The Two-Dimensional Process of Selling

Most salespeople do not have a sales process. They think they do, but try to have them describe it for you. Most salespeople can’t. Without a defined sales process, salespeople can react only passively to customers. Such reactive salespeople base their approach on:

• Customer selling: The customer leads the sales process and the salesperson follows.
• Experience selling: This is the process of hoping that past experience will lead to future success.
• Catch-up selling: The competition directs the sale and then you have to play catch up all the time.
• Bad sales manager selling: The sales manager enforces the “do it like I did” methodology.
• Situational selling: The sales person is “winging it and praying” on every call.

Traditional Tactics Are Not Enough

Salespeople are given sales tactics early on in their careers. These tactics may have included open probes/close probes, elevator speeches, and closing techniques. These are all good skills, but they are much too elementary for today’s sales environment and are one-dimensional.

They cannot be combined and leveraged with other skills throughout the life of a sale. Most, if not all, sales efforts today put strategies before tactics. Develop the strategic side of the sale, regardless of what the buyer wants to do, and then push the customer through a one-dimensional sales process. The heck with what the buyer wants to do; push that sales process.

This can be a successful approach, but it is very reactionary and is missing the two-dimensional part of selling. It forgets about what the customer wants to do. You can argue that all the homework (strategy) a salesperson does is selling-centric. It focuses on how a salesperson plans for a sales process, regardless of the selling tactics required to accomplish the strategy and align with a buyer/seller sales cycle.

Putting tactics before strategies within a process implies that the salesperson is thinking what is needed for the next step in the buyer/seller relationship, and then fitting the tactics into a buyer’s strategy, which after all is what the buyer is following. What tactics are needed to keep control of the sale and convince the buyer that he or she should follow the salesperson in an atmosphere of mutual discovery, which of course salespeople need to lead?

This buying-centric nature of selling, this nonreactionary sales approach, and this buyer-first approach is the core of as mentioned before, ProActive Selling, since it is all about buy/sell tactics that fit into a process.

So, ProActive Selling works even better the higher up you go in a buying organization. We all know the “trick” of calling high in a customer’s organization.

Calling high is not the trick.

Anyone can do that. The trick is when you are there, what do you say? What do you say to have the senior level executive (CEO, CIO, CFO, COO, etc.) treat the salesperson as a value-add asset and to have the executive stay engaged? How can you avoid the C-level executive sending you down into the bowels of the organization from which it is nearly impossible to get back up? ProActive Selling addresses not only what salespeople have to say at the CXO (Chief X-fill in the blank Officer) level, but gets them comfortable in calling high and staying high, as well as being a value-add to the senior level executive.

ProActive Selling is so good at the CXO level that salespeople typically find the senior executives of the account calling them and asking the salesperson what they should do next. Tactics before strategies in a two-dimensional selling model is what ProActive Selling is all about. It is what makes successful salespeople great. It is their attitude of:

• Focusing on how people buy, not how they should sell.
• Focusing on the buy/sell process, not just the sales process.
• Looking at the sale as a series of buyer-related steps
• Qualifying early in the process and then deciding if the salesperson wants to spend time with an account, rather than hoping the buyer wants to spend time with them.
• Taking control and having the buyer follow the salesperson’s lead.
• Closing at the beginning of the process, not at the end. There is no such thing as a great closer, or “great closing skills.”
• Having the right tools at the right time for the right call.

Some More..

By successfully reading and implementing the tactics and processes in ProActive Selling, salespeople will be able to:

• Accomplish more in less time.
• Be proactive and anticipate the next sales step.
• Motivate themselves to call successfully at all levels in the organization.
• Control the sales process. The salesperson who controls the sales process . . . wins.
• Get rid of maybes in their sales funnel.
• Learn where to hunt and use their time most effectively.
• Plan and utilize homework on the sales call.
• Lower the overall cost of sales.
• Increase the average selling price per order.
• Create a powerful sales introduction on every sales call.
• End every sales call and stay in complete control of the sale.
• Understand the buyer’s motivational direction. Master the seven qualification questions to call on the right accounts all the time.
• Speak the right language to the right level of buyer.
• Change a maybe to a decision easily and effectively.

A note, The term prospect in here is used rather freely. When we say prospect, we mean an individual or a group of individuals who are chartered to make a purchase decision. It could be anyone from an individual buying a new computer to a major corporation working through a committee to make a decision on a new infrastructure automation system. There are many differences at the strategic level between these examples, but the buy process and the tools a salesperson uses during the sales call are easily transferable.

For the most part, selling is selling, so ProActive Selling works if you are selling a product, service, or tangible or intangible item. It works when selling over the phone, over the Internet, face to face, or through channels. The examples in the book are simple and easy, but it should not be misconstrued that ProActive Selling is effective only for simple sales situations. The strategies of a sale can and do change based on what you are selling, usually based on the size of the order and length of the sale cycle. The tactics and process of a sale rarely change, regardless of the sale size or length of a sale, since it all involves sales calls, which is what ProActive Selling is here to make you better at. Good luck, and learn how to better your sales skills. . . . ProActively.

Be a Step Ahead

After the exhibition David was very excited. He is happy with the way the presentation went, and a senior vice president told him what he should do next.

This follows the old sales rule that if you just do what the prospect tells you to do, and you do it well, then the order will follow. Right? Wrong!

If David does what the senior vice president wants him to do, he loses control of the sale, which puts him at a disadvantage. Remember the Law of Sales Control.

He has to identify the next step and have the customer agree to it, not just do what the senior vice president tells him to do. Senior executives want to be guided just like lower level people in the buyer’s organization. They just give you very little time to take control, since they are used to having it. They will give up control, however, if you have a planned-out next step that makes sense to them and is seen as helpful to them.

Some thoughts…

David stayed in control of this sale. He has now been ProActive, not reactive, and has increased his chances of getting this sale.