Sales Intelligentsia

Big Ticket, Long Sales Cycle: SPIN Selling

If you sell big ticket products and services with a long sales cycle then you know that these types of sales bear little or no resemblance to sales that close in one, two or three presentations. Unfortunately making the transition often can be a painful experience as everything you know about qualifying, objections-handling, presenting and closing techniques are turned upside-down.

The Bible for this type of sale is Neil Rackham’s SPIN Selling series of books and audio courses which focus on the incremental process of building mutual value for both sides of the transaction, resulting in not a single sale but an on-going business partnership. While the SPIN acronym has an unfortunate political meaning to many Americans (putting a Karl Rovian ’spin’ on a story for PR purposes), in Rackham’s case it is an acronym for Situation, Problem, Implication, Need/payoff; his formula for handling these sales.

Rackham’s book is worth reading because it is not a sales gimmick cooked up to sell books. It is based on actually researching 35,000 sales calls over a ten year period, including observing sales pros on the road and in client meetings. The fascinating result of this research is that classic sales processes derived from one call selling not only have no relevance to these large sales, they can actually hurt the potential of completing each sale.

Value selling involves becoming truly knowledgeable about the customer’s business from both a macro and micro-perspective. This requires research, information gathering on a personal basis and entering into a mutual exploration of the benefits of doing business together. A case is built, by both parties, that either justifies the value or does not. Once the value is agreed upon, a relationship is mapped out that will include more than simple delivery and set-up of the product or service. This type of relationship selling has revolutionized the way many businesses do business with companies like IBM, Xerox, Kodak and others building significant service businesses around their core products.

Many of us read sales books for a kernel or two of knowledge we can use for a little extra edge. SPIN Selling offers a complete paradigm shift in the way major sales are handled. Recommended.

“Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”

That’s Albert Einstein talking. The lesson is that your sales message needs to get refined down to its essence because you’re often only going to get one chance to deliver it. The classic approach to this is the so-called Elevator Speech which supposes that you’re in an elevator, you meet someone and they ask what you do. You’ve got about 10 seconds to tell them before the bell rings and the door opens.

I almost always want to hear a sales rep’s elevator speech very early in their training process and I seldom hear a good one. So what are the criteria for a good 10 second sound bite about your business?

• It must tell from your customer’s POV: ‘We help companies save money on XYZ’
• It must encourage questions. In the example above, if a prospect has an interest in saving XYZ then they will ask: How do you do that?
• It should be one sentence or, at most, two short ones.
• No industry jargon. The person you’re talking to may not know the talk but they may know someone who does.
• No words that you tend to stumble over. Write an elevator speech and practice it out loud (the car is a good place). Anytime you stumble or put in an um you either need to clarify or practice more. Recording yourself doing this will be an eye-opener! (if you don’t own one get out and buy a cheap digital pocket recorder or get an attachment for your iPod- you’ll gain a lot by recording your sales pitch)
• It should be instantly memorable. You’re talking to someone, give your speech and a minute later a colleague of theirs says ‘So, what does she do?’. Your speech should come out of their mouth.

A great elevator speech makes a great basis for an opening sales script. Because you’ve had plenty of time to practice it with lots of different people including non-customers, it should be very natural. If it fits the criteria above it opens up a conversation that the rest of your script can direct and focus.

So what do you do?

Here’s another Einstein quote:

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

Thanks to Max.

Analyzing your website from a Sales POV

Salespeople want one thing from their company website: qualified leads. They want incoming phone inquiries, email requests for information and filled out forms offering product info. They don’t care about much else. Or do they?

Analyzing the effectiveness of your company website from a sales POV (point of view) is critical to achieving these important sales goals. All too often we see sites that focus too much on information delivery and brand building and not enough on the circumstances that brought a visitor to that specific site. Let’s take a look at some common site errors that impede rather support your sales team:

• Buried Contact Info. This is so common and so obvious. Would you run an ad that didn’t tell how to reach you or where to get the product or service? Of course not, but a very high percentage of sites do just that, burying their contact info on a single page somewhere on the site. Contact info including Email Us and toll-free Phone number should be on every page. Even that is not enough, IMHO. Eye-tracking studies show us that people scan websites in an F pattern, starting at top left, a place usually reserved for a brand graphic that looks like a banner ad. The same studies show us that people do not even see banner ads (its called banner blindness). So why not put your Contact info right in the sweet spot on every page? It will increase your inbound queries.
• Mission/brand statements are prominent. This is the opposite issue. Right in the center of a Home page or About The Company page we park these inane monuments to corporate egos and bad copywriting. If I am at your site and wish to buy something from you (as opposed to those who wish to sell you something, a very different visitor) I am already interested in a specific answer. The last thing I want is some stupid positioning statement about your corporate values or brand ‘meaning’. What I do want is a clear path to the answer I am seeking. Again, in our opinion, all your Home page should offer is clear top-level navigation to product and service pages and copy that directly addresses customer intent.
• Too many links on pages. Prospective customers coming to a site from search or a referral, have a specific need. Littering your site with dozens of links distracts and confuses. As noted above, pare down your navigation to the core elements that help the visitor find what they need. The key word is ‘help’. Your site is here to facilitate not impede the sales process.

Your brand marketing team is not going to like this but, to put it bluntly, brand value is secondary on your web site. People are there to complete a transaction, be it seeking information, making a purchase or talking to an expert. Sales is the art of completing transactions to the mutual benefit of the buyer and the seller. I suggest you have a focus group with your sales reps and your website developers. Make sure there is no punishment for saying what they think. I suspect you’ll hear some important input.