Finding the right people

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point, describes salespeople as people capable of spreading ideas. He says:

‘It’s energy. It’s enthusiasm. It’s charm. It’s likeability. It’s all those things and something more’

The something more, he’d say, is ‘irresistibility’. But Malcolm is American and he is seduced by the American vision of selling, which he more fully describes in What the Dog Saw – a collection of his New Yorker articles in which he describes the art form of QVC Shopping Channel ‘pitching’ as immortalised by genius salespeople such as Ron Popeil. Gladwell tells the story of how, in just his first hour on live TV (demonstrating, presenting, cooking and taking phone-ins), pitching the new, promotional version of the Showtime Rotisserie, Ron sold a record $1 million of product:

‘It was one thing to talk about how Ron was the best there ever was … but quite another thing to see proof of it before your very eyes … (enter Ron Popeil from the TV studio after that first hour) … there was a hush and then the whole room stood up and cheered.’

The hair at the back of my neck stands up when I read this. It would for anyone who’s sold or pitched.

There’s a heady moment when you can visualise nothing stopping you and no one capable of presenting you with an objection you can’t sweep aside or, better, twist to your laughing advantage. You feel immortal and at one with yourself. You are unscripted but feel as though you are presenting a divine script and you enjoy being in your own company. You want people to buy from you because it feels like the right, the only, thing to do.

Salespeople are not whingers (and if they are they won’t last long). Selling is the last bastion of optimism and opportunism.

Selling B2B

A salesperson of high-ticket merchandise to commercial customers will be different from someone working in retail, as will a salesperson working with a big brand company where reputation and trust have been built over time. Someone selling medical equipment or high-tech products is a sales consultant whose primary objective is to create a relationship, not achieve a one-off sales transaction.

No one effective in sales today aspires to be anything less than:

• A brilliant presenter.
• A brilliant relationship-builder.
• A fount of deep knowledge in the product sector.
• An assiduous listener.
• A business strategist.

Increasingly top salespeople are global salespeople too. The premium this puts on being a profoundly knowledgeable and compelling presenter of a product portfolio is obvious. In government circles the belief that ‘being better at selling is the single most important thing we can do for the economy’ has taken deep root.

The art of sales planning

The other side of selling is more rational but, in a topsy-turvy world, critical. And that’s the ability to juggle, predict and do a tightrope walk all at the same time. All great salespeople are great at planning and understanding their customers’ businesses and they have an intuition about timing. The time when it’s right to push, when it’s right to make a concession and when it’s right to stop.

Great sales planning is about breaking down a sales forecast into manageable, meaningful chunks. A target of £1 million breaks down to £4,500 a working day (or just £550 an hour). It represents £10,000 a customer if you have 100 of them. It spreads a lot of ways.

Targets are never fair nor are they precisely scientific. They represent the opportunity for a good salesperson to work out ‘how to’, not to wonder ‘if’.

The art of sales planning lies right at the heart of brilliant marketing because, however good a marketing plan, it won’t happen if the people selling to customers aren’t motivated and equipped to do the job. The relationship between a salesperson and a marketer is like that between an actor and a producer. The latter gets everything in place but the actor has to be given a good script, proper direction and the room to interpret what will work for the audience.

Plans should not be short-term things, however the economy booms and busts. Brilliant salespeople are playing a two-handed game. On the left-hand side filling the sales pipeline, getting orders, confirming orders and following up. That’s the transactional stuff. And on the right-hand side developing and building relationships, acquiring competitive and marketplace intelligence and creating a sales framework for the future. That’s the intelligent stuff.

Professional salespeople always have a plan and know how to use their time and the opportunities so their performance is never erratic. We spend too little time praising salespeople. And marketing people spend too little time on a one-to-one basis understanding and working out with salespeople how to tap into the real opportunities in the marketplace and build partnerships with key customers. It’s time that changed.

Selling in the 21st century

Here are some examples of how selling is changing:

1. Tesla is the leader in electric cars in the USA. They are starting to take off. The Tesla Roadster actually accelerates faster than most sports cars, yet produces no emissions. Apple and Gap executive George Blankenship is joining them as vice president of design and store development. Having managed the growth of over 250 Apple stores worldwide his job here is to build Tesla’s retail strategy and network. Tesla stores are also the service hub for Tesla Rangers, the mobile service programme that provides house-calls for service. Tesla Rangers travel to customer homes or offices to carry out services, including annual inspections and upgrades. So eat your heart out, Jeremy Clarkson, having been so rude about the Nissan Leaf on Top Gear.
2. The word ‘conversation’ is new (we seldom hear the word ‘pitch’ nowadays.) We all avoid formal, bullet-point presentations. Instead, we have conversations. Increasingly, ‘selling’ is going to be about customising things so they fit the buyer rather than suit the seller (‘Any colour you want so long as it’s black’ is history).
3. Selling ‘now’. Today you specify your car and wait several weeks until it’s made. It doesn’t need to be like this. Nor do banks have to take five days to clear a cheque. The real selling story is going to revolve around quality, value, relationship and speed. If you or your business isn’t overnight-fast you are probably not going to be reading this.
   

   

   The world is getting faster. It’s time to work out how you can speed up what you do. Speed gives you sales edge.

4. Taking customers to experience mind-changing places to precondition the selling process. Here are just five I’ve heard about recently, all involving going behind the scenes:
   • At a premier division football club stadium.
   • At the Globe Theatre.
   • At the Whitehall War Rooms.
   • At the ICMA Trading Centre at Reading University.
   • At the Royal Opera House.
5. We’ll have fewer but smarter salespeople who spend a lot of their time working out how to improve customer performance with their brands. They will be doing what marketing people used to do in the past and acting as consultants.
6. The new pitchers of the 21st century are quieter than they used to be. American Adam Lisagor, a success story as a commercials director in the USA, has espoused a style that is quiet, spare and deadpan. He believes his audience – the new consumer – is smart enough to want to hear a cool story being told without hype. Which suggests the salesperson of today is going to have to learn a variety of styles of selling.

Thinking small

In running a small business the owner or the boss will be the primary salesperson. They will have the benefit of being especially passionate and knowledgeable about their product or service. All they have to learn is how to be distinctive and effective as a presenter.

The essential skills are no different, but in a small business we are looking less for a polished professional and more for the sort of person Margaret Heffernan, author of Women on Top and the champion of women entrepreneurs, describes as having an ‘irrational love of their customers’. In a small business someone who spends money with you is literally keeping you alive. In small businesses the simple art of selling yourself and your product is at the heart of marketing, not a service to it. That’s what Ron Popeil did on QTV. That’s what great leaders of business can still do. It’s what made Steve Jobs so compelling a leader. He was a great salesman and he positioned Apple as an accessible business bringing you magical products. Ron and Steve had a lot more in common than anyone might think.

Often the best salespeople wouldn’t recognise it if you told them they were great salespeople. But they all have the following things in common:

• The appetite to listen and to empathise.
• The passion to tell a good story.
• The belief in what they are selling – I was once told you could only tell a great salesperson by how well they sold rubbish – which is rubbish itself.

The reputation of selling has taken two knocks – from telesales and from financial salesmen offloading exotic ‘instruments’. But at its core, and ignoring these mavericks, selling is a noble profession and becoming more important.

Technology is transforming everything, most of all our access to information and the ability it confers on our getting faster and faster in responding to customers. Delivery times are getting shorter. But one thing is not changing: the need for face-to-face contact. Real human beings rule and sell OK.

The rules of selling

1. Being trusted by your customers is vital.
2. Being an irresistible storyteller is a huge asset.
3. Enjoy ‘pitching’ – it’s fun and having fun is infectious.
4. If you aren’t an optimist find something else to do.
5. You have to be smart and knowledgeable to be a salesperson – no one will know your product from a customer perspective better than you.
6. The art of sales planning lies right at the heart of brilliant marketing.
7. Make it easy for people to buy from you … why is it so many make it harder than it should be?
8. Cultivate your marketing and financial colleagues – the better you all get on, the better the company will do.
9. Selling is becoming more to do with business strategy and is more conversational than hard sell.
10. Think long-term relationships with your customers, not short-term sales.