A 4th Key Law of Sales:

Respect the buyer’s process. The truly successful sales people know that they have a superior ability to “take the customer out of the market,” in other words, they know that they have been successful in establishing the trust-bond, and in matching their services/products well with customer’s requirements so that when the customer does buy, he knows they will buy from him. He accepts that he cannot and should not try to materially alter the buyer’s process, for doing so will violate the trust-bond, and likely result in sacrificing margin. Far too often those in desperate need to meet a quota deadline will offer a concession to win the deal earlier then the customer was prepared to authorize it, and in a great many cases the incentive comes in the form of a price reduction—“if I could get a lower price, would you order this month?” It’s a lose/lose question:
o The trust-bond has been broken. The customer now knows he didn’t get the best his sales person could’ve offered
o The sales person has sacrificed margin, making the transaction and his company less profitable
o The customer must do abnormal things to make the sale happen, which he’ll both learn from and resent
Far better to have managed the pipeline better, spent more time developing prospects, less time chasing deals that really weren't qualified deals, and knowing that there are enough opportunities in the sales funnel that the requisite number will materialize, without adversely impacting the normal and natural course of events at any one customer.

More on the Immutable Laws of Sales

The great sales people recognize the “yes” that isn’t an order, but is the “yes” that comes from following the path of least resistance versus the path of a disciplined methodology. When the sales manager asks if an account closed and was the order placed, and the answer is, “not yet, but they said they’d like to meet again” we’ve potentially allowed ourselves to fall into the trap of the “easiest yes”. This can be avoided by setting goals and objectives for each customer contact that will advance the sale—not that it will always go as hoped or expected, but at least it was a planned sales call with a defined objective against which we can measure the success of the call and avoid the “yes” that does not mean we’ve won the sale, but does impose additional expensive time, effort and sales cost.
Additional ideas can be found on my web site at www.focusedonrevenue.com
or my blog at: http://michaelbpearce.blogspot.com/

Another in my short series of the Immutable Laws of Sales:
The importance of the trust- bond, it outweighs all of the features and benefits of any product or service. People buy from people they trust and salespeople who add value to the relationship. Notice I didn’t say a person they like, which is important too, but less so than the trust-bond. Too many organizations teach their sales people all about the features and benefits of their products/services, but they fail to focus in either their coaching or the measurement standards on this key element of truth—the trust-bond matters!
Additional information may be found on my web site at www.focusedonrevenue.com or my blog at: http://michaelbpearce.blogspot.com/

An Immutable Law of Sales: one of a series
A "slow" maybe is extraordinarily expensive. The great sales people over time have realized they must learn to be discerning enough to know when they haven't yet successfully matched their services/products with the customers’ requirements. Too often the customer is unable to “just say “no”” so we continue to call on them hoping for a miraculous conversion. And they do occur! But the cost of the sale is nearly always too expensive, not even counting the opportunity lost cost since other potential sales went uncontested to the competition as there was no time available to develop them.
See more on my web site at: www.focusedonrevenue.com

Selling by "Instinct"
I got my pilot’s license in 1972, and as they say, there are no old, bold pilots. I’ve thought about what it takes to be a proficient pilot, and I’ve recognized a commonality with successful selling. Changing the revenue trajectory for firms is what I do, so I admit I’m thinking about it a lot, and it occurred to me that flying is an apt model. Far too often I work with sales teams who manage by “feel.” They have a “feel” for their customers and prospects, when they’ll buy and how much. They rely on instincts, often tuned over a long experience base. These are the guys who don’t last long in an airplane! Pilots are taught from the very first day not to rely on their instincts – but to trust the gauges. Pilots will tell of the times they felt they were flying right side up, while the gauges told them they were upside down. The gauges are always right, instincts aren’t. We need to help our salespeople understand and rely on the metrics of sales. They need to KNOW they are making progress, it needs to be quantitative. They need to have a clear and defendable account plan overlaid with the account map. I’m not trying to imply that good instincts aren’t important, that having a “second sense” isn’t worthwhile, they are! They should recognize the feeling in the stomach that reminds one something may be going on that deserves a check of the “gauges”—is the effort progressing as planned and is the progress concrete, and verifiable. Those who adopt this approach will find their close rate increasing and the sales cycle shortening!
Visit me on my website: focusedonrevenue.com; or my Blog at http://michaelbpearce.blogspot.com/; or you can reach me at 425-830-4156.

One man’s perspective on China—

I have travelled the length and breadth of China over time, excluding Tibet and Mongolia. I read and hear many opinions about China, although it seems that few actually go beyond Shanghai and Beijing, the major well known cites, which in my view tends to color their experience, so I thought I’d post my own thoughts…..hope you enjoy them!

China has 1.3 billion people, we all know the number although we may have no idea just how many a billion is, what’s more meaningful to me is that of the 1.3 billion, perhaps 260 million, or about 20% may really be in a position any time soon to buy anything and are therefore the “real” market in China—still, it’s as big as the United States!

Putting the number in perspective is hard, but maybe it’ll help to consider Shanghai. In 1994 there were 150 high rise buildings, today there are 1500!
Or Beijing, a city of contrasts. It’s the clash of two different worlds, the old and the new. It’s a vibrant city, where the form of government, Communist, and the style of commerce, Capitalism, work in amazing harmony. The old neighborhoods and the new hotels and fabulous restaurants seem somehow to co-exist in a wonderful montage.
Yet in Guilen or Yongshou little has changed in 150 years or so except for the introduction of TV and cell phones. They still fish using Cormorants. They’ll put a collar around their neck, so they can’t swallow, and every so often they remove the collar so the bird will get an occasional fish to eat and then stay excited about catching them—quite amazing.

Guanzho, which the west used to call Canton, is a thriving city, full of market opportunities, and will likely replace Hong Kong as the primary money center. Its airport, as an example, is a modern, well functioning, well designed facility that would put nearly any airport in the US to shame. Especially one as poorly designed and run as Seattle’s.

Climbing the mountains to a village like Taoshin you will find a paper industry largely unchanged for generations, with little outside contact and little need for any.

Or Xidi, which the locals visit because it’s so picturesque, but few foreign visitors find it. It has largely escaped the new economy and continues to exist as it always has, with small irrigation streams passing by each home providing water for cooking, bathing, fishing and flushing that which needs to be flushed, all at different times of the day, so it seems to work, and has for hundreds of years. No changes needed or anticipated!

Xian, which due to the unearthing of the warriors has become a tourist destination. Yet, short of the few businesses that serve the tourist little else has changed. Food is still grown and sold from small mats, with one vendor’s food virtually undistinguishable from the next. If you enter into a conversation trying to help one of them differentiate their pomegranates from the next, like we practice in the west, they look with confusion and ask what would they then due to their neighbors business, with an attitude of incredulity that anyone would suggest a practice that would elevate one above the others, and profit one while hurting the less creative. This isn’t a market likely to happen in our lifetime!

In China nearly 20% of the population still lives on the banks of the Yangtze River, which is also about more than 10% of the world’s entire population. It’s a unique river; it’s the only river that, at Cloud Mountain near Yichang, begins to run to the north; all others run south! So the river exists in Shanghai, otherwise, if it had continued to run to the south as all others do, it would’ve exited into the Gulf of Tonkin. Imagine how that would’ve changed both China and the world! It begins in Tibet and ends in Shanghai, about 4,000 miles, easily the longest river in the world.
The people have enormous pride in their country, everything is the “biggest, best and most famous” yet they have little personal pride. For the most part, they seem to have bought communism hook, line and sinker. There seems to be little desire for improved productivity or mechanization aside from that which is unavoidable, it might displace workers. Yet they build the Three Rivers dam, and displace who knows how many people, needing to create whole new cities and flooding critically important history in the process, without a lot of concern for what would be lost. Every new regime seems bent on destroying the heritage along with all memories of the past, yet the history of the country is profound and evident at every turn.
There is virtually no established religion, they just exist without complaint, it s what makes Tiananmen Square such a unique and impressive event. It’s still largely an agrarian economy with tea making, ink and paper major industries in the countryside, and with the average pay about $1,000 a year, leaving not much for anything beyond that necessary to survive.

So, what to make of China. It’s a country as much about exporting to them as it is importing from them. They import a great deal, more then we think, importing more than any other country except the US and Germany. They can and do produce high quality products, but they need careful oversight.

What concerns me more then anything else is our perception. We don’t take them seriously enough. They are rapidly becoming a major consumer, especially of oil. They have hard currency we have come to rely on, assuming they will continue to invest in us because they have no other safe haven and because they need our consuming markets. It is going to change! If China, India and Russia succeed at co-operating and implementing a common Euro-like currency, which they are actively trying to do, with little or no recognition in our country that this is even an issue, we will face an enormous barrier to our ability to continue to fund our extraordinary debt, and we will face a resource competitor unlike anything we’ve ever experienced—most of the world’s population, most of the developing demand, a lot of the worlds intellect, drive and natural resources, all wrapped into one regional entity; the prospect is indeed daunting. Its concerning enough to contemplate the ASEAN market integration and separate currency, but this one would truly to impact the very fabric of our day to day lives in immeasurable ways.

More on the impact of Viet Nam and Cambodia later!!

Immutable Time-Tested Laws of Sales
By Michael Pearce

I was visiting the famous temples of Angkor Wat, Angkor Tam and Ta Prohm, spectacular vestiges left from antiquity in Siem Reap, Cambodia not long ago. Built over 1,000 years ago, they have survived the ravages of time and remain for us to consider not only the enormity of the undertaking that long ago, but reminding us of those areas of life that remain true no matter the challenges that occur in our culture, our accepted lifestyles, societies standards of acceptable behavior, norms and the like.
As I thought about this, my thoughts came to sales and what were the fundamental rules that have survived time, the rules that would’ve been in place since commerce began, and survived to govern yet today.
I realized there are several that have stood the test of time, among them:
• A "slow" maybe is extraordinarily expensive. The great sales people over time have realized they must learn to be discerning enough to know when they haven't yet successfully matched their services/products with the customers’ requirements. Too often the customer is unable to “just say “no”” so we continue to call on them hoping for a miraculous conversion. And they do occur! But the cost of the sale is nearly always too expensive, not even counting the opportunity lost cost since other potential sales went uncontested to the competition as there was no time available to develop them.

• The importance of the trust- bond, for it outweighs all of the features and benefits of any product or service. People buy from people they trust and salespeople who add value to the relationship. Notice I didn’t say a person they like, which is important too, but less so than the trust-bond. Too many organizations teach their sales people all about the features and benefits of their products/services, but they fail to focus in either their coaching or the measurement standards on this key element of truth—the trust-bond matters!

• The great sales people recognize the “yes” that isn’t an order, but is the “yes” that comes from following the path of least resistance versus the path of a disciplined methodology. When the sales manager asks if an account closed and was the order placed, and the answer is, “not yet, but they said they’d like to meet again” we’ve potentially allowed ourselves to fall into the trap of the “easiest yes”. This can be avoided by setting goals and objectives for each customer contact that will advance the sale—not that it will always go as hoped or expected, but at least it was a planned sales call with a defined objective against which we can measure the success of the call and avoid the “yes” that does not mean we’ve won the sale, but does impose additional expensive time, effort and sales cost.
• Respect the buyer’s process. The truly successful sales people know that they have a superior ability to “take the customer out of the market” – in other words, they know that they have been successful in establishing the trust-bond, and in matching their services/products well with customer’s requirements so that when the customer does buy, he knows they will buy from him. He accept that he cannot and should not try to materially alter the buyer’s process, for doing so will violate the trust-bond, and likely result in sacrificing margin. Far too often those in desperate need to meet a quota deadline will offer a concession to win the deal earlier then the customer was prepared to authorize it, and in a great many cases the incentive comes in the form of a price reduction—“if I could get a lower price, would you order this month?” It’s a lose/lose question:
o The trust-bond has been broken. The customer now knows he didn’t get the best his sales person could’ve offered
o The sales person has sacrificed margin, making the transaction and his company less profitable
o The customer must do abnormal things to make the sale happen, which he’ll both learn from and resent
Far better to have managed the pipeline better, spent more time developing prospects, less time chasing deals that really weren't qualified deals, and knowing that there are enough opportunities in the sales funnel that the requisite number will materialize, without adversely impacting the normal and natural course of events at any one customer.
• The sale is “closed” when it’s referencable. The truly great know that receiving a purchase order isn’t the end of the sale, it’s merely the beginning. But too many believe the sale is official when the service/product has been delivered. That is still a bit pre-mature to celebrate. The sale that matters most is the sale that meets the customer’s requirements in a way that results in a referencable customer. It is said that 80% of all sales occur after the 5th contact. A meaningful reference can reduce that number by a many as two, cutting the time and sale expense by nearly 40%! And 76% of all people who get a good personal reference, buy.
4. And finally, never confuse a sale of opportunity with a market. All too often aggressive, hungry sales people get an unexpected order from an unexpected customer, and they fail to recognize it as a sale of opportunity, rather they see it as an untapped market and immediately begin to change their course of action to pursue this new “market” failing to realize they just had an incremental sale, but did not discover a whole new market. The reverse can be true as well, but it’s the disciplined, methodical, aware sales person who can differentiate one from the other.
Additional articles can be found on my blog at: http://michaelbpearce.blogspot.com/
If I can serve you or answer any questions, I can be reached at michael.pearce@oneaccordpartners.com or at 425-830-4156

Calling at the “C” Level
Nearly every sales effectiveness course I know of encourages salespeople to call at the “C” or executive level. I think it’s time for a fresh concept!
Sales seems to be one of those functional areas that is most resistant to change. Concepts taught 30, even 40 or 50 years ago, are still advanced by sales trainers as a “best practices.” And of all areas in the firm, sales is often the most resistant to embracing technology. Odd isn’t it? Although there may be some good reasons. First, every training class they go to still teaches the same old theories. Second, sales, perhaps more than any other functional area, demands skilled “coaching” for effectiveness, and few compensation plans I see reward their management for coaching. It’s hardly ever mentioned, let alone measured and expected. We reward activities and measurable success metrics. We rarely reward sales management directly for personnel coaching and development.
I was reflecting on this while I was recently in South Africa on a safari watching a lion eat his kill. Think it’s odd that I was thinking about sales while watching the water buffalo get devoured, don’t you? I’ve decided the link must have been accomplishing the mission!
Anyway, the lion didn’t go for the head of the herd, his equivalent of the “C” level. Rather, he went for the easiest kill!
It seems to me we should re-think how we encourage our sales people plan their approach to the prospect. Trying to go by key influencers and straight to the “decision makers” will likely work against them more often then it will work for them. There’s no question the final authority/decision maker is critical to the process, but it is a process, and trying to jump over the earlier supportive levels can be fatal. Relationships can be built, trust can be established, features and benefits can be vetted and confirmed, and opportunities can be discovered and developed, all at levels below the key “C” level executive. It’s my experience that winning the support staff carries far more weight in advancing the sale than does the reverse, which is having the “C” level executive impose a salesperson on his subordinates. When that happens, they are, as often as not, working to prove him wrong, and by extension the salesperson and his product as well.
Clearly, we should be working to understand the buying process, the issues that face the buying organization, the solution we can offer and winning the hearts and minds of the implementation team, and then advancing to the executive level with the support, confidence and trust of his staff. That’s a sale that will happen, happen more often, and happen far more quickly.
And they are usually far easier to get to meet with. They’ve less gate keepers trying to keep sales people a t bay. My advice is..get in!! And get in at any level. If a sales person is successful at penetrating the “C”: level, then he should work to get introduced to those who will support the decision, rather then try to influence a buying decision in their absence. Relationships, confidence, engagement and trust are as important today as most non-enterprise product offerings. Successful rock star sales people know it and practice it, in spite of what they are told during their sales training classes!
If you know of an organization that is failing to meet their revenue objectives, I’d be happy to visit with them with the goal of providing insight that can help them change their revenue trajectory. I can be reached at:
Michael.Pearce@oneaccordpartners.com or 425-830-4156

An Epiphany in Cambodia

Keys Critical To Successful Management
Accountability, Leadership, Coaching, Mentorship and Alignment

Towards the end of 2009 we found ourselves in Cambodia, and I attended Rotary in Phnom Phen. It was a memorable experience. Here’s a country desperate for coaching in nearly any and every area. I hadn’t really come face to face with the devastation Poll Pot reined upon them until I walked the killing fields, and the streets of Phnom Phen. He killed nearly a third of the population! And with it, he destroyed nearly all of the country’s written history. By the time the Vietnamese ended his reign there were nearly no people of any age, education or technical skills left alive. He destroyed records; there were no birth records, no property records and little recorded history. So now we have a country literally re-inventing itself, and anxious to learn the lessons visitors are willing to share with them.

The Phnom Phen Rotary club asked me to come back to discuss management philosophy and methodologies in the US with them. As I began my discussion with my new friends and fellow Rotarians, I pointed out that enlightened executive management has a number of facets to it, including leadership, coaching, mentorship, and alignment along with accountability.

It occurred to me as we talked that in the United Sates the pendulum has moved too far toward analytics and metrics. We’ve all heard the phrases: “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” and “accountability requires measurable goals” and “you need a dashboard of key metrics to successfully run the business”, and other similar pronouncements. To be sure, accountability is a key performance criterion. It assumes the implementation of a set of achievable goals and objectives, holding those assigned the responsibility, accountable for achieving them on time and within budget. And it presumes analytics and metrics as its basis. Goals and objectives should never be assigned without having the ability to generate a corresponding progress report card. The responsibility accountability brings with it, is to be able to define and measure success for those reports having tasks assigned to them.
But it doesn’t end there. It also requires leadership, which is not the same as being able to direct the activities of others. Leadership is developing a vision for the business, and then being able to reduce that vision to achievable goals and objectives for the organization and to be able to effectively communicate them with the employees. The conceptualization is worth little without a corresponding effective call to action that the staff can and will enthusiastically embrace. Too many executives fail to concentrate on this aspect. They assume if they say it, it will be done.

Successful managers are good coaches. Coaching means being able to tactically develop employees, improving specific performance, so that they grow with the organization, and do not get left behind, causing disruption and turnover. And being ”left behind” is arguably the single largest reason for turnover in the organization. People don’t just suddenly stop performing , but one day management realizes they can’t contribute to the level necessary and/or the employee realizes he’s no longer achieving success and it becomes a job verses the exciting and rewarding career it once was, and then we have turnover! Expensive, disruptive turnover.

Good management also requires mentoring, which largely means both living and re-enforcing the core values of the company in every way every day in action, behavior and decisions, thereby continuing to grow the employees professionally.
Finally, it means being able to achieve alignment of the employees with the vision, the core values and the goals and objectives of the organization. This begins as early as the interview and on-boarding processes where we often focus on areas that will have the least impact such as legacy performance which we expect will be an indicator of future performance, even though it’s a whole new environment, culture, set of products, etc. Then we often impose demonstrable industry knowledge as a condition of employment. The only thing prior industry knowledge does is speed the on-boarding process. It also serves to eliminate potentially great hires! And then we fail to focus on cultural alignment virtually at all in too many interview processes. And cultural/values alignment is a critically important criteria and indicator of success, perhaps the most important one.

It takes skill in each of these five distinct areas to lead an organization today, and an executive must focus on each of the five to successfully negotiate the business environment and grow the firm. Took me a 14 hour flight and a very foreign environment to recognize how far off kilter we are in emphasizing one of the five all too often and all too much, occassionally to the exclusion of the other four!

On a recent dive I was struck by the similarities between diving and business today. May sound like a stretch to you, but stick with me for a moment. As I dived down to a moderate depth of about 75 feet, it all seemed quite tranquil and similar to any other dive, just as business does when all seems to be going well and we operate a bit on auto-pilot. There were eels, big ones and small ones, some more fearsome then others. Just like our competitors, we tend to worry ourselves about their actions and if they can do us harm, but mostly its wasted effort. They really aren’t as big a threat as we think. Then the three of us came around a large piece of coral and were suddenly face to face with four sharks. It’s just the way competition happens, all of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, our tranquil business world is shaken up by a predator/competitor, anxious to take market share and not concerned in the least about the very viability of our company. Quick and decisive defensive action put us out of any harm we might have faced, and it turned out the sharks, while potentially dangerous, were really a bit shy and timid themselves and had moved away from us just as we were moving away from them. Competitors are often the same, they seem a lot worse then they turn out to be. They often aren’t as strong, well run or organized for battle as we thought.
And then just as suddenly there we were, right in the middle of what seemed like an aquarium, fish of every shape and size in front of us, below us, above us, everywhere we looked were beautiful fish, innumerable in their differences. All fish, but all very different in color, behavior, and actions. Some were inquisitive and came right up to us, some were wary, watching us as we moved toward them, some were skittish, and darted off the moment we got too close. Just like customers. We tend to think of them and plan for them and try to address them treating them all the same. But just like the fish, they are all very different and need to be treated uniquely.
It’s a beautiful world down there, full of the unknown and unfamiliar, with plenty of risk that can be mitigated only through thorough planning, preparation and training, and when done correctly, the rewards are memorable. And as I said, it acts just like the market in many ways, the lessons are clear, now to remember them!