Sales 2.0

Do you need an Aspirin after your sales meetings?

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What kind of job may require you take an aspirin after a particularly good meeting? Answer: sales.

During the last 24 months I think I have held some of my best sales meetings (this is reassuring since I am always trying to improve my own sales skills).  Thinking back on these particularly well run meetings I realized they were very tiring and I really could have used an aspirin after many of them.  But the end result was a couple of deals that made my year… not a bad trade-off.

So why might you need an aspirin after a good sales meeting?  During a sales meeting you should be listening with intense focus.  You need to really understand and to some extent take on the buyer’s pain.  When you are doing things well you really start to step into the buyer’s shoes, feel their pain and try to figure out solutions.Dealing with the buyer’s problems; thinking of solutions and staying intensely focused on the other person all at the same time is really hard work.

So the next time you hold a sales meeting ask yourself “Was that too easy?”  “Did I stay as intensely focused as possible?”  “Did I leave everything on the court?”  “Do I need an aspirin?”  (Tip: a cold beer works too).

How Many Slides in Your Sales Presentation?

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In general, sales people need 0 (ZERO) slides for most sales meetings…

The goal of the majority of sales meetings is to have a conversation with a prospect not to make a presentation.  The goal is for the sales person to listen. You should be asking questions and listening to the answers.  You really don’t need slides for this.  In fact, the more slides you have the more likely you are to stop listening and just get caught up in worrying about your presentation.

Using slides also tends to make the meeting feel more formal.  This puts the prospect on their guard. Not what you want.

Now it can be useful to have a few slides (think up to five) in “your bag” to illustrate a point visually, or offer proof against a stated need.  But the key is to keep these slides in your bag until you have exhausted the questioning phase of the meeting (after you know what the prospect wants in a solution).

For 75-80% of meetings that sales people attend, it is not your goal to show slides.  Your goal is to learn what the prospect wants in a solution.  If you get this far, then a few slides can be useful in illustrating a solution and showing proof (you could also use a whiteboard or a blank piece of paper for this!)

So, for most sales meetings think about getting your slide count down to ZERO!

“It’s a complicated offering and we really can’t get through it (sales presentation) in less than an hour.”

That’s what I was recently told by a start-up technology company I was asked by a friend to meet with. My friend, the majority investor in this company, asked me to review their sales presentation – a 50+ slide presentation loaded with features and functionality.

Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, considered by many to be the greatest American speech of all time, defining democracy and our purpose as a nation, took three minutes to deliver. Jesus, defining Christianity and the purpose of man, delivered the Sermon on the Mount in less than 15 minutes. So, why would it ever take anything more than 30 minutes to describe a company, it’s offering, and benefits to a prospective customer? That’s 10 times longer than Lincoln used at Gettysburg!

…extract from JS Logan’s blog

The Champion Trap

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How do you get to a senior decision-maker without upsetting your “champion” (who just happens to be one of their reports)?

  1. Be aware of this problem from the beginning.  When you start prospecting, or when you are following up on leads, keep in mind the ideal profile of the executive who typically buys your solution.  If the person you are speaking to is not this person, then be very careful investing large amounts of time in developing this relationship. Understand that your goal is to advance the sale.  You can only do that by getting to the key decision-maker(s) included in the buying process for your product/solution.

  2. Get a referral.  Be honest with your “champion” (but be tactful and polite as well).  Tell them that typically you find that your solution is bought by an executive of “such and such” a type (their boss) and that you nearly always find that you need to meet with this person to advance the buying process.  If your champion really wants to buy then they will arrange a connection/meeting with their boss.  If they tell you why they cannot, then they usually give you great information on the “politics” of the account or give you clear reasons why this opportunity is not qualified.

In summary, do not end up spending excessive amounts of your selling time on people who do not meet your ideal buyer profile.  They may work for the right company but they may not be able to buy.  Use your champions correctly to “coach” you on how to advance the sale.  Have them help you to get to the decision-makers in the account as quickly as you can.  You will not get a sale from someone unable to buy.

If you want a review of the types of people involved in the buying process, check out Chapter Five of the “New Strategic Selling” by Heiman and Sanchez.