deal is over a single competitive feature that your software does not have.
Let’s start with the basics. The first thing is you should be obsessed with knowing what your top competitors’ software can and can’t do. You need to know how they are going to position against you and respond to competitive land mines that your sales reps should seed with the customer. Your sales reps should be taught never to disparage the competition because that just makes you look defensive and inferior in the customer’s eyes.

In fact, great sales reps acknowledge areas where their competitors have an advantage over you. That establishes strong credibility with smart customers. Then the great sales reps build the business case with the customer that the advantages that your overall solution has over the competition dwarfs the single feature or integration that your software does not have. In fact, the best of the best sales reps proactively seeks out those latent customer objections over a competitive feature or integration that your software does not have. And they convince the customer by giving real world examples that a single feature should not be the most important factor in their final analysis.

Here is an example of how great sales reps would do this. It’s the classic sales pivot. Bring the customer back to things that they told you were far more important in their overall solution needs that you do better than anyone else. “You are correct Mr./Ms. customer in that we do not support an integration with Slack in our platform today. In fact, this is not the first time this has been brought up by our customers. But what we’ve found in practice through our customers experience is that your users prefer using Slack as a standalone application. Because that is how they are accustomed to using Slack. In fact, we’ve heard through other customers that had Slack integration in different platforms that the Slack integration was not being used due to the user’s customary workflow experience.”

The aforementioned was the debunking the significance/value component and then you pivot to reminding the customer what they told you was most important in their decision criteria. Here is an example of how to do that: “Allow me to go back to what you told me was the most important parts of your decision criteria. Ms./Mr. Customer, didn’t we discuss the user experience as being the most important overall requirement in your decision criteria? The customer will respond and then you ask: “Has that changed or is that still the case?” The customer responds and then you get concurrence on why the user experience is the most important element of their decision criteria by asking: “And my recollection is that you shared with me that the reason the user experience was the most important element in your decision criteria was because you are rolling this platform out to your entire enterprise and need rapid adoption to ensure success, is that still correct?”

The customer responds and then you do a trial competitive positioning close by saying: “Great, because throughout your evaluation we have heard you and your team repeatedly say that our platform/solution was by far the best use experience compared to the other solutions that you are considering. Is that an accurate statement?”. The customer responds in the affirmative and your great sales rep elegantly handled an objection and outsold your competition in one fell swoop.

Good selling to all!

The post Are You Losing Deals Due To A Feature? first appeared on True Sales Results.

Last week, a new entrant was submitted for consideration and immediately granted unanimous entry into the aforementioned Sales Hall of Shame. Unfortunately, as much as I’d like to tell you that this was a one off situation, I’m seeing this become the norm and not the exception in dealing with many sales people.

But first a little context…what I’ve observed in 25 years of enterprise selling is that every 3-5 years a new sales strategy or methodology will emerge backed by thoughtful research that creates a buzz. There usually isn’t anything revolutionary about these new hot sales strategies, rather they tend to look at things through a slightly different lens and present their perspective in a compelling way that resonates.  They build new sales frameworks to use with customers.

And then everyone jumps on the bandwagon and tries to start using this new sales methodology in their selling efforts. And with mixed results. Why? Because translating the strategy/theory into actionable sales tactics is harder than most people think. Sometimes the research and theory don’t translate into real world effectiveness. And worst of all, the lazy companies that read a blog post or article and decide that is what they are going to do without understanding the rigor and discipline that is required to do so effectively.

The Challenger Sale by Corporate Executive Board (CEB) is a perfect example of this (http://www.executiveboard.com/exbd/sales-service/challenger-sale/why-challenger/index.page?). Now I’ve read the book and agree with many of the key assertions expressed in it and generally find it to be a great resource. However, I’d suggest there are a lot of enterprise sales people like myself who have been selling in a Challenger mode for many years without needing the validation from CEB’s research that it was the most effective way to sell.

Now back to my Sales Hall of Shame experience last week. I received a sales email that was attempting to use the Challenger sales model. Needless to say it failed miserably. In fact, not only did it not engage me, it offended me to the point where I forwarded it to several other fellow VPs of Sales in my network to get their opinion. There was a unanimous opinion that this was rampant in the industry as people try to apply the Challenger sales model and fail miserably.

Here’s the sales email with the names redacted to protect the innocent:

XXX,

I’m getting worried. One of a few things is happening here, either: 

1. You are interested in XXX just been super swamped and haven’t been able to reach out. If that’s the case whats the best number to reach you and I’ll give you the quick 2 min synopsis to see if this is even worth scheduling a demo.
2. You are not interested in XXX but love getting my emails so don’t want to respond to get me to stop. If that’s the case let me know anyway and I can give you some better ones.
3. You’ve been eaten by an alligator and it’s really difficult to respond to emails from it’s belly. If that’s the case I understand. Rough break. 

Fun Fact: Ashton Kutcher really likes XXX!

-Crappy Sales Rep

Crappy Sales Rep’s Phone #: 415-XXX-XXXX

As mentioned previously, I forwarded this to several VPs of Sales that I know and respect along with this note:

Hi XXX,

Hall of Shame sales email candidate below, thought you’d appreciate it!   They email me every three days and act like they are owed a response.  BTW, the reference to Ashton Kutcher is hilarious, perhaps they should know that I would care if Warren Buffet was an investor, not the guy who was married to Demi Moore.  Now if you’re talking about Bruce Willis, he made much better movies than Ashton and that’s not saying much… 

It really strikes me that these companies of twenty something year olds (backed by the likes of none other than Ashton Kutcher:-) heard about the Challenger Sale and think they are being edgy, disruptive and clever when they’re actually coming across as cliché, unprofessional and rude. 

Best,

Steve

Here are two of the replies that I received but quite representative of all the replies:

“Agree with you on the email below.  It’s a disturbing trend and I don’t think it works. I don’t think they’ve even read it.  They read XXX XXXX’s blog and then they all tell each about their pithy emails and then copy each other.” 

-Smart, Experienced and Highly Successful VP of Sales

“Good god… that just makes me sad that people think this approach works…

Maybe it’s a generational thing…”

-Another Smart, Experienced and Highly Successful VP of Sales 

So I looked up the antonyms for the words “Challenger” and “Disruptive” online and the results that I found were hilarious and ironic at the same time. The opposite of “Challenger” is simply “Non-Competitive” (source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/challenger). And the opposite of “Disruptive” is “Quiet” (source: http://englishthesaurus.net/antonym/Disruptive).

So the moral of this real world sales story is that you need to know that when you try and fail at being a challenger or disruptive at sales, know that you are coming across as non-competitive and quiet to the customer. Just what all Sales VPs want to hear about their sales reps:-) Just as a funny footnote, spellcheck flags Ashton Kutcher’s last name and suggests “Butcher” instead.

The post Are Your Sales Reps Not Challenging or Disrupting? first appeared on True Sales Results.