B2B — What Are You Really Selling?
(This is an excerpt from my book; here’s the Amazon link if you want to read more.)
What You’re Selling VS What They’re Buying
When I speak at big sales meetings, I sometimes bring along McDonalds.
Not a bag of burgers and fries, but a perspective. Because consumer companies know something that many B2B companies have trouble embracing:
Often, customers — even tough B2B customers –are buying something that is very different from the goods you think you are selling.
I ask the group, “What does McDonalds sell?” Immediately, someone will call out “Burgers!” Another, “Fries!”
This, of course is true, by the multi-millions. But then why don’t we always see rows of burgers frying in their commercials? How come there’s nary an oil-dripping fryer basket in sight?
So I ask the group, “What else do they sell?”, and the right answers soon come up. “Convenience!” “Cleanliness!” Bingo. They may make burgers and fries, but McDonalds knows their customers are buying something else. That’s why their commercials are all about happy people having happy times. (Founder Ray Kroc: “A mother with two children in tow cares more about clean restrooms than she does about the tastiness of the burger.”)
Every company – including yours – has such a duality.
- Rolex, for example, makes very nice watches, but any $10 quartz watch will keep time just as well. Their customers are buying luxury far more than timekeeping accuracy.
- Disney World knows its customers don’t fly a thousand miles to go to an amusement park – they’re coming to ‘The Happiest Place on Earth’.
- You know those websites that will automatically back-up your hard drive? Their marketing talks about how you could lose your precious photos forever without them, not the tech specs of their storage system.
My goal in bringing up McDonalds is to get my audience thinking about their customers’ point of view. That’s not easy for a salesperson to do – their own company aggressively markets to them with product–centric announcements and materials. After months and years of that, seeing the customer’s view requires thought and focus.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking your customers are just choosing products or services — that’s only the view from inside your company. Most likely, they also see themselves buying things like confidence, safety and personal success.
Make a point of catering to those needs and desires, and you are far more likely to bring in that sale.
SWAT and the iPhone 5 — What the iPhone 4s Teaches About Selling Technology B2B
Everyone was waiting for it. Even though no one even knew what it would do or not do. But c’mon, who wanted to be stuck with the old model when they knew the new one would soon be here?
Then it arrived. And it didn’t even have a new number in its name. Forget about it having 4G, holographic projections of Princess Leia, or being able to sprout wings if you got stuck in traffic to fly you home. Instead, minor improvements, though I’m sure they’re solid ones. But many people are sighing; gee, maybe waiting those extra months with my junky old phone wasn’t worth it.
The iPhone brand is in no danger from all this, of course. But there’s a lesson here for B2B technology sales.
In selling complex technology to business, there’s often a similar situation to the iPhone5. No person in a corporation wants to be the one who just bought the model that’s now old stuff. They’ve waited this long, their company has survived up until this point without buying it from you. Heck, why not wait a little longer to see what the new model will bring?
If you sell for a living, you know the problem with that. Delayed sales often don’t happen. Something pops up. A new executive arrives. Budgets get shifted. They’re getting acquired and all spending is frozen.
I’m not a big fan of acronyms, but here’s one worth remembering: S.W.A.T. – Sell What’s Available Today. Especially in the tech field, proud product managers can’t help but boast about the great things they’ve got coming up. They often think it will inspire customers, impressing them with how you guys are always moving forward.
But instead, it can do just the opposite. A natural reaction is, hey why not wait for the great new widget? What’s the big deal if we postpone buying for a little while?
That waiting helps no one, of course. That prospect isn’t yet benefiting from your marvelous solution, and you’re not putting the revenue from their purchase to work for your company. Now competitors have time to maybe interfere with your sale. If that new version is delayed, all the above problems are made even worse.
And if, instead of being a remarkable advance, it turns out to be merely a solid, useful improvement, you may end up with a prospect who is less excited about doing business with you than they were before all this future talk entered the picture.
The lesson here: It’s great to have pride inside your company about upcoming advances. But before anyone lets that pride out the door to tease customers, consider the impact on sales that are in the works today.
The Best Salespeople Aren’t There to Inform — No One Needs That Anymore
Sorry, No One Needs Salespeople for Information Anymore
For thousands of years, they did. If you wanted to know anything about any new product or program, you needed to talk with the people who controlled information: Salespeople.
Up until just a few years ago, every facet of doing business required one. Salespeople were the only path to getting information about features, pricing, options, availability, configurations, shipping and everything else.
Overnight, they became optional.
Being essential was good for salespeople, of course. Those meetings often led to relationships, and those relationships often led to sales. They also helped keep competitors out. That’s why so many ‘classic’ books on selling devote so much time to nurturing it. For example, Harvey McKay details no less than 66 items a salesperson should try to find out in his bestselling 1988 book, Swim with the Sharks Without Getting Eaten. (Today, that person’s LinkedIn profile probably has most of them, and anyone on the planet can read them.)
It was less than ten years ago that the Internet reached critical mass and began changing everything.
Once a company’s website had more information than any salesperson did, the balance of power changed.
Suddenly, instead of waiting to meet with a salesperson of unknown competence or accuracy, any prospect could explore vast stores of information. Even better, they could do it anytime, stop when interrupted and return at their convenience. No need to meet with a salesperson to get information.
Selling based on informing suddenly became a losing strategy.
Many salespeople out in the field are still in a “let me educate them!” mode. You can’t really blame them. After all, it’s what they’ve done all their lives. Someone has to teach them a different way. Too many companies are still feeding only giving their sales force product-info-centric training along with with information-oriented PowerPoints.
But that’s not what customers need from them today. It’s 2011. These days, no one needs a salesperson who can only inform.
Selling is now all about creating desire, not being a web page.
- It’s about intriguing that prospect, right from their very first sentence.
- It’s about getting that prospect to see personal reasons to care about this and expand the audience.
- It’s about getting strangers self-motivated so they want to take action.
Creating desire takes additional skills, but it’s what delivers incremental sales. It’s what any sales force should be trained to do and expected to do every day.
“And We Got Some Fish” — It’s What They Don’t Say That Hurts
Every restaurant knows it. That’s because, in that business, it’s easy. In complex selling, especially if there’s a channel involved, it gets much tougher.
I’m talking about who says what to who when. At the restaurant, you’re all ears as your server tells you today’s specials. How they phrase it is no accident, right down to the “and lightly sprinkled with fresh cilantro.” Those carefully chosen words are chosen by the executive chef or manager — not by each waiter. Whether delivered from memory or read from a small pad, that description makes you far more likely to choose that offering than if he or she had instead said, “and we got some fish.”
In selling, it’s different. Your marvelously robust product does so much; that’s problem number one. Your salespeople have had plenty of product training just to grasp it all. But let’s leave them for the moment. Let’s assume they are each masterful and that your company has terrific selling tools they well-know and a consistent, highly effective message comes out each and every time any one of them speaks.
Enter your channel. And cue the theme music from Jaws.
Those channel folks may be terrific, but they know far less than your salespeople do. They have different priorities, too. They care about protecting their account, not necessarily maximizing your sales. They want to be cherished over there, however they define that.
There’s our problem. Your product is so robust. They, however, may feel that their contacts have no deep interest for all that. Since no salesperson every wants to possibly bore their contact, they decide to present your solution in as few words as possible. If you were in their spot, you’d do the same.
But which words will they choose, and why?
“And we got some fish.” That’s the shortest, most efficient way to put it – why not avoid wasting time by just saying that? Hey, it’s accurate and if anyone is interested in fish today, they can then ask questions, can’t they?
I worked with Canon’s imaging division to address just this problem; it turned into a series of teaching events I led across North America. They had a new line of products with remarkable technologies – ones that could really help a corporation. But Canon had found that their all-important dealer channel was far from consistent in how they served it up to their many accounts.
Many of those channel salespeople, in a rush to explain it without boring anyone, unintentionally trivialized the capabilities. You couldn’t really blame them; they had never learned the best way.
Oh, sure, there was plenty of product training. But something crucial was missing. Each channel salesperson had never been taught how to handle that crucial first step – the moment when that product line was introduced in a short, sweet way. Each channel salesperson was winging it.
Some were pretty good. But most weren’t.
After all, distilling a compelling message and choosing precisely how to convey it so it intrigues and appeals to the interests of a prospect wasn’t their specialty. If someone helped them, however, they certainly could combine that with their own style and create a lot of interest.
This can’t be force-fed; salespeople don’t parrot. They will embrace it though, if they’ve learned:
- the reasoning and psychology behind it
- how the people they’re talking to will find it useful
- why their contacts will value them for it
That’s what our program did. It took those channel salespeople into the mind of their customer, then taught them why and how to succinctly convey this in a way that would appeal. Each then brought their own personality to it as they met with their accounts. Within four months of those events, sales of that product line went up 37%, which amounted to millions of dollars in commissions for those salespeople.
As in a restaurant, the words used at the pivotal early moment can make or break a sale — or even an entire product division. No smart company ever wants their customer-facing folks winging it and saying the equivalent of, “And, oh yeah, we got some fish.”
‘Click – Shh’: The Biggest Mistake When Presenting? (from my book)
Here’s the solution to one of the most common — and easiest to fix — mistakes people make when giving a slideshow. It’s one of those “Of course!” moments once you think about it, and as soon as you read the next paragraph, I predict you will be changed forever. (How’s that for a build-up?)
Here it is:
Don’t say anything important right after changing slides.
Why not? At that moment, everyone’s attention is elsewhere. You’ve just introduced something new and they’re busy reading the words that just arrived or they’re trying to understand that diagram.
It’s tempting to dive in because you already know all about that slide. But they don’t, so anything you say right now is likely to be missed because their brains are busy and they’re not listening.
The remedy is simple: Click and pause. Just wait two seconds before saying anything important.
(If it’s a complex slide, I will even say, “Let me give you a few seconds to take this in before I explain why it’s so important.” That way, I’m giving them time to absorb and they now know this is an important point.)
Beware Super Models That Seduce You
I couldn’t resist that headline, but this isn’t about scantily-clad women posed oh-so perfectly. It’s about models of one’s sales process. You know the diagram I’m talking about — a flowchart of boxes with the very-specific steps that your company would love prospects to follow.
At a client last week, I was sitting in on a meeting about their sales process model and whether it was well matched to the models that prospects were using for buying. I’ve seen these meetings before; today’s post will have a few observations on this topic.
- Every company’s sales model is, of course, completely one-sided. They’re all about what that company would love prospects to do. Over at the prospect, however, no one really cares about your sales process. They’ve got their own issues, thank you.
- Your competitors also have their own diagrams. They too want that prospect’s business. But no prospect can afford to from everyone who happens to have a well thought out sales process model.
- “Let’s have our model meet theirs!” It’s not a bad idea; in fact it’s a sensible notion: “Let’s match up how we sell to how prospects buy.” The idea here is to envision their model and figure out how to have our model fit nicely, step by step.
It’s hard to argue with that concept – but it brings us up against the problem with models.
- Models – even our photo-shoot beauties – tend to only look perfect when gazed upon from afar and under ideal lighting conditions. You’ve seen those photos of celebrities when caught without their makeup or in harsh sunlight. Wow; not what I was expecting. Reality is always different.
- Models of selling are similarly removed from real-world meetings and decision-behaviors. They can be useful, sure. But even the best model is a simplistic, idealized representation of a process that involves very, very complex humans. Neither buying nor selling is done by robots following algorithms dictated by a flowchart. The players are fickle, distracted, wonderful humans. And they react to other humans.
- Models leave you at the door. They don’t mention what to say or how and when to say it. They don’t show how to make advantages compelling or how to handle pivotal real-world situations. Models don’t create desire.
It easy to get fixated on models and trying to match them up. But prospects can only care about things they experience.
That’s why we have salespeople – and why sales increase only when they receive the skills and comfort needed to make advantages come across in compelling ways. (How often have you bought because of a sales-process diagram?)
Back to the Future
How does one apologize to a blog? Calling is out of the question, so too is sending flowers.
Well, I’ll do it this way: I’m sorry, blog — for far too long my attention has been stolen away by writing my first book and working with clients.
But I’ll change, really I will. You just watch — I’ll quickly add posts from my book that’s on Amazon and also from magazine articles published over the past months. From here on, regular posts — at least twice a week.
Because, really, I blog you very, very much.
– Ken
Everything I Know About Selling Through the Channel — in 5 Words
I’ve helped companies as big as IBM and Microsoft dramatically increase sales from their channel. And I’ve done the same with smaller companies.
Here’s the key to it all, in 5 little words:
They don’t work for you.
They don’t get paid by you.
They don’t report to you.
They don’t have to read your emails or positioning statements, or learn and use your slideshows or other selling tools.
They’re good people, absolutely. But despite your agreements with their top-level executives, the harsh fact is that frontlines channel salespeople don’t care about you nearly as much as you’d like them to.
You’d feel the same if you were in their shoes. It’s all about priorities and pressures. They have to somehow impress and satisfy their clients and customers. They have to bring value — and can’t appear as a shill for vendors.
Because they don’t work for you, you can’t force them to do anything. Can’t order them to learn about your offerings or the best way to sell them. Can’t even require them to mention you in their meetings.
But there’s an upside. Because they work for themselves, they’re on the lookout for ways to become more valuable to their clients. (They want to make money, too — but promising that won’t win their hearts or time; they’ve heard such promises many times before.)
And that’s the very short course on succeeding with the channel. It’s not about you; it’s all about them. You have to somehow manage people who don’t work for you.
Suppose They Made a Channel Portal and Nobody Came
It’s happening right this minute. Maybe at your company.
There’s that channel portal. It’s rich, it’s robust. It’s filled with all sorts of things that your business partners should be using to sell for you. And it’s not getting used nearly as much as it should.
No one’s happy about this. You’ve invested time and resources, and continue to do so.
The problem is this: Your channel partners don’t work for you. They don’t get paid by you. You can’t force them to go there. They have to want to.
And that’s the test to use. When I come to that portal, does it speak to my needs? Or is it overwhelming? Will it help me make money? Which parts? How would I know that?
Channel agreements are one thing. Having front lines salespeople at those channel partners actually selling for you is something else. They have to wanna.
"We really have no competition!"
Oh yes you do.
It doesn’t matter how great your new widget may be, or if it is the first, smallest, coolest, or the most powerful and robust that the world has ever seen. You still have plenty of competition.
If that wasn’t the case, sales would already be through the roof.
You’re competing against everything else. That includes every distraction that’s going on in your prospect’s world. Every other purchase they could be spending that money on. Plus all their boss’ priorities. Not to mention other companies in your space that are also trying to create desire and win that order instead of you.
Tech companies sometimes fall in love with their creations. I’ve seen it in companies large and small. So darn hardworking and proud, they expect everyone else will of course feel the same.
Alas, the business world is harsh — especially during challenging economic times. The customer always has choices.
When you hear someone say you don’t have any competition, it means they haven’t yet looked hard enough.
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