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Reason #1
Buyers have a system, sales people usually don’t. It is a battle of the plans, and the person with the stronger plan wins. Buyers have a effective system to deal with salespeople. Many technology buyers are formally trained in dealing with salespeople.
The buyer’s system is designed to get as much information as possible and to keep them in control of the situation. Buyers often mislead sales reps about their intentions, how much they’ll spend, who makes decisions, etc. The prospect’s system is designed to turn high-tech sales people into unpaid consultants, lead them on until they have all of the information they need, and often use their proposals to negotiate better deals with their current supplier or a competitor.
Does this make buyers bad people? Of course not. We all use this system for dealing with salespeople. It’s almost second nature. But still it’s true, in every culture we’ve visited around the world, there is a universal belief that:
You can lie to sales people and still go to heaven.
Why do buyers do this? First, it works. Also, in order to protect themselves, buyers feel they need a system to deal with sales people. It is an instinctive reaction to the negative stereotype of a salesman that causes buyers to put up a defensive wall when dealing with anyone who is selling something.
So how do most sales people deal with the buyer’s system? Most play right in to it. Many don’t use a systematic approach to selling and find themselves winging it. They allow the prospect to take total control of the sales process. They eagerly:
• Give their information
• Make commitments without getting any in return
• Waste resources on pursuing deals that will never close
• Make unneeded concessions
• Misinterpret the ubiquitous I’ll think it over and get back to you as a future sale
• Lose deals to competitors with stronger salespeople
What do companies do to contribute to the problem? Most high-tech firms train their reps on the features and benefits of their great technology, even though traditional feature and benefit selling has proven ineffective. This underlying paradigm that drives the buyer/seller dance works to the detriment of the sales person. But is it in the best interest of the buyer to make significant technology decisions this way? No, this default mode of operation is in neither the buyer’s nor the seller’s best interest.
FACT: Over 80% of high tech salespeople we observe are still using traditional Feature/Benefit selling techniques.
Solution: A non-traditional approach to selling that provides a system that sales managers and reps 100% buy in to. The system should balance both the buyer and seller’s best interest the Art of Mutual Agreement.
It helps if you can determine incremental awards or incentives around ideas that improve profits. We’ve seen rewards given as a percentage of money saved and thus tens of thousands of dollars with a potential cap as well as simple small cash or gift card awards for any and every idea that has an impact on profitability. Determine an incentive program that you can live with and deliver upon regardless of how voluminous the profit improving ideas may become. Back up monetary rewards with genuine praise and gratitude; this can be in written or formal spoken expression.
There are the Eight Essential Areas of Objectives in the strategic planning process (
We get asked a lot about sales compensation and commissions. Everyone wants to know “what is the best structure for a successful Sales Force?”. Companies fall across the board on what and how they commission their sales people. Of course, there is the obvious strategy of incenting the results and behaviors you need to be successful. This seems simple enough, but how does it actually work? Often, in consulting with companies we have found sales comp plans that are not actually aligned to the results that the company needs.