Sales is a process.  This is one of my most basic beliefs about sales.

I have never understood why so many people treat sales as if it is some form of “black magic”.  In every other job you are expected to follow a process but in sales this expectation is somehow waived.  

I cannot imagine software companies in today’s world saying “we don’t need a process, we’ll just jump in and start coding” and yet this is the standard applied to sales.

There are innumerable examples of IT sales people that have not worked out and in many cases (especially in smaller companies) management has no idea why.  When you dig into these situations it turns out that management had no idea of what process their sales person was supposed to be following and no way to measure their interim results.  All management could see was either a sale was made or one wasn’t.  Managers just kept waiting and waiting until one day they finally lost their patience and the company chewed through yet another sales person.

If any of this sounds familiar, you need to think about your sales process.  Document it; have people follow it and measure their progress.  Sales is not “black magic”…it’s a process!

Is cold-calling a waste of time?

Last month I wrote about Frank Rumbauskas and his program “Cold Calling is a waste of time” This week a saw some data from an article written by Ernest Nicastro that puts Frank’s hypothesis into context.

In his article in Marketing Profs, Ernest references some research conducted at Harvard University that found that executives need to see your message approximately nine (9) times before they will be receptive to talking to you. Ernest also states that for every message you send out only one in three will be seen by these executives. (And these numbers are only getting worse as the noise in the marketplace grows.)

This makes for some quite compelling math. Ernest’s findings say that you will need to approach a target executive approximately twenty-seven (27) times before they will warm up to talking to you. So if your only method of contacting suspects is cold calling you will need to make twenty-seven (27) cold calls per suspect in your database before even getting a conversation.

Are there sales people who call each suspect in their target list 27 times just to get through? There are…but not many. Most senior sales executives I have met average two to three cold calls a day (if they are in cold calling form) and have at least a hundred targets in their database. At that rate they will only meet a small fraction of their targets before they go on to their next sales job…

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 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.