Sales 101 Rant*

Today I made my usual round of calls to various customers and resellers here in Australia. One thing that pops out at me more and more to me are the differences in sales approaches in ANZ compared to the United States.

From day one when I worked at Minolta Business Solutions I was trained in the Sandler Sales Methodology. In short, it is a solution sales method. I won't claim it is a better method than another methodology, but the key point I learned from Sandler was managing expectations. Sales people in ANZ generally don't do that and because of this the sales process falls completely out of control which ultimately kills your forecast and ability to close deals.

Very often I ask my resellers what the next step is with the customer and the response is that they are waiting on a call back from the customer to find out what that next step is. I've become better with my responses back when the customer doesn't call back.

This comes to my point managing expectations. Sales is about maintaining good communication with your customer, with your sales team, and with your management throughout whatever sales process you are following. Good surprises are usually called bluebirds and bad surprises are usually called career altering events.

With every call you should setup the next step.

"We'd like to review this and get back to you next week". Okay - the expectation set on the sales person by the customer is that they'll call you in a week. Great, but what is the expectation of the customer if they 'don't get to it' because of whatever? (keep in mind, that's what usually happens) There's none! A week goes by and the sales person may or may not call the customer. If the customer knows that you'll be calling them by a specific date that helps the call go easier - you've got permission at that point to bug the hell out of them until you get them.

Just a thought:

Customer: We'd like to review this and get back to you next week.

Sales: No problem, what day do you think I'll hear from you? (was that really that hard?)

Customer: Tuesday or Wednesday. (you have a timeline to work with and let management know what is going on)

Sales: Sounds good, I'll mark that on my calendar to expect your call - and if something comes up can I call you Tuesday afternoon? (1-you've put some accountability onto the customer; this isn't bad. 2-you've asked permission to call them a day earlier.

Customer: No, Wednesday would be better to follow up.

Sales: Sure thing, I'll buzz you in the afternoon if I don't hear back. Also, what are the main things you need to review? (Again, permission is setup, and you've asked another qualifying question to get more info - nothing wrong with this)

Customer: We'd like to...

And there you go. This isn't rocket science, and it's not a psychological game like some books try to talk about. If the customer is truly interest in your product then they are happy to help you sell it to them - they're buying because they have a problem. Ask questions, setup expectations with the customer, and hold the customer accountable to what they tell you. At this time you have a next step / appointment to talk with your customer on Wednesday afternoon to answer questions from their review, talk pricing, etc. Here's another short short hand:

Customer: We need to see it work well on XYZ.

Sales: And then?

Customer: Then we build a business case for management.

Sales: After the review if we work on XYZ let's setup a time to chat on that.

Customer: Okay.

You know what they are doing and you know where it goes from there and it's out in the open and agreed to. Easy. Expectations are managed and next steps are already agreed to.

*This is no way a piece of sales training - I don't know how to do that. This is just me putting stuff on paper so I can move past it and learn from them.