Are You Ready For 2012? A Quick Look Back At 2011.

Top Articles of 2011

New to the Solution Selling Blog? Or are you a committed reader? Welcome and welcome back. At SPI we are more committed than ever to be the go-to thought-leaders of the sales performance improvement industry. We are consistently looking ahead to changes in the marketplace, trends, tools and learning methods to influence our practices and programs. We incorporate research and feedback into our decisions and work diligently to forward the knowledge and skills we pass on to our clients. So in with the new year and out with the old. But… before we move forward with a wealth of new sales knowledge in 2012, let’s take a brief look back to see what mattered most to readers in 2011.

	Do You Really Understand Your Customer’s Problems? One common sales challenge I have been hearing a lot lately is that sales people are not having consultative dialogues with the customer. As a result, sales cycles become longer or win rates drop. Let me paint the picture…
	Rumors of Solution Selling’s Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated You can’t really blame our competitors for trying to do and say things to tarnish our brand, Solution Selling® - it’s the nature of the beast when you are among the market leaders… we take it as a confirmation of a leadership position…
	Re-Thinking Sales Training - 2011 and Beyond To maximize an organization’s return on sales training investments, sales leaders and managers need to consider three key issues before investing in a sales training initiative, as illustrated in the article…
	Selling Styles: Art or Science(A Love Story) I love my job. My primary responsibility is to create LEADS. In my career, I’ve created a few hundred thousand quality leads to be distributed across an array of sales teams. With numbers of this scale, the main issue that kills me is not necessarily the lead source, cost per lead, OR lead quality…
	Column Fodder My favorite locale is the (gold standard) that defined the qualities that I truly enjoy in a burrito - everyone else that I consider, well, they have a lot to live up to. Unfortunately, the ‘other’ restaurants offering burritos have become columns B, C, and so on in my evaluation…
	Winners Versus Losers - What Does Research Tell Us? Of more general interest is what we learned about top performing companies – companies that have significantly higher quota attainment and revenue attainment. The “best-in-class” companies outpace laggards in a number of areas, including…

Rumors of Solution Selling's Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

You can’t really blame our competitors for trying to do and say things to tarnish our brand, Solution Selling® - it’s the nature of the beast when you are among the market leaders… we take it as a confirmation of a leadership position.

When we do confront our detractors on their mischaracterizations, such as “solution selling is dead” or “that methodology is old” or “it’s just an approach where you ask 20 questions and hope you find a problem you can address” they usually come back with the same response… “We didn’t mean your trademarked methodology; we meant the general concept of solution selling.”

We also have to weather the trendy selling phrases that pop up… “Provocative selling”… “Sales challenger”… “Outcome based selling”… (Insert your own trendy phrase here). The irony is that while all of those are relevant approaches, they’ve been approaches inherent in Solution Selling® for years.

Provoke the prospect? – Solution Selling® includes methods, concepts and tools designed to stimulate interest and curiosity by leading with compelling, pain-oriented messages that provoke the prospect from a state of latency to exploration. These targeted, relevant messages focus on problems solved, value attained, and results measured. In this case, the seller or marketer is leading with a message that would rouse interest from their target prospect.

Sales challenger? - Solution Selling® promotes effective, sales conversations that methodically align conversations to where the buyer is in their buying evaluation. And then, consultatively and tactfully challenges the buyer’s current perspective when a more effective solution may exist. To effectively challenge a prospect, a sales professional must have situational fluency around their capabilities and competitive capabilities, the prospect’s market and the issues in which they are faced – all traits of a true Solution Seller.

Outcome based selling? – Solution Selling® defines “pain” not only as a problem or critical business issue that the buyer may have but also as a potential missed opportunity. If there is a potential missed opportunity, you will want to highlight the potential outcome of addressing that missed opportunity.  So while a prospect may not be missing their revenue targets, they may not be operating as effectively as they could be and therefore not maximizing revenues.  In this case, the seller is focusing the conversation/exploration on a potential outcome that would be desirable for the prospect.

While we have trained over a million people worldwide on Solution Selling® and our own pipeline of prospects has grown at a record-breaking rate over the last year, this isn’t a blog about how good we are but rather a commentary on the continued relevance of Solution Selling®.

At the end of the day, a “solution” is an answer to a problem. As a solution selling professional, you should seek to uncover or understand the problem of a customer and then consultatively, explore potential capabilities that can address the problem.

With that being said, as long as there are customer problems, Solution Selling® will be alive and well, until then, rumors of Solution Selling’s demise have greatly been exaggerated.

Solution Selling® stands tall against our retractors. Read more about our competitive differentiators.

Do You Really Understand Your Customer's Problems?

I have the opportunity to speak with the sales leaders for a lot of small and medium-sized businesses. One common sales challenge I have been hearing a lot lately is that sales people are not having consultative dialogues with the customer. As a result, sales cycles become longer or win rates drop. Let me paint the picture.

If you are a seller—it’s happened to you.  If you are a sales manager—you see it all the time.  A seller is working on an opportunity with a new prospect and all signs indicate that they are going to buy.  Then after a long period of silence from the prospect, the seller is told that the purchase or initiative is going to be put on hold.  The salesperson can’t figure out what went wrong and instantly scrambles to put the deal back together (sometimes making things worse).  The sales manager is confused as to why business that was once forecasted in the pipeline has seemingly disappeared for no reason.

While the customer may give the seller several reasons on why they decided not to go forward, chances are that the seller never truly understood the factors that were impacting their buying decision in the first place!

Think about the last purchase you made where you felt you had a positive experience with the salesperson.  Did the sales person introduce themselves and immediately tell you what they thought you needed? Did they ask you questions to better understand your situation and accurately diagnose your needs?

Here is a good way to test yourself to see if you understand your customer’s real problems.  Think of a specific opportunity you are working on and name two or three challenges that your prospect wants your capabilities to help them resolve. In most cases, this is the easy part.

Now comes the hard part. Ask yourself, “What bad thing will continue to happen if they don’t do business with us?”  It could be that their revenue won’t grow, they will lose market share, miss a goal, etc. Obviously, it varies based on product or service.

But if you can’t answer the question, chances are your prospect can’t either.
The basic principle here is to diagnose before you prescribe.  When you can answer the question, “what bad thing will continue to happen if they don’t do business with us?” you are ready to provide your prospect with a recommended solution. Challenge yourself to answer that question for your clients. They will reward you with their business.

To learn more about SPI’s Small and Medium Business Solutions, click here

From College to Account Director: Loni Bernhard

Last week I interviewed a sales executive, we decided to continue the trend. This week I interviewed Loni Bernhard, Account Director at a national hotel and resort chain.

SPI: Hi Loni. Thanks for meeting with us. Last week we interviewed a sales executive who’s been in sales for the past 30 years. This week we wanted to interview a younger sales professional, to get a different side of the story. How long have you been in sales?

Loni: I’ve been in sales for eight years, shortly after finishing my Bachelor’s degree in 2002. I studied advertising in college, but I decided that sales is my passion.

SPI: So you studied advertising in school. Have you had any formal sales training?

Loni: Yes, I have. I believe sales training is crucial to developing your abilities as a sales person. Sure, you learn a lot in the field, but sales training courses help hone your sales skills and knowledge. I also participate in continuing education for sales training annually.

SPI: Over the course of the last eight years I’m sure you’ve grown a lot as a salesperson, from starting fresh out of college to becoming an Account Director. Do you have a sales philosophy?

Loni: People buy from people. There’s no way around that. I know the Internet has changed the way people interact, but we still need to develop relationships based on trust and integrity. That is where you will find your most lucrative opportunities.

SPI: What would you recommend for people who want to go into hotel sales?

Loni: You will have to start as a sales coordinator to learn the business. Do as much as you can for your Manager and ask lots of questions. Continue to improve your customer service skills and you can move up very quickly in hotel sales.

It’s an exciting industry. My job takes me all over the country, and I get to meet some really wonderful people.

SPI: What’s the biggest challenge you’ve encountered in sales?

Loni: Like I said earlier, the most important part of sales is building relationships. I feel confident in my ability to do so; however, I have to say that the “down” economy has been my biggest challenge. And that is something that’s difficult to navigate, despite how skilled you are at building relationships, and no matter what field you’re in.

SPI: What do you do to continue to improve your sales skills?

Loni: I take online courses, read sales books, and take classes. My company provides access to all these things, and I seek it out on my own, too.

Also, I belong to professional associations that are constantly working to provide their members with valuable information.

I also try to learn from those around me, both clients and sales mentors.

SPI: Loni, thank you so much for taking a moment to talk to us! We really enjoy speaking with professionals across the country to find out what inspires you to grow as a salesperson.

Loni: Thank you!

30 Years of Experience and Counting, An Interview: John Winslow

For our blog this week, I interviewed sales executive, John Winslow. John is currently the Vice President of International Sales for a billion-dollar orthopedic company. Since 1982 he’s worked in domestic and international sales for several Fortune 500 medical supply companies.

I was particularly interested in talking with him about his experience in international sales. We sat down over a cup of coffee so he could share with me a little bit of the knowledge he’s gained over the past 30 years in sales.

SPI: Thanks for talking with us, John. First, I’d like to ask you why you got into sales in the first place. What inspired you?

John: Thanks for having me! I can actually identify the moment when I decided to become a salesperson. It was 1977 in New Orleans. My sister’s partner was attending a wine convention, and he invited us to come along. He was offering a presentation on a wine taster’s workshop he was selling, and I was quite impressed with the relationships he built with his potential clients.

I realized then that I wanted to do that. I wanted to build relationships with people, build connections. To this day I credit that moment in New Orleans as the foundation of my success in sales.

SPI: Have you had any formal sales training over the years?

John: Yes, definitely. While every salesperson has different personality traits, sales training programs can be incredibly beneficial. Integrating what you learn in a sales training with your personality can lead to strong sales skills. I continue to refer back to sales trainings I participated in 10, 20, even 30 years ago.

SPI: What is the hardest part of international sales?

John: Well, the first difficulty is the travel itself. While I travel to Asia and Europe several times a month, I’ve also been on some very long and difficult around-the-world trips. The most strenuous of these was a trip from the U.S. to East Asia, to Australia, back to East Asia, to the Middle East, to Europe, then back to the United States, in fifteen days.

The other difficult part of international sales, which I actually enjoy, is communication. I don’t mean simply the language barrier, but all the nuances of communication that we take for granted when doing domestic sales. American slang is a big no-no. We’re accustomed to speaking in metaphors, but doing that in an international setting can lead to some enormous misunderstandings!

SPI: Do you have any advice for people who are interested in going into international sales?

John: There are three things I’d recommend.

1. Make sure you have a burning desire to do so. International travel is exciting, but it’s difficult. You’ll be recovering from jet lag while making presentations. You’ll be away from your family for extended periods of time. And everyone is familiar with how uncomfortable air travel has gotten!
2. It helps to have a working knowledge of another language. It’s not crucial, but it does help. If you don’t speak more than one language—actually, even if you do—you must spend time researching cultural norms, etiquette, and courtesies. Sales training programs will help you with your sales skills, but you still need to research how people in other cultures communicate, and how to be polite.
3. Going into international sales is easiest if you’re already successful in your sales career. It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to apply for another company’s international sales position if you’re just starting out in sales or have no experience in international sales. Work hard at domestic sales. Do your research. Continue learning—reading and participating in sales training programs. International sales is hard, but highly rewarding.

SPI: Thank you for talking with us, John! We appreciate hearing the perspective of highly experienced and well-trained sales executives.

John: Thank you!