Use the attainment of predetermined customers’ agreements to measure and manage your progress.
Make every sale a reference for the next one, and build competitor-proof, long-term professional relationships.
Eliminating the Tower of Babel Effect
Traditional selling methods focus on nonmeasurable concepts such as relating, prospecting, qualifying, and closing. This book makes these topics and others key ones measurable (review Exhibit I-1).
Because this approach is new, no terms exist yet to allow you to measure concepts such as qualifying or prospecting. This approach required creating new terms that are logical and measurable. Now, everyone involved in a sales opportunity can evaluate it the same way. Otherwise, you end up with a Tower of Babel with everyone using different benchmarks to determine the status of sales opportunities.
It’s Your Choice
If you prefer to use your own sales methods, MeasureMax’s flexible framework accommodates that choice. However, this book treats sales methods (including MeasureMax) like diet plans. Claims are one thing, results another. The Science of Sales Success works like a scale for whichever ones you choose to use. You weigh yourself throughout sales opportunities to see how well the methods you are using work. If past results mean anything, you will be surprised at which method works, and which ones do not.
Making the gray areas of selling black and white by injecting measurability takes discipline. It also takes courage to stifle our ability to self-rationalize. Not everybody can do it—only superstars. Yet, as a soon-to-be superstar, you know that when selling goes from a subjective and random-occurring art to a manageable and predictable science, the improvements in your performance will be phenomenal.
One last thought on what makes this book powerful. You can give a copy of it to your customers and never be concerned or embarrassed about what has been written. The Science of Sales Success empowers you to help selected customers make well-informed, value-driven purchasing decisions to choose your solutions. Everyone wins.
Notes
1. Peter Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1985), p. 26.
2. Jack Katz, How Emotions Work (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 49.
Chapter 1: Measurability Matters
Overview
Every sales opportunity has two columns that customers use to weigh out their purchasing decisions. Both of these columns have items with actual or perceived dollar figures assigned to them. After adding up the items, customers use the totals of the two columns to decide whether they will buy something and from whom. While customers can assign a dollar value to the Column 1 items on their own, Column 2 requires a salesperson’s assistance. You want that salesperson to be you.
In Column 1, customers always (informally) insert the dollar value of the differences between these four items:
Purchase Prices of Competitors’ Products and Services. Customer will use actual values to calculate this difference.
Delivery Dates. Customer will use actual or perceived values to calculate this difference.
Personal Relationships with Suppliers. Customer will use perceived value to calculate this difference.
Costs of Changing to New Products, Services, or Suppliers. Customer will use actual or perceived values to calculate this difference.
Note The cost of change always favors the salesperson working for the existing supplier. Salespeople often mistakenly form elevated opinions about the effectiveness of their selling skills in situations where the cost of change favors them. The real test of their selling skills occurs when they are in sales opportunities involving competitors’ customers (where the cost of change works against them).
Column 2 only has one item: the measurable benefits customers receive from achieving their goals. When it comes to selling value, this one item can more than compensate for the four items found in Column 1. Column 2 always starts out empty. Only you can help customers (formally) fill in their dollar amounts to outvalue the dollar differences from Column 1.
Your ability to sell value depends on whether you have the opportunity to fill out Column 2. To compound matters, you have only a limited number of in-person sales calls you can make in a year. Sales calls are your currency; where you invest them will determine your return. Therefore, invest more of your sales calls in Column 2 opportunities rather than those in Column 1. Using the quantifiable value of benefits and the other metrics of the MeasureMax selling system will help you concentrate your efforts on the former, but when necessary, also help you to obtain the most value out of the latter. (See Exhibit 1-1.)
Exhibit 1-1: Column 2 makes value measurable.
The chart in Exhibit 1-2 illustrates how customers would assign value to the Column 1 items if you were not the existing supplier. If the customer only uses the dollar value of Column 1, you will lose the sale because the existing supplier’s perceived value is worth $10,000 more than yours. Personal relationships and costs of change always favor the existing supplier (more on this subject in later chapters). However, if the customer considers both columns, you will win the sale (as long as you help the customer make Column 2 measurable). Your products and services are worth $15,000 ($25,000 minus $10,000) more than the existing supplier’s. You outvalued the competition—and can justify a $3,000 higher price.
Column 1
Your Products
Existing Supplier Products
$ Value to Existing Supplier
Column 2
Your Products
Existing Supplier Products
$ Value You Provide
Purchase Price
$73,000
$70,000
$3,000
Measurable benefits customers receive from achieving their goals via your products
Quantifies that products save customer $25,000 worth of lost production
Customer is not sure how much products save in lost production
$25,000
Delivery Date
1 week
2 weeks
(-$1,000)
Personal Relationship
New
Existing Supplier
+$3,000
Cost of Change
-$5,000
$0
+$5,000
Column 1 Value to Existing Supplier
+$10,000
Column 2 Value to Existing Supplier
-$25,000
Exhibit 1-2: Using Column 2 to win over competitors’ customers.
Using the measurements of MeasureMax, you achieve the following three key sales goals:
Provide more value than competitors.
Receive higher profits for doing so (with performance-based compensation becoming the norm, as a sale’s profit level increases, so will your commissions and bonuses).
Earn long-term customers by fulfilling their measurable expectations.
Achieve all three goals and you are a consistent, top-performing salesperson. Chapter 1 shows how using measurability to sell value:
Drives your strategies and tactics
Affects customers and your mode of selling
Influences every sales opportunity
Works in negotiated and bid sales
Note Although this section provides an overview of these topics, later chapters are dedicated to detailing them. The learning strategy is to progress from broad concepts to detailed descriptions, analyses, and applications—one chapter at a time.
Strategy First, Tactics Second
Successful selling depends on your strategy driving your tactics, and not vice versa. Before you make sales calls do you think, “If my customer says this, I will say that” or, do you think, “This is what we need to find out, and what we need to agree on to continue the sale.” The former means you rely on tactics and reactive techniques (that is, handling objections) to win debates. The latter means you rely on strategies to plan and manage your selling efforts to win orders.
Another surefire method exists for determining which approach you use. If you discuss specific products on your first sales contact, tactics drive your strategies. Product presentations rely on canned techniques to highlight your features and benefits. Your so-called strategy is to use product presentations to flush out customers’ likes and dislikes. To convince customers to buy, you name every feature you believe produces great benefits. With tactics-driven selling, customers typically request proposals on the first sales call that never go anywhere.
When tactics drive this shotgun approach, you need knowledgeable customers. You count on them to know how to pick out what features they like while disregarding the ones they do not. Never sure how customers will react, you rely on your ability to react to the unexpected. When you use tactics, you become proficient at verbal jiujitsu. You learn how to spar with customers when situations arise that do not favor your products or company.
Example
Eileen Watkins is the information technology (IT) administrator for a large life insurance agency. Bob Thompson sells security, storage, and backup software for networks to prevent the loss of information. Eileen contacts Bob’s company and requests that they send someone out to discuss her electronic data protection needs. Lucky Bob, Eileen is in his territory. Bob confirms on their initial phone call that Eileen wants to know what products and services his company can provide to increase data protection during power outages and prevent incidents of illegal access (hacking). Bob is certain that he can help Eileen solve her problems.
On his first in-person sales call to Eileen, Bob relies on tactics. They exchange pleasantries and brief histories of one another’s background and companies. Bob asks Eileen if she has any other concerns (“pain”) in addition to power outages and hacking. She says no.
Bob launches his well-polished PowerPoint presentation to outline features, benefits, and price ranges to gauge the extent of Eileen’s preferences, sense of urgency, and available budget. He explains how his products and services help companies like Eileen’s to protect their electronic data. He provides various dollar amounts these companies avoided losing by preventing data loss and illegal access.