Winning Edge: September 2019 - Stand out in a Crowd

I N ST I T U T E O F SA L E S M A N AG E M E N T

WINNINGEDGE R A I S I N G T H E VA L U E O F S A L E S

Number 4 2019 | ismprofessional.com | £4.95

STAND OUT IN A CROWD

How to set yourself apart in selling’s sea of sameness

GET INSIDE THEIR HEADS! UNDERSTANDING YOUR BUYERS’ THINKING

VALUABLE ADVICE FROM THE EXPERTS IN CRM – PROUD TO SPONSOR BESMA 2019

CUT OUT BAD BEHAVIOUR WAYS YOU CAN BUILD A BETTER SALES CULTURE

DON’T DO IT FREE!

You’re good, so make ’em pay

STATE SECRETS

Tips on winning public sector bids

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ISMyBenefits will offer wide range of discounts, specifically chosen to support members both personally and professionally.

As an ISM member you’ll automatically be eligible to access these benefits by virtue of your membership.

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The benefits offered will provide significant cost savings on products and services

BE AT BESMA 2019! you normally purchase, potentially saving you much more than the cost of your ISM

membership subscription. There’s even a nifty savings calculator on our member l benefits The British Excellence Sales page, where youin can find Management out just

Awards (BESMA) 2019 will highlight and celebrate how much you will be able to save. outstanding sales expertise, talent and achievements

From cinema tickets, meals out and by individuals, teams and organisations domestic appliances, to grocery shopping, l home BESMA is organised by the Institute of Sales insurance and professional training, l

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Don’t miss BESMA 2019!

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The BESMA dinner and awards presentation ceremony will take place at Wembley Stadium on 15 November, 2019

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This magnificent event will include a Champagne reception, sumptuous four-course dinner, celebrity guest speaker, and live musical entertainment

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Book today – for you and your team – at ISMprofessional.com or call 020 3167 4790

Managementhas (ISM).

Now in its 13th year, the awards ISMyBenefits it covered. continue to recognise and promote great work within,

Designed to make ISM membership and the huge contribution of, the sales profession even more rewarding, ISMyBenefits l provides BESMA has long been UKacross sales industry’s top a wide range of the offers awards event, and 2019 has once again seen a the following categories: l

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BESMA seeks to reward the efforts of individual sales professionals and teams in driving company performance, as well as recognise the key role of sales in creating a thriving UK economy BESMA judging has now been concluded. All that remains is for the winners to be announced – and for the whole sales industry to celebrate their success!

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

22 Cover

6

44

WINNINGEDGE NUMBER 4 – 2019 ismprofessional.com

36

32

3 ISM Editorial ꢀ

BESMAꢀisꢀonꢀ15ꢀNovember...ꢀPlusꢀ topicalꢀsalesꢀnewsꢀandꢀresearch

6 Smarter Selling

Chief Operating Officer: Roger Bradburn Director:ꢀThomas Moverley Head of Marketing:ꢀAdam Brook Editorial: Marc Beishon, Tom Nash Design: Del Gentleman Advertising:ꢀAdam Brook Telephone: +44 (0)20 3167 4790 Email: abrook@ismprofessional.com Printed by: Ridgeway Press ©ꢀISMꢀ2019.ꢀOpinionsꢀexpressedꢀareꢀnotꢀnecessarilyꢀsharedꢀ​ꢀ byꢀtheꢀISM.ꢀTheꢀpublishersꢀendeavourꢀtoꢀcheckꢀallꢀfactsꢀandꢀfiguresꢀ priorꢀtoꢀpublication,ꢀbutꢀareꢀnotꢀresponsibleꢀforꢀerrorsꢀ​ꢀ inꢀmaterialꢀsuppliedꢀtoꢀthemꢀforꢀpublication.ꢀAnyꢀarticleꢀ​ꢀ publishedꢀwillꢀautomaticallyꢀbeꢀdeemedꢀtoꢀcarryꢀtheꢀsoleꢀcopyrightꢀ andꢀbeꢀtheꢀpropertyꢀofꢀtheꢀISM. ꢀ InternationalꢀStandardꢀSerialꢀNo.ꢀUKꢀISSNꢀ1746-6849

Adviceꢀonꢀsalesꢀprofessionalism,ꢀ socialꢀselling,ꢀteamwork,ꢀandꢀmore

13 Tools for the job Theꢀlatestꢀinꢀsmartꢀsolutionsꢀforꢀ​ꢀ tech-savvyꢀsalesꢀprosꢀ ꢀ

15 Software supremo Winning EdgeꢀtalksꢀtoꢀZoho’sꢀCRMꢀ championꢀSridharꢀIyengarꢀ

16 Sales performance It’sꢀtimeꢀtoꢀgetꢀoverꢀold-styleꢀsalesꢀ tools,ꢀsaysꢀAkilanꢀSelvanadesan

18 Managing growth KylaꢀSmithꢀsharesꢀhowꢀsalesꢀteamsꢀ canꢀadaptꢀtoꢀrapidꢀexpansionꢀ ꢀ

20 Live your dreams CarltonꢀBrown’sꢀframeworkꢀforꢀ transformingꢀyourꢀperformance

ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

22 Cover story: Standing out

TheꢀlatestꢀISMꢀnewsꢀandꢀviewsꢀ

4 Sales Talk

Institute of Sales Management 18 King William Street London EC4N 7BP Telephone:ꢀ+44 (0)20 3167 4790 ꢀ​ꢀ​ꢀ​ꢀ ꢀEmail:ꢀabrook@ismprofessional.comꢀ​ꢀ​ꢀ Website:ꢀismprofessional.com

20

ꢀ ꢀ

SimonꢀKellyꢀonꢀhowꢀtoꢀbeꢀdifferentꢀ​ꢀ whenꢀsellingꢀinꢀaꢀseaꢀofꢀsameness

28 Don’t do it for free

ꢀ ꢀ

Biasesꢀinꢀnegotiationsꢀshouldꢀ​ꢀ beꢀcountered,ꢀsaysꢀPeterꢀColman

32 Yes, you can... ꢀ

GavinꢀInghamꢀshowsꢀhowꢀtoꢀ​ꢀ createꢀaꢀcan-doꢀsalesꢀculture

36 A long and winding road ꢀ

SarahꢀHinchliffeꢀonꢀtheꢀcomplexꢀ​ꢀ taskꢀofꢀsellingꢀtoꢀtheꢀpublicꢀsector

40 Get inside their heads ꢀ

KarenꢀGreenꢀprovidesꢀinsightꢀintoꢀ​ꢀ understandingꢀbuyers’ꢀthinking

44 Welcome progress Embraceꢀadvancesꢀinꢀartificialꢀ intelligence,ꢀurgesꢀJimꢀPreston

46 Book reviews MarcꢀBeishonꢀliftsꢀtheꢀcoversꢀonꢀ twoꢀsubstantialꢀsalesꢀtitlesꢀ​ꢀ​ꢀ

48 ISM profile MeetꢀISMꢀChampionꢀWillꢀOffen WINNING EDGE 1

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INSTITUTE OF SALES MANAGEMENT | EDITORIAL

NEW AND VIEWS FROM THE ISM TOM MOVERLEY looks at the heritage of the ISM – and the sales vs marketing divide that is still an issue today

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ack in 2011, we celebrated the centenary of the ISM, which was founded in 1911 as the Sales Managers Association to improve sales techniques and give managers a more professional footing.

In Winning Edge we provided a brief timeline of the evolution of the organisation to become what was then the ISMM (where the first M stood for “marketing”), and subsequently we have followed the logic of focusing on sales, as in fact the marketing people had taken over the institute back in 1968 – but it was always apparent that sales needed its own body, and hence the ISMM was then set up in continuation, and now the ISM. We have now put this “heritage” timeline up on the ISM website, so you can see some of the milestones. Certainly there was a lot of to and fro with the marketing side in various name changes, and it’s apparent that there is still a divide between the two disciplines that has not been resolved by the advent of digital channels and the idea that customers are entering the sales cycle at a later stage.

If anything, we have seen yet more focus on the sales side rather than on marketing – in B2B, the “inside sales” organisation has been in the ascendancy for some years as a vital resource. With new technology the lines are blurring between field and inside sales, but there is no indication that digital “self-service” channels are diluting the need for professional selling – and “digital native” companies are even now adding field salespeople to their organisations.

In B2C, where commodities rule, the top UK retailer is undoubtedly Richer Sounds, which is essentially marketing its fantastic in-store salesforce. Some may say this is mainly about customer service – it’s that too but it’s primarily about the ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

“If anything, we have seen more focus on the sales side than on marketing” company’s expert, highly trusted sales experience that keeps people coming back.

The year 1911 was also the founding of IBM, which went on to pioneer the in-house sales school, and also a number of firms that are still household names – Mars, Hotpoint, Fila, Esso, Chevrolet, Thorntons and Whirlpool. But the radical change in the past few years is that the digital giants – Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon – are now the world’s biggest companies by value. And they are recruiting a lot of salespeople for their B2B activities such as cloud services.

BESMA BECKONS The heritage timeline also shows that our awards scheme – now called the British Excellence in Sales Management Awards (BESMA) – dates back to 1978. This year’s event takes place on 15 November, and there’s still time to book a place (see inside front cover). The judging has taken place but of course I’m sworn to secrecy...

BESMA is just one opportunity to get involved with the ISM. Apart from being a judge (and entering of course), if you are an ISM member you can host an event, deliver a webinar, advertise in Winning Edge and more. Check out the website for details.

IN WINNING EDGE One theme that stands out for me in this autumn issue is sales leadership. In Gavin Ingham’s article (page 32) he sets out three essentials for building a “can do” sales culture, namely conviction, clarity and consistency. They are, says Gavin, the “magical” trio required for developing accomplished salespeople, highperforming teams and a winning sales culture. Where I could take issue with him is that he says developing high-performing teams is not that difficult – if it were fairly easy then maybe we’d see a lot more successful sales directors and managers (and football managers too), but I guess the distinction is between identifying what needs to be done and actually doing it.

One of the critical activities for sales leadership success is coaching, as set out in the lead book review by Winning Edge co-editor, Marc Beishon, on page 46. As Marc notes, technology can help – it’s why there is much current interest in sales enablement tools that support salespeople with content and playbooks – but personally carrying out coaching is vital, and the book he reviews shows you how.

I’m reminded that Neil Rackham, who developed the SPIN selling model, has long identified what he called “sales supervision” as a key differentiator.

Whether change succeeds – and whether results significantly improve – depends much more on sales supervisors than on salespeople, he has said. On coaching, he said: “Every world-class salesforce I’ve worked with puts great emphasis on coaching. They don’t just give lip service to coaching; they create systems and processes to make coaching happen.”

We’ve seen much more emphasis on sales leadership in recent years, not least with the take-up of our higher level diplomas, and in university courses as well as commercial programmes. Being a good business leader is not just about selling of course – but it’s good to see our sector paving the way.

Tom Moverley is director of the ISM.

WINNING EDGE 3

SALES TALK INDUSTRY NEWS STATISTICS

DID YOU KNOW… Social Selling Stats for 2019

50%

OF REVENUE ACROSS 14 MAJOR INDUSTRIES IS GENERATED BY SOCIAL SALES

75%

OF B2B BUYERS AND 84% OF C-LEVEL EXECUTIVES ARE INFLUENCED BY SOCIAL MEDIA WHEN MAKING PURCHASING DECISIONS

70% 90%

OF SALES PROFESSIONALS USE SOCIAL SELLING TOOLS FOR LEAD DEVELOPMENT

OF TOPPERFORMING SALES PROFESSIONALS USE SOCIAL NETWORKS

LEADERS IN SOCIAL SALES ATTRACT 45% MORE SALES THAN THEIR PEERS AND ARE 51% MORE LIKELY TO REACH THEIR QUOTAS

B E SMA 2 0 1 9

BOOK YOUR PLACE AT BESMA There’s still time to book tickets for the ISM’s BESMA awards night on 15 November. But hurry!

The BESMA 2019 awards night celebrates the success of salespeople, sales teams and organisations from across the UK. With over 750 top sales professionals attending, it provides the perfect opportunity for finalists to showcase their achievements and network with their industry peers. Held at the prestigious Wembley Stadium, the night is an outstanding evening filled with entertainment, fine dining and celebration.

Comedian, actor, and writer Ellie Taylor (pictured) will star at the event. Taylor was one of five UK comedians to be featured in Netflix’s trailblazing Comedians of the World series, with her special Cravings premiering on New Year’s Day 2019. Alongside this, she’s also part of the core cast of hit BBC 2 satirical show The Mash Report, with her clips becoming worldwide viral hits, notching up close to 60 million views online and shared by Madonna. Her stand-up show Don’t Got This toured nationwide in 2019.

For more information about BESMA, see the inside front cover of this edition.

To book tickets for you and your team, visit ISMprofessional.com or call 020 3167 4790.

Source: smallbizgenius.net

B OOK S

BUZZWORDS SOCIAL SELLING Social selling is a lead generation technique where salespeople directly interact with their prospects on social media platforms. It isn’t a quick, one-and-done deal, but social channels are prime territory for connecting with new prospects and laying the foundationsꢀfor new business relationships.

When social media first appeared, marketers quickly saw its value. Today, organisations are increasingly using social tools throughout the sales process.

Whether you leverage your professional network on LinkedIn or build your Twitter following to nurture relationships in your industry, social selling is aꢀkey tool in your sales arsenal.

Source: Salesforce.com

4 WINNING EDGE

ACHIEVING PEAK SALES PERFORMANCE Winning Edge expert’s book explains how to boost sales Winning Edge contributor Carlton Brown has published Achieving Peak Sales Performance for Optimal Business Value and Sustainability.

Brown says that in recent years there has been a significant decline in sales performance among businesses internationally. Many professionals attribute this disparity to the lack of attention towards certain business techniques including “sales peak performance”.

“Strategies like this lack empirical validity and further investigation on the implementation of these approaches could significantly impact the business world,” says Brown.

His book is a collection of research on the methods and applications of various elements that influence sales peak performance. By highlighting topics including emotional intelligence, personal branding and customer relationship management, the book is designed for sales professionals, directors, advertisers, managers, researchers, students and academics seeking current research on insights and advancements of business sustainability and sales peak performance.

ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

SALES TALK | INDUSTRY NEWS

Talking Point LEADERSHIP WHERE DO BAD LEADERS COME FROM? ADAM BROOK WANTS TO KNOW We’ve hired someone! They are going to be amazing!

Issue a press release, get them in the news, get all the journalists fired up about this appointment. Then weeks, months or even years later (if you’re unlucky) they are “let go”.

And, of course, their exit isn’t met with as much of a fanfare as their entrance. People forget and move on, but how much damage have they wreaked on the business?

Have you watched the TV drama Band of Brothers? It tells the story of Easy Company, 506th Regiment of the US Army’s 101st Airborne Division. Based on interviews with survivors of Easy Company, as well as soldiers’ journals and letters, the series chronicles the experiences of these young men who felt extreme fear and showed extraordinary bravery in the Second World War. One episode focuses on the effect aꢀpoor

leader,ꢀ1st Lieutenant Norman S. Dike Junior, has on the unit’s morale. He fails to integrate with his men, demonstrate leadership, offer support or listen. He is required to lead “his” troops into battle, but fails spectacularly. He demonstrates an inability to make decisions and weakness under pressure, and he fails utterly to deliver the results expected of someone of his rank.

Casualties start to mount – until, finally, a more able officer steps in and saves the day.

He takes immediate control, communicates clearly, leads from the front and commands the respect of his soldiers, ultimately securing success on the battlefield.

A similar scenario (without the killing!) has just occurred in a company I know of. The pain, anguish and sheer annoyance across the faces of my friends as they were left with the destructive aftermath of poor leadership was plain to see when we met recently for drinks.

I’d like to know where all the Norman S. Dike types end up. More importantly, where the hell do they come from in the first place?

Adam Brook is head of marketing at the ISM.

BLOCKCHAIN ENTERS THE SALES WORLD The secure technology finds a place in lead generation

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N E WS ROU N D -U P GOING FOR GOLD

TE CHN OLOG Y

Blockchain for lead generation has reached the “innovation trigger” in Gartner’s 2019 “hype cycle” for CRM sales technology.

According to the analyst, the secure records technology offers sales organisations the ability to gain the most current and highest-quality leads via the exchange of personal and/or business information based on crowdsourcing data collection methods. In addition, blockchain allows for monetising data for revenue-generating purposes, while also protecting privacy.

“This is the first time blockchain is entering into the sales world and it has the potential to have a transformational impact on how sales organisations typically source leads and contact information,” says Adnan Zijadic, senior principal analyst in Gartner’s sales practice. “Rather than source from unreliable third-party databases, users can

SHORT SELLING

instead partake in a network sharing system supported by blockchain infrastructure to source leads and contacts that fit their organisation, while selling leads that do not match their ideal customer profile to other companies that may be in the market for such a lead or customer.”

Other tech in the hype cycle includes: l Digital adoption solutions that get new sellers onboard more quickly and allow existing sellers to focus more on selling l Sales engagement platforms that expand sales enablement capabilities by using information about buyer and seller engagement to deliver better sales results l Conversational engagement analytics that use proprietary artificial intelligence algorithms to analyse audio conversations to deliver insights into the quality of interactions with prospects and customers.

Stella Round, an ISM Fellow and a former Account Manager of the Year at BESMA, is in the running to add another accolade, having been shortlisted for Mentor of the Year in the Women in Insurance Awards.

She will soon be contributing to Winning Edge. We wish her success in the final.

BLURRED BOUNDARIES

Field sales and inside sales have traditionally had their own domains but, consider Andris Zoltners and colleagues in Harvard Business Review, in today’s digital world, field sales is tapping into the tools of inside sales. At the same time, inside sales is invading the turf of field sales. Consequently, companies must rethink how they structure, hire, support, manage and incentivise field and inside salesforces, they say.

GETTING ONBOARD

A report on the market for sales training and onboarding software – which helps newly hired salespeople to learn the ins and outs of their firm’s sales processes and ramp up their selling abilities – is out now from Market Insights Reports. It includes details on companies such as Showpad, Brainshark, MindTickle, Lessonly, Allego and Qstream.

B2B WEBSITES FAIL

Forrester recently evaluated 60 B2B websites across 12 industries and found nearly all scored poorly because they fail to engage and produce content that buyers find compelling. Not one industry average passed Forrester’s test, largely because the content focused only on the capabilities of companies rather than the needs of their customers’.

SALESFORCE CEO

A senior appointment to note is Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia, who has joined Salesforce, the CRM giant, as CEO for UK and Ireland, the firm’s largest market outside the US. She was CEO of Virgin Money from 2007 to 2018, and was honoured for her contributions to financial services and women in the finance sector.

ANY IDEAS?

If you are an ISM member and would like to contribute to Winning Edge, please email articles or ideas to Adam Brook, at abrook@ismprofessional.com

WINNING EDGE 5

SMARTER SELLING

P ROFE SSIONA L SE L L IN G

NEVER APOLOGISE FOR BEING A SALESPERSON Steve Burton praises the ISM for promoting sales professionalism customer – and yes, it’s often financial. So why is the sales profession not held in the same high regard as accountancy, teaching, law or the majority of other professional careers?

The ISM is on a mission to change that, through a revised code of conduct that members adhere to, along with Professional Sales Certification (PSC), a framework of excellence for the industry.

SHOW PROFESSIONALISM

A

s salespeople, what do people really think of us? That we are dodgy, money-hungry party animals? Liars, cheats, people who’d do anything for a quick buck? Masters of false smiles and fake laughs? I fear a few of these thoughts have crossed people’s minds when I’ve mentioned my profession.

Of course, in some instances, that perception might be warranted. Sometimes we make wrong, short-sighted decisions, usually caused by the fact that we are under a lot of pressure to make sales and hit targets. We don’t save people’s lives, like firefighters and surgeons do, and we don’t grow things to feed families, like farmers. So, what exactly do we contribute, if anything?

Well, if I put my spin on it (I’m a salesperson, after all) then I’d say that, in essence, we introduce people to new things and help them purchase stuff.

Of course, there’s a benefit to us too, in that it makes us money. And I think that most others in my field would agree that it’s a conflict – are we here to help people buy things they can benefit from or simply make as much money as we can?

Even if we’re not mis-selling, are we ultimately chasing what’s good for us and failing in the primary purpose of serving our customers?

I would argue that it’s a bit of both – and that, actually, it’s the same with all jobs. There’s always a benefit to the professional as well as to the 6 WINNING EDGE

STEVEN BURTON Is director of sales and marketing services provider, The Point Company. He has twice won the accolade of Sales Trainer of the Year at BESMA. Visit thepointco.com

Developed by the ISM in conjunction with its partners and industry leaders, PSC is a competencies-rich framework for cultivating and recognising a salesperson’s skills, enhancing continuing professional development (CPD) and helping to build a rewarding career path.

The PSC process helps salespeople and their organisations identify and work towards individual development goals while drawing on ISM member benefits such webinars, video content, networking groups and wider knowledge resources.

The ISM offers member access to four levels of PSC: Associate (AISM), Executive (EISM), Leader (LISM) and ultimately Fellow (FISM), each specifically designed to recognise and assess a sales professional’s current capabilities, skills and knowledge and providing appropriate support and guidance as they progress through the different stages of their sales career.

ISM membership is a badge you can wear with pride. With this in mind, I’m honoured to have been accepted as an ISM Fellow. It’s the highest grade within an organisation that I believe is the yardstick for a professional salesperson.

We all need to raise the standard in sales to get people to take our profession more seriously.

Personally, I have always had a “play hard, play fair – but play to win” ethos. Yes, I’m competitive – but I sell with integrity, and encourage everyone who works for me or trains with me to do the same. We all have to sleep at night and feeling you’ve manipulated someone into something they don’t need or don’t want doesn’t help with that. Play hard, play fair and help provide customers with solutions – and yes, make some money; there’s no shame in it... After all, if companies don’t sell products they go out of business – a principle that’s central to the whole concept of commerce.

We salespeople help the world go around.

With the ISM’s help, let’s just make sure we do it professionally, ethically and with a clear conscience.

ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

SOCIA L ME D IA

SOCIAL SELLING MADE SIMPLE Daniel Disney explains how to build your LinkedIn profile

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n this series, I’m going to break down in super simple steps how you, your team and your business can start generating real results from LinkedIn and social selling. None of this will be fluffy or based on just getting likes and followers; it will be about generating real conversations with real prospects that turn into real opportunities and sales.

To kick this off I’m going to begin with the number one place that everyone should start with, your LinkedIn profile. This is the foundation of social selling. Think about it: you could write the most amazing article on LinkedIn, it goes viral and thousands read it. They then go to your profile and, bang, it’s empty. They quickly lose interest in you and move on, and you miss out on loads of potential sales opportunities.

You can generate inbound and outbound sales from your profile. To generate inbound leads, you need to build a fully optimised, customer focused profile. This should include a billboard style LinkedIn background image, a professional profile photo, and an elevator pitch-style LinkedIn summary of you and your business.

It should be customer-focused and written to show them what you do, how you could potentially help them, how you have helped similar companies and how they can easily get in touch with you.

To generate outbound sales opportunities, you need to start looking at who has viewed your profile on a regular basis. A percentage of the people viewing your profile will be prospects, and you can use the view as an opportunity to start a conversation. Send them a little message saying, “Hi John, thanks for viewing my profile.

I’d love to understand a little more about what you’re currently using for (insert product/service here). Kind regards, Dan.” Simple social selling tips create powerful lead generating potential. Look out for the next issue of Winning Edge, where I will dive into how you can send effective LinkedIn messages that actually work and generate sales opportunities.

DANIEL DISNEY is a social media expert and founder of The Daily Sales website for salespeople. Visit thedailysales.net

ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

TE L E SA L E S

TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK OWEN RICHARDS considers how to create a high-performance culture in telesales Can you remember sitting in a school classroom and discussing your future career? Perhaps you had a plan, a desire, what you thought was a calling – you were going to be an astronaut or a doctor. Or perhaps you had no idea what your future would hold.

Either way, it’s fair to say it’s unlikely that telesales was on your list of dream jobs. That is what you have to accept as the MD of a telesales company – nobody wakes up in the morning wanting to work in telesales, so this means you have to create a culture that people do want to be a part of.

PEOPLE

Telesales is a service to people, by people and its success is reliant on people. The only way to make telesales a success, whether as an agency or in-house, is by consciously working hard on culture. This cultural effort begins at the recruitment process, placing huge importance on the right cultural fit above all else. But the best high-performance culture is not based purely on just the recruitment process or the annual Christmas party – no, it takes constant team building, challenging of each other and ongoing work to achieve.

Culture is the feeling you get

from your team, your employer and from being in your place of work. It’s heavily dependent on the individuals you have within your team, as one cultural aspect that may work fantastically in a telesales company may fall flat on its face in a financial services company, for instance.

In our case, we encourage lots of fun and incentives both for individuals and as a team. By their very nature, the people who get a kick out of sales are competitive and driven, which works perfectly for incentivising the team, whether that be lighthearted awards, one-off weekly bonuses or yearly holiday incentives.

PROCESSES

Sitting behind all of this are good processes, measured by both numbers and behaviour, catching people doing things right, not wrong, and encouraging more of that behaviour. We can’t make people wake up wanting to work in telesales, but we can encourage people to buy into our highperformance culture that delivers a win-win: results for our clients and rewards for our people – each and every time. You can too.

OWEN RICHARDS is managing director of telesales expert Air Marketing Group.

Visit air-marketing.co.uk WINNING EDGE 7

SMARTER SELLING

P SYCHOLOG Y

SELLING IS EASY, PEOPLE ARE COMPLEX Mike Lever explains how the study of neuroeconomics can inform selling

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his isn’t some shock headline – it’s the conclusion I came to about 15 years ago. Having spoken to salespeople across the private, public and third sectors, selling a vast range of products and services, I know that the process of sales can always be reduced to the following straightforward objective:

MOVING FROM A TO B

It’s this simple: the customer is at A, and for whatever reason, they want to be at B. The motivation could be to move towards B, or it could be that they want to move away from A. We know that the process of sales is to understand the reason(s) for the move from A to B, and then to make it happen.

Whether it’s selling a tangible product: “I have an unreliable company car fleet that is turning into a money-pit, and I want one that’s more reliable,” or it’s selling a service: “I want a complete review of the company’s insurance policies to ensure we have adequate cover in place,” it’s all about the move from A to B. It’s when we introduce the people that we make sales complex. Even one salesperson brings complexities: their energy levels and chemical balances shift throughout the day. If they feel stressed, their ability to recall memories or propose creative solutions can suffer. Similarly, a bad night’s sleep can affect their listening ability. Remember this is also true of the prospective client. And imagine how complicated it becomes when we have two sellers and multiple buyers involved.

WHAT’S A SELLER TO DO?

I advise sellers to study neuroeconomics so they can better understand how decision-making happens and is affected. And here’s a shortcut as a takeaway: make sure you get the client’s orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) on your side. Why? You don’t need to be a neuroscientist to know that a “happy” OFC is the gateway to your client making a decision to not only buy from you, but to take the upsell and cross-sell options too. How? By making sure that your client is in a positive emotional state before you start “selling” to them.

This is where you can get creative: come up with the high-value, low-cost ways to ensure that your client is in a positive emotional state. If you do, your client will not only buy from you, they’ll buy more, and more often.

For more information, view our video at bit.ly/2oApz18 MIKE LEVER is a director of sales training company New Results, a Champion of the ISM, and a Sales Trainer of the Year at BESMA.

8 WINNING EDGE

L E A RN IN G

SELLING TO THE SELLER

TOM WARD says taking on an expert at their own game can be a daunting, but rewarding, experience It’s no coincidence that Ronaldo’s and Messi’s best performances come when they play against each another. Likewise, Federer, Djokovic and Nadal are arguably the three greatest tennis players of all time, all competing for championships at the same time, and hoovering up an incredible 55 Grand Slam titles between them – so far. Facing each other may be a daunting prospect, but when they do so they push each other to unparalleled levels.

Similarly, selling to salespeople may be a frightening prospect, as they are experts in the field and most likely to be your biggest critics. But facing the fear can help you hone your selling skills.

WHAT SELLING TO SALESPEOPLE TAUGHT ME

After practising my lines, objections and closes, it was time to start dialling. It wasn’t long before a well-established salesperson had turned my sales call into a “how to sell” lesson.

My worst nightmare was realised, I couldn’t put the phone down soon enough. It was a harsh lesson but one that I needed – bring your A-game and get to the point.

Remove any filler, jargon,

unnecessary questions and any other time-wasting that will only end in frustration. These guys know what you are trying to do and can see straight through any smoke and mirrors you try to use.

So, get real and stay genuine.

DEUCE OR ADVANTAGE?

It’s important to remember that the one key advantage of selling to a salesperson is that they’ve been in your shoes, so are more likely to listen than give you a rude rejection. They understand your pain and know how it feels to be rejected and, while that doesn’t necessarily guarantee success, you are more likely to get a reasonably sympathetic audience and a genuine reason for not buying than be sent packing with a flea in your ear.

So, channel your inner Federer, Djokovic and Nadal and don’t be afraid of picking up the phone to a fellow salesperson. Embrace the challenge, turn any negative thoughts you have into a positive learning mindset and take any feedback you can get to improve your sales game.

TOM WARD represents National Sales Conference, taking place at Coventry’s Ricoh Arena on 27-28 November. Visit nsconference.co.uk ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

SMARTER SELLING

SA L E S B OOK S

RECOMMENDED READING Roger Bradburn recommends some of his favourite sales books Here at the ISM we are often asked what the best sales books are. In truth, there are many and it is hard to know where to start. Here are a few personal favourites of mine. They are all readily available on Kindle if you don’t want to carry books around.

The No 1 Best Seller by Lee Bartlett is one of my favourites and seems to be very popular with the ISM membership generally, judging by social media posts.

Bartlett covers a wide range of sales techniques but the great thing about this book is that it really gets you into the mind of a successful salesperson. It is a great source of motivation.

If you are new to sales – or just want a different perspective – New Sales Simplified by Mike Weinberg is always a good bet. It’s a best-seller, and rightly so, because it really does provide a great overview of key sales techniques in a clear and logical way.

A lot of people like reading Anthony Iannarino and it is not hard to see why. His writing is very clear and accessible. His The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need is perhaps a little optimistic in its title, but certainly covers a lot of ground. There is a lot in there about sales management as well as just selling, if you are operating at that level or thinking about moving in that direction.

It’s well worth following his blogs too.

There is a great deal spoken about The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. This relatively new approach to selling is sometimes described as a breakthrough in sales techniques and the successor to SPIN selling. Whether or not you agree, I think all salespeople at least need to understand the concepts that the authors put forward.

Finally, The Future of the Sales Profession by Graham Hawkins makes for an interesting read, if a slightly concerning one. It can be a little depressing but really poses some pertinent questions about where sales is going and how to deal with upcoming challenges.

ROGER BRADBURN (FISM) is chief operating officer of the ISM. Visit ISMprofessional.com

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CON SU LTA N CY

KEEP YOUR PIPELINE OPEN TONY REEVES argues in favour of prospecting for new consultancy business, even if you’re already busy

“If a consultant is constantly chasing you for an opportunity – paid or otherwise – doesn’t it follow that they are only doing it because they are free to do so.

And if they are free, then how good can they actually be?”

This was a question recently posed by one of my contacts on LinkedIn, which unsurprisingly led to some heated debate. I disagreed with the main thrust of the point but the use of the word “chasing” was interesting.

To explain, my firm, Level 7 Expertise, is a very small team providing niche, specialist consultancy in the defence and security arenas. We often have two or three concurrent activities in delivery per consultant – which entirely depends on the level of effort and availability required by the client – and clearly there are overlaps between projects in their various phases. Given that the lead time from an initial conversation to a contract being signed will often take from 2 to 4 months, is it reasonable to expect one of our consultants to hold back until their current engagement ends before even starting to seek out the next one?

The MBA adage is “revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, cash flow is king”. I would add that pipeline is the power behind the throne...

In my view, you always keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities – and especially if you are any good and in high demand. I’ve worked with a good sales coach over the past 5 years, and one of his key themes is, “You always have to have your antenna up”. This means that you have conversations and you meet prospects and potential clients, either as part of your delivery work or completely away from it.

Our process is focused on finding reasons why the prospect won’t work with you, seeking to weed out false opportunities and reduce valuable time otherwise wasted on chasing phantoms.

I often come across “interested” prospects, who get very excited in the early stages of an engagement but subsequently go very quiet. In the past this would have led to a couple of phone calls – often going to voicemail – and a string of emails along the lines of, “I haven’t heard from you. Do you still wish to proceed?” Many consultants will spend a great deal of time chasing these elusive opportunities, but my challenge to such prospects and clients is to ask them to be candid. A polite “no” is worth far more to the consultant than 6 months of “I’ll think it over”, “Can you send me a proposal?” or “I just need a little more information”.

TONY REEVES is a director of defence industry consultancy Level 7 Expertise. Visit level7expertise.com WINNING EDGE 11

TOOLS FOR THE JOB

ON THE MOVE

E Q U I P M E N T F O R D I S C E R N I N G P RO F E S S I O N A L S NOTEBOOK

SILENT FLIGHT

HP is claiming the world’s longest battery life in a 13-inch business convertible with the Elite Dragonfly, which weighs under 1 kg and tops 24 hours uptime. You can switch it to tablet mode and also add 4G mobile connectivity. It comes with WorkWell, HP’s wellbeing software, and the keyboard is almost silent so that should help you not annoy others on the plane at least. It also has a screen privacy feature so others can’t see what you’re doing from the side.

POLESTAR 2

ELECTRIC FEEL It’s about time we featured an electric car and here we bring you the Polestar 2 – Polestar being a brand jointly owned by Volvo and Zhejiang Geely. The Polestar 1 is a low-volume hybrid, and is shipping this year, but this model looks to be an attempt to break into the big time as it’s launching in North America, several European markets including the UK, and also in China, where a new production centre has been opened. The target is of course Tesla. The Polestar 2 has a 300 kW all-wheel drive powertrain, a 78 kWh battery pack, and an impressive range of driver aids. There’s also a “highly anticipated” infotainment system powered by Android Automotive OS, said to be a first. There aren’t many details on the structure of the car though. The UK base price is about £50,000 and you can reserve one now for a promised delivery in June. You can also get Polestar specs in Volvos too.

APP

TO DO Microsoft has just upgraded its To Do app, which was launched in 2017. The software giant had earlier acquired a strong planner app called Wunderlist and has been busy building in its best features into To Do, which now has subtasks, recurring tasks, prioritised tasks, reminders and due dates, file attachments, notes, and list sharing with others. It syncs across devices and runs on Apple products too.

PROJECTOR

ALWAYS RIGHT WAY UP There’s a big choice in mobile projectors so a new one has to stand out, and Acer’s C250i LED model fits the bill, as it is claimed to have the first auto-portrait mode to mirror your smartphone’s screen orientation without black bars on the side. It also has stand-free multi-angle projection thanks to its twisted roll design. It has HD 1080p imagery and a battery life of up to 5 hours, and supports Android and iOS phones wirelessly. It will be out in early 2020 at 539 euros.

NOTEBOOK

ARM MUSCLE

Also out now is Microsoft’s Surface Pro X, which takes yet more weight and size off what has become an impressive model range. The screen is a 13 inch PixelSense touchscreen with a 2,880 x 1,920 resolution and is said to be “gorgeous”.

The possible drawback is that it uses an ARM processor but you are promised Windows-class performance.

TABLET/PHONE

APPLE TIPS

Apple has just gone through it’s usual autumn refresh of iPhones and iPads and again the picks are not at the top end (the iPhone 11 Pro starts at an eye-watering £1,149). The nonPro 11 is a more affordable £729, and if you want an iPad, the new 10.2 inch retina entry model (left) with 32 GB memory is a decent £329 and you can add Apple’s smart keyboard.

WINNING EDGE 13

GEBERIT. INSPIRED INNOVATION

A GUIDING LIGHT DURING THE NIGHT ODOUR EXTRACTION GENTLE DRYING HEATED SEAT REMOTE CONTROL PRACTICAL AND EASY TO MAINTAIN A TOUCHLESS LID GENTLE HYGIENE

Geberit are one of Europe’s innovators in sanitary technology. Our AquaClean range takes toilets to another level with a whole host of innovations to give you a completely new feeling of freshness, cleanliness and sense of well-being. And with six inspirational ceramic ranges and unrivalled behind-the-wall technology we bring Swiss precision to everything we do.

That’s why we were named one of the Most Innovative Companies in the World by Forbes in 2017.

Find out more at geberit.co.uk

BESMA SPONSOR | INTERVIEW

CHAMPIONING CRM Winning Edge meets Sridhar Iyengar, who has been with Zoho since its inception, thoroughly enjoying its journey from start-up to global corporation What is Zoho?

Zoho is one of the world’s most prolific software companies. Our online platform is capable of running an entire business, with over 45 apps in nearly every major business category, including sales, marketing, customer support, accounting and back office operations, and an array of productivity and collaboration tools.

set scoring rules to prioritise leads that can generate the most revenue. l Configure automatic actions like sending email notifications, assigning tasks to employees, and updating fields to take place immediately or at a scheduled time once the defined criteria are met. l Keep contacts updated regularly on what matters using schedules, for example on new products or upcoming events.

How can sales teams use CRM to help them sell more effectively?

How can sales teams ensure they “Sales teams used to operate comply with GDPR? Depending on the vendor and whether it in silos. Sometimes this led to uses an integrated platform, CRM can be GDPR compliance can be achieved used to help understand customers better and through using the right tools to ensure customer needs not being met guide the way you engage with them using customer data is not compromised and not from the outset. Today’s the metrics from the tools to enable customer shared with people that shouldn’t have expectations are higher” success. It can also record data to provide access to it. GDPR-compliant tools should insights into how a prospect initially engaged, be used right across sales, marketing and as well as what they were most interested in during support. This way compliance is automated and the engagement. If the CRM system supports in-built in a way that all data meets compliance omnichannel communication, it can be used to guidelines, no matter what the activity. engage with the customer across any means of What are today’s chief challenges in communication, such as LinkedIn, Twitter or other achieving sales targets? channels. This enables you to truly personalise your approach, giving more likelihood of sales success.

Today’s landscape is quite different from 10 or 20 years ago. Sales teams used to operate in silos, What can automation in sales achieve? simply handing over the lead to the implementation Automation can help sales teams and aid sales team once a deal was closed. Sometimes this led to processes in many ways. It can help easily tackle the customer needs not being met from the outset, as inefficiencies of your team or business processes what sales had promised was not delivered. Today’s and ensure you still have sufficient time to focus on expectations are higher. A prospect expects a other priorities to enhance your company’s salesperson to listen to and understand their needs productivity and growth. It can also improve the and wants to ensure the onboarding process and prospect experience and keep them engaged. If you ongoing relationship with a company is seamless. are using the right CRM system you should exploit In a solely sales-driven culture there is a danger its full capabilities to improve your performance. of creating a dissatisfied customer base. To avoid this, an organisation must consider a strategy and What are your top tips? culture based on the customer. The customer l Consider workflow management features to help journey should be plotted out from initial perform a variety of actions, either instantly or at a engagement onwards and all teams should work scheduled time. This helps your company both together to deliver an excellent customer experience improve efficiency and manage its business better. that encourages repeat business. It can also create l Ensure the right assignment rules are set. For customer advocacy. example, you can have leads automatically assigned For everyone across an organisation to work SRIDHAR IYENGAR is head of to selected sales reps in a round robin pattern, together most effectively in this way requires European operations for Zoho assigning tasks for each lead. integrated software. This often means it has to be Corporation. He has spent over 20 l Ensure you are delivering a great service. Set case years building B2B software and on the same platform so that data can be shared has played leadership roles in escalation rules to ensure that every case or ticket in easily between departments and merged to create a product management, business your organisation is answered before its due date. single customer view, to give any user the full development, marketing and l Not every lead is of equal importance. You can picture during any customer interaction. engineering.

ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

WINNING EDGE 15

ISM PARTNER COMMENT

CRM, AN INDISPENSABLE UPGRADE AKILAN SELVANADESAN explains why businesses need to get over old-fashioned tools and move onto modern software solutions

B

usiness software is one of the largest growing markets, as it provides solutions with the power, speed, accuracy and sophistication necessary to run a company well.

Every niche need and use-case is increasingly being addressed as powerful new tools continue to emerge.

But many businesses today still rely on Word documents and spreadsheets to store their contact information, manage their sales activities, keep track of their inventory, create invoices, file their reports and so on. For a new company, these tools might suffice for a while, but they weren’t built to run a business effectively in the long term. That’s where customer relationship management (CRM) comes in. Storing documents on a computer is an inefficient, laborious and disorganised way to run a business. With CRM, this is no longer an issue.

Today’s CRM software exists on the cloud, using the software as a service (SaaS) model. This allows businesses to manage their relationship with customers seamlessly and collaboratively on any computer or device. With a centralised platform for sales, marketing and support, you can streamline your data, communicate with customers across any channel, schedule your work and automate your tasks from anywhere in the world.

WHAT DOES CRM DO BETTER? Break silos and unify data When you keep your contacts and deal information in separate, local documents, its usefulness is limited, and it’s prone to loss. It’s more difficult to collaborate, a chore to maintain, and a pain to keep tabs on your individual customers. This is a barrier that CRM helps you overcome – you can break down silos, bringing data together and enabling collaboration. By establishing a framework for convenient and flexible access to crucial data, you can make quick decisions, and generate useful charts and reports, while making it easy for staff to share insights. With CRM, your data will remain accurate, up-to-date and useful.

Multichannel communication Communication is crucial to any successful business (or relationship). From despatching welcome emails and making sales calls, to sending a group text to set up a meeting, you need to use all 16 WINNING EDGE

the tools at your disposal to keep things running smoothly. A CRM system is more than just a database – it’s a hub for engagement. You can send emails, make calls, monitor website activity and post on social media, all from within your personal CRM interface. You can map each point of contact with an important customer, log every call, keep notes, and update fields automatically for everyone in the business – something a simple spreadsheet cannot do.

AKILAN SELVANADESAN is a salestech evangelist at Zoho.

Email: akilan.s@zohocorp.com

Create tasks, events and reminders A CRM system is a productivity suite – you can assign leads to people, create events to attend, and set reminders to get things done, none of which is possible in a basic calendar app. There’s a timeline for everything and a system in place to handle each event and task with the complete context provided by your sales and marketing data.

Automate your work and save time Every salesperson wishes they had more time to talk to prospects instead of entering data into a computer, which is a real productivity and enthusiasm killer. That’s why a CRM system actively assists in minimising the time salespeople spend on admin by automating routine tasks and actions like data entry. You can auto-assign leads, set up workflows and macros, and best of all, utilise an AI-based sales assistant to aid you with your day-to-day activities. The simple fact is that automation is a game-changer for sales.

Create mobile accessibility A major selling point of a CRM system is its mobile device capabilities. Your desktop CRM and your mobile CRM share the same data and functionality, so you don’t have to be at your desk to do your selling, allowing you greater freedom and flexibility to do your work to the best of your ability, wherever you need to be.

MAKE THE SWITCH In addition to these powerful features, CRM offers cutting-edge security measures, data backup, privacy compliance (especially with the GDPR), cloud storage, and more. The adoption rate for CRM solutions is climbing fast each year, as more companies are finding it indispensable to thrive in a competitive market. Have you made the switch?

ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

KYLA SMITH shares how sales teams can adapt to rapid company expansion

A

s a sales professional, it is crucial to understand your business and the products and services it provides.

When you are part of a rapidly expanding business with an ever-increasing breadth and depth of offerings, your ability to adapt, learn and be flexible is vital. New products, services and business opportunities have a big impact on sales operations, and it is imperative that you understand the bigger picture: how they can fit with existing capabilities, which ones open new sales avenues, and where there are opportunities to cross-sell. This is also true when your business makes acquisitions.

The company I work for, RSK, an integrated environmental, engineering and technical services consultancy, has recently seen a period of rapid expansion, acquiring 28 new businesses since 2016. Our experience shows that, as a company grows, sales teams must also adapt to the changing landscape of a business.

ADAPTING TO CHANGE The RSK sales team comprises many smaller teams, from direct sales and tender and proposal support, to contracting sales, events, and marketing and communications, but we have always worked hard to ensure a unified approach to providing a well-presented overview of the business and the services it provides. This coordination has been even more important during our recent growth.

We are now working with new acquisitions, as well as the existing RSK businesses, which has brought several changes to the way the central sales team operates. With more teams to support and an expanding number of services to consider, implementing an effective strategy has been key.

The sales team’s operations focus on sectors and markets rather than individual services, but as we’ve grown we’ve also found it useful to have dedicated sales personnel who can look at specific initiatives for our companies and divisions that need extra sales support. This reorganisation, albeit only slight, has helped when bringing new companies on board, ensuring we have enough personnel to meet increasing demand for support.

Since then, we’ve also put in place sales staff who focus on wider areas, such as international and European sales, and the team is continuing to grow.

With any expansion, it is important to look at the resources you have, how these can be used effectively and where changes can be made.

Outside the central team, we have also identified 18 WINNING EDGE

COMMENT GROWTH S E E I NG T H E BIGGER P I C T U RE

KYLA SMITH is director of sales at RSK, a leading integrated environmental, engineering and technical services consultancy.

Visit rsk.co.uk

employees at the new companies who will lead on business development, and we are working closely with them on sales initiatives and where we can incorporate their services into our existing sales communications. Together, we are looking at the variety of new clients and frameworks that the newer companies bring, identifying where there are crossovers and opportunities to cross-sell. It’s important to ensure all parties are on the same page.

CONTINUOUS LEARNING Understandably, sales teams are in a state of continuous learning as a company evolves, so communication and awareness are very important, especially in a large company. As RSK’s service provision increases, one of the biggest challenges we face is finding an effective way of learning about all the new services in a short space of time.

We find it helpful to invite the new companies to give presentations on the services they offer.

Investing in internal resources that spread awareness has also worked well. We’ve developed a variety of tools to complement our vast internal network, including an internal company app.

Having a searchable platform that identifies our full range of in-house services and contacts has been a quick and easy way to view the variety of new services we can offer to clients. The app can be used by all employees, not just sales personnel, which is helping to increase awareness and cross-selling throughout the business.

With any company expansion, seeing the bigger picture is key. Are there new services that can complement what existing clients are looking for?

Do new companies bring new clients that could benefit from the additional services that you can offer? As a company continues to expand, these are questions that you should always consider.

More often than not, the answer to them is “yes”.

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SALES BASICS | ADVICE

IT’S ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS BENTIL ODURO advises sales professionals to focus on customer needs

H

aving had the opportunity to sift through sales literature and experiences from a range of practising sales professionals, it is fascinating to appreciate how selling philosophy has evolved. Gone are the days of pressure tactics and transactional selling. The current emphasis is on developing sustainable relationships with clients.

This process has been described by practitioners and academics as client or customer-orientated selling and is also known as contemporary selling.

How does the sales industry draw the attention of sales professionals to these important skills? A clear focus on understanding the sales process is fundamental. If sellers put customers at the centre of the selling process, then the value created in the relationship will go a long way towards being sustainable and profitable. Customer or clientcentric selling enshrines partnering, consultation and problem-solving to deliver value.

Customers or clients want to buy things – but their default position is that they rarely want things to be sold to them. This default position always presents a challenge to salespeople, but this apparent resistance in the selling process can be unlocked by adopting relationship-selling techniques. People buy benefits rather than products, so through using excellent relationshipbuilding techniques salespeople should be able to provide clear pointers to buyers on how they will appreciate the benefits they will receive.

Relationship building can be useful in creating value to clients and the salesperson’s organisation.

The selling process is always mired with problems, from prospecting and presentation to the objectionhandling stages of the process. Appreciating these challenges and working with buyers to deal with them are some of the key relationship skills that the salesperson must develop. So, here are six of the skills required by salespeople.

1. KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS: Salespeople should know their customers inside out. It is not enough to know when they buy and how they buy.

They should have in-depth understanding of the issues that customers face, in order to provide solutions for them and in turn create value for their own organisation.

2. DO THINGS RIGHT: Buyers want salespeople to do things right and to be open about what they are selling. If salespeople behave honestly, they will end up being trusted by buyers.

3. COMMUNICATE CLEARLY: Buyers want to be explicitly aware of the benefits they will be getting ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

BENTIL ODURO is programme leader in sales, marketing and public relations at the Coventry University Group and MD of Prudential Consultancy.

He has a wealth of experience in higher education sales teaching, as well as from industry in fields ranging from client relationship management to ethical selling. His current research and consultancy interests are in small business selling, international sales strategy and cross-cultural sales behaviour.

Email: bentilo@live.co.uk

from the product they are buying. Don’t assume everything is clear. Ask questions if you struggle to understand what your buyers are saying. Take notes of the points they raise.

4. LISTEN CAREFULLY: This skill is extremely underrated. There is always a tendency for the salesperson to talk too much in selling discussions.

This could be very intimidating for prospective customers who are not yet ready to buy and want to articulate their needs in more detail. The more the salesperson talks, the less chance they give prospects to explain those needs to them.

5. CHECK UP: This skill should always be embedded in the selling process. Quite often salespeople follow up after the sales process, but I prefer to use the term “check up”. As long as it is done in the right way, a salesperson can check up on a prospective buyer even if they have only made enquiries. It might not lead to a sale, but it is an opportunity to sow the seeds of a relationship.

6. WEAR MANY HATS: One of the most important skills salespeople should have in successful relationship selling is to adapt their sales style to diverse situations. No matter how prepared the salesperson is, there are bound to be situations that they may not be ready for. The salesperson’s ability to adapt to these unforeseen situations could be fundamental to developing a successful customer relationship. In the sales process, the salesperson could be selling a product, providing information, solving a problem and reassuring and motivating buyers at the same time – so learning to wear many hats in selling situations is vital.

WINNING EDGE 19

LIVE YOUR DREAMS CARLTON BROWN puts forward a framework to transform your personal and professional performance

“It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well”

This observation by French philosopher René Descartes is one that we would all do well to note – not least sales professionals. As children, teenagers and adults, we have all had aspirations, dreams and goals that we wanted to achieve, something that would satisfy our appetite for success in our personal or professional lives.

The world was our oyster and anything that our minds could conceive was possible. You would wake up in the morning with that winning mindset that anything was imaginable, and you would strive to make your dreams a reality.

However, years go by and you wake from your slumber and contemplate your current reality, having been exhausted from a job that you don’t really enjoy and wonder what’s happened to your life; the reality of a monotonous coexistence as you meander down the road of mediocrity.

20 WINNING EDGE

WHAT WENT WRONG? What changed you from being that bright, energetic, enthusiastic and determined individual who had such a positive winning mindset and zest for life? Was it that your expectations changed or was it the weight and the burden of mortgages, rent, bills, families, work or your attitudes to conform with perceived societal norms that got in the way of living your dreams, limiting your creativity and innovation and nullifying your winning mindset?

Our mindset often operates out of our memory, which is a historical database that is stored in our brain and retrieved continuously.

Memories will have either a positive or negative emotional attachment, which will be either empowering or limiting. A bad experience, such as delivering a poor presentation, will lead to a negative limiting belief about your ability to deliver a good presentation in the future.

ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT | FEATURE

Similarly, when reflecting on a poor business experience or failure in the workplace, this may trigger an unconscious emotional response.

Our response becomes the manifestation of our thoughts, which in turn shape our mindset, our behaviour and subsequently our actions.

Memories can either propel you towards your dreams or they can keep you trapped within the confines of an unsatisfactory past.

The brain stores memories in two distinct ways. Short-term memories, like a telephone number, are processed in the front of the brain in a highly developed area called the pre-frontal cortex. Short-term recollection is translated into long-term memory in the deeper brain, the hippocampus, which takes memories from the brain’s different sensory regions and connects them into a single experience of memory.

REMEDIAL ACTIONS Our memories are recorded images, sounds, pictures and feelings. We must try to understand how to reprogram our mind to ensure the past does not hinder our future. To change we must develop new strategies and ways of thinking that permeate our subconscious and reprogram our minds with new languages, positive affirmations and beliefs. A belief is a subconscious generalisation that we hold as a truth; our brain then determines and filters information that is either congruent or incongruent. The generalisations become the basis of our reality, which shapes and guides our behaviour.

To be successful in life, we must first adopt a positive mindset, then develop a belief system that underpins and supports this mindset. This will require you to adopt new empowering beliefs and values that are compatible with your goals.

If you’re to be successful, your actions must support this new winning mindset.

TOOLS FOR CHANGE There are several tools you can use to support the changing of your beliefs: l Visualisation, imagining and seeing positive images regarding an event or experience. Magnify a positive new image in your mind and replay this repeatedly, so it replaces previous negative images l Auditory, positive self-talk and affirmations about what is possible for your life. Daily positive affirmations with repetition will sink into your subconscious mind, which eventually manifests into your reality as they become a self-fulfilling prophecy and they become your new reality. This will help you to develop strategies about achieving as opposed to looking at obstacles or challenges ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

l Kinaesthetic, the ability to act, work towards a specific outcome or goal.

Newton’s third law of motion tells us that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. When we act, we are intentionally seeking to change our outcome. The basic premise of cause and effect demonstrates to us that we are accountable for our actions and for our own circumstances. If we are facing a challenge in life, the onus is on us to find a way out of that situation.

SET POSITIVE GOALS

Alice: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

The Cheshire Cat: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”

Alice: “I don’t much care where.”

The Cheshire Cat: “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”

This scene from Alice in Wonderland sums up aimlessness. If you don’t have a target or a destination, then setting goals does not matter.

However, if you have a specific goal you want to achieve, then your mindset, behaviour and actions will help you reach your objective.

It’s important that you ask yourself the questions, “What do I want to do? What do I want to achieve? When do I want to achieve it?”

When you ask people these questions, they will often start off by telling you what they don’t want. There is an inherent risk that when you focus on what you don’t want, that will be what transpires in your life. The key to success is to focus and concentrate on what you do want.

Set clear, quantifiable, “Set clear, quantifiable, written written goals, goals, divide them into short, divide them medium and long term, then list into short, them in order of priority” medium and long term, then list them in order of priority. Act daily, weekly and monthly.

At the end of each day, week and month review your progress and modify your behaviour and actions to ensure you meet your objectives.

CARLTON BROWN (FISM) is a partner at management consultancy Aspire. He is a support services expert with senior corporate leadership experience and success in building startup businesses.

Visit aspire-consultancy.com

TAKE SMALL STEPS To develop and grow, adopt the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen, an approach to creating continuous improvement based on the idea that small incremental changes yield greater developments. The key action is to start investing in your own self-development, learning through books, TED talks, networking, seminars, conferences, associations, mentors and coaches to nurture a winning mindset that will deliver outcomes you would not have thought possible.

WINNING EDGE 21

STAN

CREATING VALUE | FEATURE

D OUT IN A SEA OF SAMENESS SIMON KELLY, PAUL JOHNSTON and STACEY DANHEISER consider how to differentiate yourself from competitors

W

hen your customers are swimming in a sea of sameness, can you save them from drowning?

We became interested in how differentiated companies were in their marketing communications because credible research we found while writing our book, Value-ology: Aligning Sales and Marketing to Shape and Deliver Profitable Value Propositions, pointed to customers typically being 60% of the way through the buying process before they contact a salesperson (CEB research) at which time 67% of the customers have a clear picture of the solution they want (SiriusDecisions).

The fact that the first 60% of the sales cycle is now spent interacting with company marketing communications through internet searches, company web sites, Twitter feeds and the like, places an extra onus on marketing to make it clear to customers why their organisation is better and different from competitors in ways that have relevance for those customers. We suspected that typical company marketing communications were

not providing relevant value propositions, as 94% of customers claimed to have disengaged with organisations because they were being sent irrelevant content that gave them no value (CEB research). We knew that for B2B organisations, this lack of clear differentiation was having a telling effect on sales success – as 58% of sales deals end in no deal because the customer has not been convinced of the value in moving from the status quo (Qvidian sales execution research).

Against this backdrop, we set out to explore for ourselves how well-differentiated organisations are in their marketing communications. The main thing we were interested in finding out was how easy companies are making it for customers to make informed choices based on what was being communicated to them.

EVERYONE TELLS BUYERS THE SAME STORY Our research shows that B2B organisations are hell bent on telling the same story.

We began our research by focusing on the telecommunications sector, as we had a lot of experience there. We analysed the websites WINNING EDGE 23

FEATURE | CREATING VALUE

MOST OVERUSED WORDS Services Businesses Solutions Networks Cloud Enterprise Connectivity Security Management Customers 0

75

150

225

300

and Twitter feeds of “All the organisations were the top 30 global players effectively telling their potential in the sector and found customers they are no different that all the companies from their competitors” were effectively telling their potential customers they are no different from their competitors.

You can see some of the top takeaways from our research in our whitepaper, Lost in a sea of sameness, at shakemktg.com. We have performed similar research for data centres and UK universities, and the results are no different.

1. GENERIC BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY CLAIMS DOMINATE MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS Of the top 10 most frequently used words, generic terms such as “services”, “businesses” and “solutions” make up 60%, while generic technology terms such as “networks”, “cloud” and “security” make up the remaining 40%. None of the most frequently used terms relate to customer needs or benefits. They are common descriptors of products, technology and business terms, which leaves the onus on the buyer to decipher why they should care and what’s in it for them.

Considering that 58% of IT purchase decisions are now being made outside the IT department, this language is IT-centric and not reaching the executive or business decision-maker. What appears to be happening here is reflected in a sales view expressed by Greg, a consultancy owner and former telecoms and IT sales VP: “Marketing takes a very much inside-out view of the world. Basically, their approach is: ‘I’ve got some products, or I’ve got a new thing in my portfolio?

How can I present that to the customer...?’ And quite often that is very ‘me too’ in terms of how they position and present that in the market.”

24 WINNING EDGE

2. COMPANIES TALK TOO MUCH ABOUT THEMSELVES RATHER THAN THE CUSTOMER Many of the words and themes we found are all about the telecommunications company. In other words, there was heavy use of “we” versus “you” phrases. We found that each supplier said virtually the same thing about the size and reach of their network and their end-to-end solutions.

Here’s what Jeff, a managing director at a global telco, had observed in his own organisation: “So, our value proposition pretty much reverts to ‘we’ve got this many locations in so many countries, this many people, this many installations, this many…’ You know, it’s all very much about ‘me and my company and our products’. I think the majority of potential customers would be sitting there thinking, ‘so what?’ to themselves.”

3. TOO MANY GENERIC BUSINESS CLAIMS ARE MADE WITH NO SUPPORT While most companies make some claims to be able to affect the business performance of their customers, we found that the claims were generic and unsupported. For example, we saw many promises to “transform” or “accelerate” the customer’s business. Underneath this veneer, however, it is unclear how the supplier will help take the customer from where they are today to where they want to be. The answer is simply to “buy our products” to achieve massive growth and transformation. But without real proof points or quantified results being shared, the customer is left wondering, “Will this solution really help me?”

WHY DO THEY SOUND THE SAME? We found that herd instinct, which can be defined as, “characterised by a lack of individual decisionmaking or thoughtfulness, causing people to think and act in the same way as the majority of those around them”, is prevalent throughout various industries and having a big impact on how companies are communicating their value within their industry sector.

Perhaps companies think this is the safest route to go? When everyone else is communicating in a similar way, it’s easier to justify the approach internally and gain approval. After all, who can argue with the “popular” way to explain your product? Informal discussions with sales and marketing professionals offer other potential explanations. For example, Lorri, VP of marcoms at a US telco, told us that when she was involved in a company acquisition, there was a need to get a new website up fast, so using other competitor websites as a benchmark for what to say was the quick and easy fix. Herbert, a former sales VP at a global telco, pointed to the all too common practice of hiring people from the same industry.

ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

CREATING VALUE | FEATURE

The problem with this method is that if you can’t differentiate your offer to a customer, they will be forced to choose the vendor with the lowest price. Imagine if you put yourself in the shoes of the customer in any of the three sectors we have researched to date. How can the customer possibly make an informed choice in this bland sea of sameness? Many are making a choice to do nothing.

Perhaps companies want to take the easy (ineffective) route rather than the less travelled (impactful) route. It takes a lot of work to set up a feedback loop and constantly check in with your customers about what’s working and what’s not.

And it may be easier to just use the same industry jargon as your competitors. But in the end, this results in customer disconnectedness, and wasted time and energy.

We’ve found that most organisations are not putting emphasis on creating value for customers simply because they don’t understand how to do it.

Fournaise, a marketing firm, found that 83% of marketers don’t know how to develop or implement a value proposition. That’s a particular problem when only 55% of salespeople are meeting or exceeding quota (Miller Heiman). And the primary reason cited for missing their number is a failure to communicate value to the customer successfully.

hard, but rather that they are choosing to stick with what they know, despite the fact that the B2B buying journey continues to become more complex.

An added challenge for sales professionals is the increasing use by buyers of web-based information in sourcing decisions. In the past, sales may have paid little attention to their company websites and other marketing communications. Now, they can’t afford to ignore them because research suggests that 67% of the buyer’s journey is now done digitally DARE TO BE DIFFERENT (SiriusDecisions). This means that if your digital We suggest that if customers are swimming in a sea marketing communications don’t resonate with the of sameness, then salespeople must be selling in a value sought by your customers, you will still be sea of sameness too, disqualified despite your which of course places best efforts.

“If customers are swimming any sales professional in a Further, DemandBase challenging position. On recently surveyed 250 in a sea of sameness, then the one hand, they have B2B executive buyers salespeople must be selling responsibility for selling and found that: in a sea of sameness too” l 65% are going the the company’s offer; on the other, they have to route of having formal take on the objections, criticisms and weaknesses in buying groups or committees to evaluate purchases l 75% are spending more time researching the offer identified by the customer.

The company that does the best job in terms of purchase decisions l 73% are using more sources to research and communicating their value to customers wins. But this process must start by understanding what your evaluate purchases, such as peers and colleague customer values in the first place, then quantifying it recommendations, industry experts, analysts and in a way that resonates with them. The only sure influencers and review websites. way to achieve this is by finding out the sources of The B2B buying landscape is shifting, and sales offer differentiation in and from sales conversations professionals must commit to changing their with customers. approach to be successful in this new environment.

Here are three steps sales professionals can take to begin to tap into what their customers value.

Step 2: Listen Suppliers need to ask themselves if they are really Step 1: Change your approach listening to what buyers are saying. According to When we asked marketing and sales leaders why Merkle, a marketing agency, B2B buyers want help they believe organisations are doing a poor job of solving their problems – but what they are getting is differentiating themselves, the universal answer we more product pitches (see chart above). got was “laziness”. This is not to suggest that In other words, sellers are not taking the time to marketing and sales professionals aren’t working listen to what the customer needs before jumping ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

WINNING EDGE 25

FEATURE | CREATING VALUE

The cohesive loop Stacey Danheiser, Simon Kelly and Paul Johnston are co-authors of Value-Ology:ꢀAligning Sales and Marketing to Shape and Deliver Profitable ValueꢀPropositions, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2017 and reviewed in Winning Edge No1 2018.

to a solution. So, if your company marketing is leaving the customer swimming in a sea of sameness, then a product pitch will only increase their chances of drowning. If you take time to understand their problem and explain how you alone can fix it, you can help your customer swim towards your island of uniqueness.

THE COHESIVE LOOP

Mission and vision Brand Positioning Products Services

INSIGHT

Kelly (FISM) is a lecturer in sales and marketing at York University.

He has 35 years’ experience in the ICT industry in customer service, sales and marketing. Now a “pracademic”, he has developed marketing and sales skills modules for Sheffield Business School and is chief cohesion officer at Shake.

Email simon.kelly@york.ac.uk

Johnston is a former lecturer at Sheffield Business School. His research specialism is B2B marketing management. He previously spent 20 years in the gambling and electronic games industry, with board-level roles in competitive strategy, key account management, marketing research and product innovation.

26 WINNING EDGE

FOCUS

CREATE

CHANNEL

EXECUTE

CUSTOMER MEASURE FEEDBACK

Danheiser is founder and president of Shake Marketing Group, a global B2B sales and marketing practice. Prior to starting her own consultancy, she spent 15 years as a marketing and sales enablement leader across the cable telecoms, financial services and banking sectors.

Email stacey@shakemktg.com

COMMUNICATE

MARKETING

3. Partner with marketing Feedback from sales conversations to marketing and the broader organisation is ever more crucial.

Robson, president of a global telco, told us that there needs to be a continuous learning loop from the field back into the organisation about what is and isn’t working, and crucially about what’s important to customers: “Informing the organisation to shake the proposition, so they can be more successful in the field.”

By “shake the proposition” he means that, by taking on board feedback, a company can re-shape its offers to be more in line with what customers value, allowing them to stand out and sell more.

We call this a cohesive loop between marketing and sales, and in the concluding chapter of Value-Ology, we speculate that such cohesion could be the new competitive advantage.

THE COHESIVE LOOP: A PERPETUAL LEARNING CYCLE From the organisation’s standpoint, cohesion is achieved by understanding your customers so well that you are able to lead them, in a frictionless way, to a solution that only you can provide, by uniting sales and marketing in the delivery of value at each stage of your customer’s journey.

This model recognises that, although the organisation’s vision, mission, strategy and value proposition may have come from the marketing function, nothing has really happened until dialogue with the customer starts. In a world where you have created “cohesive advantage”, marketing will have had the good sense to engage customers and sales in helping to shape these core characteristics.

If you have done this then there is likely to be better buy-in from sales as you take your value propositions back out to the market. The customer should recognise the value you are promising to deliver because you based your propositions on what they told you was important. This model is a continuous loop taking feedback from every part

EXECUTE

CREATE

FOCUS

INSIGHT

SALES

of the field in the shape of customers, sales and, ultimately, service people.

Our sea of sameness research suggests that marketing does not appear to be providing relevant and distinct value propositions to customers, so sales has a heightened role in driving better cohesion with marketing, and by presenting a regular flow of dialogue back from customer conversations.

If your conversations are just about marketing tactics not working, sales not executing against leads, or the need for more marketing events, you need to change the dialogue towards what customers value. If you can do this to “shake your proposition” to look more like what the customer values, you are likely to position yourself as a powerful and knowledgeable partner.

A QUESTION OF COMPETENCE? Our strong hunch is that there is a personal competence issue at play here. After all, it’s people who write the marketing communications and have the customer conversations that are leaving the customer swimming in a sea of sameness.

CA N YOU HE L P ?

We are currently conducting research to try to answer the question: “What competencies, attitudes and behaviours are required to enable the development of competitive differentiation, to help organisations swim away from the sea of sameness?” We are interviewing sales and marketing professionals to get their take on this. If you would like to take part in this research, please email Simon Kelly at simon.kelly@york.ac.uk.

You can download the “sea of sameness” whitepapers at shakemktg.com

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FEATURE | NEGOTIATION

IF YOU’RE GOOD AT IT, DON’T DO IT FOR FREE PETER COLMAN presents the sixth article in his series on behavioural economics in sales management – on countering biases that can diminish profits. Nowhere are biases more pronounced than in negotiations…

“We’re all aware of the long list of potential concessions that can be given away for free or too cheaply in the heat of negotiating”

28 WINNING EDGE

D

uring the classic negotiation scene in the Batman film The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger’s Joker is asked by a mob boss, “If it’s so simple, why haven’t you done it [killed Batman] already?” His deadpan response, “If you’re good at something, never do it for free!” is a lesson to all negotiators.

Back in the real world, we’re all aware of the long list of potential concessions that can be given away for free or too cheaply in the heat of negotiating: price reductions, more favourable terms/conditions, free samples, waivered services, the list goes on and on. In many cases, it has become so prevalent that it’s just expected by buyers.

For example, a few years ago my firms was asked to pitch to the divisional management team within a large corporate for a consulting project. After running through our approach, suggested scope and the likely range of return on investment, we asked if there were any questions. The divisional head told us that the proposal made sense and that if we conducted the project in his division as a “pilot” (ie. for free as a loss-leader), he would introduce the other divisions of the company to us. Like this article’s title, we believed we would create significant value and wanted to be rewarded for this – “goodwill doesn’t pay the bills”. His considerable surprise when we politely declined his offer suggested to us that this wasn’t just a negotiation gambit and that many of his previous suppliers must have worked on this basis.

Fortunately, through reframing the negotiation back to value (return on investment) and by showing

that we were prepared to walk away (ie. we weren’t suffering from loss aversion) we were able to secure the contract in close to the original format proposed and also sell on further work into other divisions at the end of it.

In previous articles I have covered a range of topics, including incentives, sales strategy and tooling. This time I’ll focus on how sales leaders can ensure that their salesforce prepare in a professional manner for customer/channel partner negotiations, by making you aware of the most common behavioural biases and how you can either counteract or deploy them depending on the situation. #1 “HOW LONG DO YOU SPEND PREPARING FOR NEGOTIATION?” (FRAMING) Let’s just say the answers from the floor surprised the chief sales officer who decided to sit in on the negotiation training session that we were running with his team. Considering that they were often negotiating seven figure deals, to receive numbers back with “minutes” rather than “hours” or even “days” as the units of time spent surprised us a little, as they were a pretty sophisticated salesforce in most other respects. For all the key performance indicators (KPIs) that were monitored by their customer relationship management (CRM) dashboards though, these numbers were invisible to management, as this information is hard to track, and it wasn’t observed either, due to the “lone wolves” culture of this particular salesforce.

Our task in these training sessions is to

FEATURE | NEGOTIATION

reframe the thinking about the size of the deal stripped down and substantially cheaper offers that and sophistication of the procurement team, they have received from lower-cost competitors rather than just the length of the actual meeting. whose submitted offers just met spec.

We like to see the majority of the time spent on One way around this conundrum is to submit the deal coming from preparation rather than just multiple offers at different price points. For the execution. example, the basic offer might just meet spec, In another company, with a similar exercise and whereas higher tier offers allow a natural upsell with similar answers, this sort of thinking was nicely path. Ideally, with three offers on the table, the captured in a quote by another sales leader who compromise effect will kick-in, steering them to asked participants “OK team, so are we amateurs pick the middle one. or professionals?” #3 “I KNOW THEY “Professionals!” shouted the “How many professional ARE THE MARKET team in reply. sportspeople do you think LEADER, BUT THEY “How many professional succeed through just STILL NEED US” sportspeople do you think (SUBSTITUTION BIAS) succeed through just winging winging it?” it?” was his response – In many situations we see “We must practise, practise, organisations being too practise!” submissive to the other party in a negotiation, As part of that intervention, we put in place a particularly when that company is much larger or deal-desk to allow the participants to have some far more established. Firms have a natural tendency actual negotiation sparring with us on a specific deal to underestimate their own power and overestimate they were working on before they went to the pitch. the other side’s power in a negotiation.

As mentioned in previous articles, substitution #2 “IS IT WHAT THEY REQUESTED bias is when we swap a hard-to-answer question OR WHAT THEY NEED?” for a similar but much easier-to-answer question.

(COMPROMISE EFFECT) Effectively, what we are doing is swapping the In many of the companies that we see, their hard-to-answer question of, “What should we do in negotiations with customers aren’t just about a price this specific situation?” for the easier-to-answer tag but rather they are about the scope of the actual question of, “What were we forced to do last time proposed solution as well as the budget. In other we negotiated with such a big player?” words, it is down to the company to create a Why is this a problem? Well, it clouds judgement bespoke or tailored solution that best meets their and makes salespeople give in too early and customer’s needs, often off the back of a request for discount too readily. What they need is an accurate proposal (RFP) or specification document. assessment of the specific situation to set negotiation Rather than creating an offer that “meets spec”, objectives and plan persuasion strategies. we often find that their returned proposal has a How to fix it? Taking a systematic approach to single offer quite a bit above spec. This is often for assessing the balance of power of that specific deal good reasons (eg. having done it numerous time you will decrease this risk, help assess the situation are in better position than the customer to know objectively and improve confidence. We used this what they actually need). approach with a client as they planned a large deal However, if not managed well, this can easily with a huge corporation. As we assessed the come across as over-engineering or, worse still, situation, it was clear that their customer had no gold-plating, when compared with the more other alternatives and needed our client’s solution urgently. Whereas previously they’d been on the back foot in deals with this customer, being pushed CA SE STU DY: “WE ’ RE G OIN G TO K E E P to grant increasingly large discounts, this time the negotiation took a very different path resulting in A SK IN G U N TIL YOU SAY ‘ N O’ ! ” much smaller discounts being agreed and therefore I remember hearing an amusing case where, a long time ago, the much better margins than usual. managing directors of two firms were having their teams negotiate a deal.

After each meeting, the supplier’s sales rep came back after the negotiation to ask their boss for more concessions.

After about three rounds of this, the supplier MD was fed up, so called the buyer MD directly to ask what was going on. The buyer MD replied, “Look, I know we’re friends, but each time my guy asks for a discount, your guy gives it, so what do you expect him to do?” He laughs about it now, but the supplier MD has never forgotten the lesson.

30 WINNING EDGE

#4 “WE’LL TAKE IT” (ANCHORING) While most people love the words in this answer, the tech entrepreneur on the opposite side of the table realised later that he’d left a large amount of money on the table because the buyer hadn’t even negotiated. The entrepreneur had created a wonderful piece of software to manage risks and was talking to investment banks about the various ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

NEGOTIATION | FEATURE

scenarios in which it could help. He was expecting the first meeting to be just about capabilities and had yet to carefully understand the value the customer would receive, let alone the commercials and revenue model.

His mistake became apparent while participating in a workshop with us where we were discussing how the first number given creates an anchor in the negotiation. In his eagerness to sign a first deal he’d undermined his negotiating position by opening with a price (his anchor) that was way too low.

Having an initial anchor offer set too low is a very common issue. We advise our clients to plan out their initial offer, target and walkaway price before they set foot in the room. It is also important to realise that price is not the only factor buyers consider. While on many procurement scorecards it will be the biggest single factor, the sum of the other factors together will often far outweigh this and largely decide which suppliers are shortlisted. In other words, the value for money of the solution is more important than the price. #5 “GREAT – NOW, JUST ONE MORE THING…” (RECIPROCITY BIAS) Nibbling! We’ve all had this happen to us, I’m sure.

You think the deal is done and then suddenly they’re asking for 60 days end-of-month payment terms rather than the 30 days in the proposal.

How do your salespeople react to such concessions?

Very few companies that we meet have their concessions carefully planned out. Salespeople need this guidance on what they should and should not do. Without it, the salespeople often don’t realise the knock-on effects of their decisions. For example, certain damages and liabilities within contract terms can be extremely risky for the company and are just as, if not more, important negotiation items than the price itself.

Also, do they ask for anything from the buyer in return? Reciprocity bias is a very powerful human tendency to want to return a favour to someone if that person has done something for us. In this case, salespeople should use this bias in their favour when they come up against nibbling. Our studies have shown that when discounting, typically two-thirds of salespeople don’t ask for anything in return.

Without these requests, why would a buyer stop asking for more concessions? #6 “LET ME SHOW YOU HOW IT’S DONE!” (EGOCENTRIC BIAS) Now, this one always gets a smile from the salesforce in our workshops. One of the frequent barriers to a good deal can be top executive involvement, ie. involved too early, too often and ill prepared.

Once they step through the door, the procurement team know that the negotiation guardrails have ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

PA M = P RE PA RE , A N TICIPATE , MA STE R What do these four professions have in common: doctor, nurse, pilot and astronaut? They all use checklists. This is not due to a lack of skill or experience (they all have long qualification periods and rigorous testing).

Rather, it comes from the realisation that complex activities involving high risk deserve extra care and attention. For example, a World Health Organisation study of hospitals around the world found that there was a 36% decrease in major complications for surgeries after introducing checklists for hospitals’ surgical procedures.

How is sales any different? Well, it might not be life or death, but it certainly can be a high complexity, high risk environment. Consequently, we strongly advise putting in place processes based on checklists, tools and workflows to manage the various stages of the negotiation.

We abbreviated this to PAM, which stands for Prepare, Anticipate, Master – as outlined below.

Prepare

Assess the balance of power in the negotiation

✔ Prepare your side in the balance of power ✔ Prepare your arguments and evidence ✔ Prepare your value and benefits story

Anticipate

Assess the likely pushbacks and challenges

✔ Anticipate comparison to competition ✔ Anticipate likely objections ✔ Anticipate your fall-back position

Master

Rehearse and execute based on that rehearsal

✔ Master the buying process ✔ Master negotiation tactics

just widened and that the executive will have to demonstrate to their staff that they can close the deal. This is gold dust for the buyer.

A much better strategy is to have the executive involved in the preparation and, in particular, underwriting the walkaway point. This gives a clear signal to the salesperson that they have their back if the deal margin would mean that it no longer makes sense to continue.

When was the last time you praised one of your sales team for not closing and for walking away from an unprofitable deal? This is just as important a signal to the rest of the salesforce if you expect them to have a margin mindset.

TO SUM UP: REMEMBER THE 7PS While the cases discussed are often business-tobusiness, they involve human beings and are therefore no less prone to irrational behavioural and cognitive biases than in the consumer arena.

The antidote? When it comes to negotiations, there’s a lot to be said for the British Army adage known as the 7Ps, namely that “Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance!”

PETER COLMAN is a partner at global strategy and marketing consultancy Simon-Kucher & Partners, where he leads the sales effectiveness practice for the UK and Ireland. He specialises in commercial excellence programmes to address strategy, sales, marketing and pricing topics. Email peter.colman@ simon-kucher.com or visit simon-kucher.com

WINNING EDGE 31

FEATURE | SALES BEHAVIOURS

YES, YOU CAN!

Gavin Ingham explains how to create a can-do sales culture (and why you won’t)

H

ow important is creating a winning sales culture for you and your business? If you are like most of the sales and business leaders I speak to, it is critical. Everyone wants their sales teams to be chock full of salespeople who are self-motivated and proactive, constantly sharpen their skills, display consistent behaviours and work well both individually and as a team. Few achieve this, however, citing difficulties recruiting, having the wrong people on board, lack of time, lack of money, external forces and many more.

Surprisingly, developing high-performing teams is not that difficult – there are three core building blocks required for nurturing superstar salespeople and world-class sales teams.

you can learn them or thinking that it will make little difference is entirely another.

CLARITY Salespeople need clarity – clarity in their understanding of their market, in who their clients are, in how to approach them, in how to spend their time, in how not to spend their time, and so on.

Life and business are more complicated today than ever. There are so many options for how to spend your time. Where once prospecting was either cold calling on foot or cold calling on the phone, now you have LinkedIn, blogs, videos, funnels, branding… salespeople need absolute clarity about where to spend time and where not to.

I see sales teams every day, full of skilled salespeople but working on the wrong requirements, doing the wrong things and CONVICTION generally working very hard to “I see sales teams every All salespeople need conviction get nowhere. And, to make day, full of skilled – conviction in their business, matters worse, without clarity salespeople but working their products/services, their it is very hard for them to skills, the marketplace, the maintain conviction. very hard to get nowhere” price, their management, their Sales leaders needs total territories… you get the idea. clarity too – over what they If you want to succeed, you have to believe, and are trying to achieve, how they are going to develop whether you believe that you can or you cannot, you individuals, how they add value to their teams, what are probably right either way. the critical moments are in their day-to-day Likewise, leaders need the conviction that they leadership function, and more. can and should develop their teams, that time Conviction and clarity are vital for success, but invested will pay off, and that there is a better way. you also need something else…

Without conviction, you will not even get out of CONSISTENCY the starting gates when it comes to sales. Conviction is at the core of everything. Even learning. Not The third essential building block is consistency. having the skills is one thing, but not believing that We have all employed salespeople who can do

32 WINNING EDGE

FEATURE | SALES BEHAVIOURS

PEOPLE INVARIABLY WANT the business some of the time: who can lift their THE ADVANCED STUFF game for short periods, who are good when you put the pressure on, and who are good when they are People always want the advanced stuff. “I am pretty on target. But we need salespeople who do the right knowledgeable at all of this Gavin, I need the things all the time – day in, day out. masterclass.” No-one is interested in “sales 101”.

Success does not come after doing something No-one wants the “introduction to sales leadership”. right once or twice. Success comes from doing the They know all that stuff because they believe they right things over and over. That’s why Jonny are good at what they do.

Wilkinson and David Beckham practised long after That’s all well and good, but if you need the everyone else had packed up. advanced stuff, why are you not applying the simple Not surprisingly, when you stuff? Why do you not ask do something over and over open questions? Why is your “Sales is not about knowing again with clarity and objection handling so bad? something, it is about doing conviction, this creates more Why do you jump into something – it is about conviction and more clarity – presenting your solution it’s a virtuous circle. before you have created taking action” Sales leaders need sufficient value? Why do you consistency too. Forgotten say that coaching your staff is coaching sessions, cancelled sales meetings and lack important but then fail to do it consistently? Why do of promised follow-up are all too common. What people snooze through your sales meetings, moan message do these poor behaviours and complete about you behind your back, and sabotage your lack of consistency communicate to your people? sales culture?

Bottom line? You need to master and apply the THE MAGIC TRIO simple stuff – brilliantly. That’s what creates great Conviction, plus clarity, plus consistency fit together salespeople and that’s what drives winning sales perfectly. They represent the “magical” trio teams. Success in sales and sales leadership is all required for developing accomplished salespeople, about becoming a master of the simple stuff; an high-performing teams and a winning sales culture. expert in living and applying the basics.

There are smaller component parts of each of these PEOPLE DO NOT PRACTISE that help, but just thinking the following three THE SIMPLE STUFF questions through will help you to dramatically improve the performance of both your individuals I can count on one hand the number of salespeople and your teams: I’ve met who do not know what an open and a l What do your teams need absolute conviction closed question is, and yet, under pressure, few about and how can you help them to create it? manage to use them correctly. Why is this? Why l How can you help them have absolute clarity do people not do what they know? The answer is about who they should be working with, how they simple: lack of practice. add value, how to find them, how to reach them, As humans, if something is simple, we think, how to engage and add value for them, and how, “I understand that,” and we move on… but sales is ultimately, to sell to them? not about knowing something, it is about doing l What behaviours do you need to make as something – it is about taking action. consistent as clockwork for you and your teams?

Bottom line? You need to practise until you can be certain to kick the ball into the back of the net IT STARTS WITH YOU every time. You must practise until your sales, your You’re probably thinking this is pretty simple, right? negotiation and your leadership skills are spot on, You’re probably thinking that, as the founder of the not just some of the time, not just when everything #IAM10 success philosophy and an expert, I ought aligns the right way, but all the time. to give you something more complex, right? And PEOPLE THINK THEY HAVE that’s part of the problem.

STRONG WILLPOWER Over the past 18 years, I have worked with many sales leaders and the biggest issue they have is There are various characteristics that people like to themselves. They fall down on core issues that stop think they have. One is “perfectionism” (which, for them manifesting change in their businesses and many, is an excuse for not taking action) but an even that hold them back from creating the sales more common one is the belief, “I have strong behaviours, results, cultures and businesses they willpower.” Well, good for you. And maybe you do, desire. This is not surprising because sales leaders but in a battle of willpower versus habit, habit wins are people, and the same things that hold back their time and time again. people, hold them back too. Here are the main Willpower is like a muscle. Using it does improve blockers I encounter time and time again: it, but it also tires. The more you use your willpower 34 WINNING EDGE

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SALES BEHAVIOURS | FEATURE

in a day, the harder it will be to use it as the day goes on. And that is across everything, so it is quite possible that your willpower gets used up on things that have absolutely nothing to do with what you are trying to achieve professionally.

The way to beat unresourceful habits is not with willpower, it is with other, more resourceful, habits.

Bottom line? Use your willpower to build new habits. Focus on what you need to do, schedule it into your diary first, and then use your willpower to do it, every day, until it becomes habit.

PEOPLE DO NOT LIKE REPETITION How do you nail the simple stuff? How do you build strong habits? Practise. Practise. Practise. And then practise again. As Anthony Robbins, author of Awaken the Giant Within, says, “Repetition is the mother of skill.” In my experience, a lot of salespeople have an inbuilt dislike of repetition – think prospecting, admin, reports... They seem to think they are the only ones who have to undertake tasks that are repetitive and maybe even boring.

If I had a pound for every salesperson who has told me they get bored with repeating the same thing over and over, I’d have a fairly sizeable pot of money. But the truth is that any skill learnt, any profession mastered, is the result of extended practice and repetition.

Bottom line? Get over your fear of repetition.

Be a grown up and realise that being good at anything requires monotonous practice. I have not heard surgeons, accountants and lawyers using this pathetic excuse – so you shouldn’t either.

PEOPLE THINK MOTIVATION IS ALL THEY NEED Not unlike their belief in willpower, many people think that motivation alone will get them where they want to go. Oh, if only this were true... I am a motivational speaker. I am good at motivation. But there is plenty of stuff that I want to achieve but haven’t yet managed to. You can know what you want, know how to achieve it, be incredibly motivated and still not accomplish it.

Bottom line? Motivation is rarely enough by itself.

Do not rely on motivation for your success. Instead, have a plan, work out your actions and schedule them into your diary.

PEOPLE DO NOT ALLOW FOR DISTRACTIONS We have all set out to do something, come into the office motivated, arrived at work with a plan, but then become distracted. Distractions come in all shapes and sizes – from colleagues to clients, from emails to phone calls, and from home issues to office chat or self-interruptions.

Distractions are bad news. Research suggests they not only hamper your productivity but impact the ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

quality of your work too. It has been suggested that three-quarters of workers feel distracted at work, 2 hours a day can be lost refocusing after distractions, 31 hours a month on average are spent in meetings and 40% of work time is spent on non-productive activities.

Bottom line? If you want powerful sales habits and a winning sales culture, you need to take account of distractions, not just hope they won’t happen. You need to work out how you build positive habits that minimise avoidable distractions and produce maximum productivity for those that are going to happen anyway.

PEOPLE REJECT HELP (EGO) A couple of years ago, a former client invited me to a meeting at his new business. The business was in desperate trouble. Sales were down and no-one was biting the bullet and going after new clients; the sales culture was just not built that way. He knew he needed help to create the business he wanted, and he thought #IAM10 could be the way to do it.

I visited him in London and met the senior management team. They were all enthusiastic about doing something, except for one executive who was incapable of admitting that they needed help.

Whenever one of the other team outlined a challenge or a weakness, he would contradict it.

To my knowledge, they are still struggling to this day and have laid off people and downsized the business – largely because of this one guy’s inflated ego.

Bottom line? If you want to build strong sales teams, you need humility, you need to acknowledge areas for your personal improvement, and you need the courage to deal with them. Even minor changes in the key behaviours of sales leaders can have a dramatic impact on the sales function.

PEOPLE JUST WAIT FOR SOMETHING TO HAPPEN Many sales leaders know they don’t have the sales culture they want. They know this is impacting behaviours every day. They know this colours their relationships with their clients and the reputation of their business. They know they will never get the results they want unless something changes, but still they do nothing. This damaging state of inertia may be because of fear, lack of knowledge, lack of belief, or because they wrongly perceive other things to be more important.

Bottom line? Your sales culture stems from everyday sales behaviours, and everyday sales behaviours drive sales results. Sales results are everything. If you are serious about your business, creating a winning sales culture is the most important thing you should be doing.

So, it’s time to act. What is the most important thing you can do right now to start building that all-important winning sales culture?

GAVIN INGHAM (FISM) is the founder of #IAM10, through which he shares inspirational keynotes and executive coaching programmes focused on installing key sales behaviours. To find out more about how #IAM10 can help you build a winning sales culture, visit GavinIngham.com

WINNING EDGE 35

FEATURE | PUBLIC SECTOR PROPOSALS

A LONG AND WINDING ROAD SARAH HINCHLIFFE presents a 101 guide to the often complex task of selling to the public sector

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n 2019/20, the UK public sector will buy an enormous £848bn of goods and services.1 To get a slice of that level of spend in the future, you need to understand how the public sector buys. It’s not a subject for the back of a postage stamp, but let’s explore the basics.

l To appreciate that public sector buyers are subject to a great deal of scrutiny and tend to be risk averse. Don’t be fooled by an emphasis on innovation if you see it – if innovation means risk, they’ll probably ditch the innovation...

SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND Now you’re ready to go, where do you find BE PREPARED opportunities? With the public sector, there’s “Public sector” often conjures up images of fusty always emphasis on the formality of selling – Whitehall corridors with stuffy civil servants having to respond to an invitation to tender (ITT) running bloated departments. In fact, there or request for proposal (RFP). But, like any are thousands of organisation, public organisations in the sector bodies will go “Selling to the public sector is no public sector, from tiny through stages in their to mammoth, many procurement before they different to any other market. You running tight ships. issue any formal tender first need to be sure that you have The Public Sector documentation. They a defined offering or capability” Classification Guide, will identify the need to published by the Office buy something, define for National Statistics,2 is a good place to get a feel and justify the requirements and the budget, and for the extent of the sector. Selling to the public gather information before they seek formal sector is no different to any other market. You first proposals, choose a supplier and, ultimately, need to be sure that you have a defined offering or award a contract. capability – you need to know what you are selling, Although there are strict rules about fairness who might need to buy it, why and when they and transparency in the public sector, suppliers would buy it, and what is different and better about that are well-informed about the procurement your offering than your competitors’. You also need: from early on are better equipped to produce a l To be crystal clear about the benefits, outcomes winning proposal. So, as in any sales situation, and results that you will help the buyer achieve – you need to make yourself visible to your buyers are seeking value for money, which may potential public sector buyers and demonstrate be assessed purely on price, but complex value to them. purchases will be decided on the basis of a mix Make use of conferences, industry forums and of price and quality networking opportunities (online or offline). l To have or be able to create credibility – buyers Make direct contact and request a meeting. want to be confident they are making a sensible Start a conversation. choice with an appropriate level of risk. Your As well as networking through standard sales track record, your credentials and the way you routes, public sector buyers often undertake handle yourself throughout the procurement pre-tender market engagement. This involves process will make a difference formal interaction with the supplier 36 WINNING EDGE

FEATURE | PUBLIC SECTOR PROPOSALS

marketplace and may be advertised via a prior information notice (PIN) – currently advertised through the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU). You can also use Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) requests to learn about existing contracts and financial values. Annual reports and strategies provide information about objectives and budgets.

PUBLIC PROCUREMENT REGULATIONS All public sector bodies must comply with the UK public sector procurement regulations. These were last updated in 2015 (and in 2016 for utilities and concession contracts). The UK regulations are based on the EU procurement regulations, but also include some UK national legislation to make life easier for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

So, every public sector buyer (usually a procurement officer) must choose and follow the most appropriate procedure for whatever they need to buy. The choice will be dictated by a “Whichever way the buyer decides range of parameters. to come to market, the supplier will The first parameter is have to read and respond to a financial value. There range of published documents” is a published set of thresholds over which a strict procurement protocol must be chosen and followed. Ensure you are aware of the latest values published by the OJEU.3 The second parameter is the type of purchase.

The default procedure is the open procedure, whereby anyone can respond to the published ITT or RFP. Other options are: l Restricted procedure, for when there is a specific need to pre-qualify and/or there would be a large number of responders l Competitive dialogue or competitive procedure with negotiation, for when the nature or complexity of the requirement means standard solutions need adaptation or the requirement needs further discussion and development l Light touch regime, for certain service types including health, social and education l Innovation partnership procedure, for when there is no existing solution.

It is up to the buyer to decide the appropriate route. It is up to you to understand how to respond in a way that is compliant and optimises the probability of winning.

Each procedure has an associated timeline SARAH HINCHLIFFE is a for each stage. There is an option to use an director of i4 Consultancy and accelerated procedure if the procurement can be Design, which helps companies justified as urgent. You need to understand the win more business through sales and bid excellence. timelines and be able to respond within them.

You can email her at sarah@ OJEU opportunities are published using a i4salesperformance.co.uk or visit i4salesperformance.co.uk contract notice. These are found on Tenders 38 WINNING EDGE

Electronic Daily (TED), the official OJEU website.4 There are many other online services offering aggregated views of all tender opportunities. Commercial service providers include Tracker from BiP Group5 and Tenders Direct.6 Free services are provided nationally by Sell2Wales,7 Public Contracts Scotland8 and eSourcing NI9 (Northern Ireland). These sites also publish PINs (which may just be for information or may be the first stage in a restricted procedure or competitive procedure with negotiation) and contract award notices.

In England, Contracts Finder is the portal for tender publication – contract notices must be published on Contracts Finder within 24 hours of publication elsewhere (OJEU or other advertisement). This applies to all opportunities over £10,000 for central government and £25,000 for other government bodies.

THE RISE OF FRAMEWORKS Frameworks are a useful device for both buyers and suppliers. They are an OJEU-compliant way of pre-selecting suppliers and then allowing buyers to choose from those suppliers either by running mini-competitions (which are not always that “mini”), asking clarification questions or by simply placing a call-off order. Buyers will generally try to find a way to procure through a framework as it is the easiest approach.

You will need to watch for the window of opportunity to apply to join a framework.

You may also come across dynamic purchasing systems (DPS), which are like frameworks but allow suppliers to join at any time subject to a compliant application.

A RAFT OF PAPERWORK Whichever way the buyer decides to come to market, the supplier will have to be prepared to read and respond to a range of published documents that include: l Instructions to tenderers: how to ensure a compliant response (a must if you are not to be eliminated) l Statement of requirements: one or many documents describing what the buyer wants to buy either described as features or functions, or as outcomes or results l Lots: descriptions of any lots (sub-sets of requirements). Procurement regulations encourage buyers to divide their procurements into lots to encourage more SMEs to participate l Evaluation criteria: confirming exactly how the responses will be assessed to decide on the most economically advantageous tender (MEAT).

The evaluation criteria should show the ratio of price and quality, and the exact mechanism for scoring and reaching the highest ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

PUBLIC SECTOR PROPOSALS | FEATURE

score. Price may be the straight price or, increasingly, the total cost of ownership (TCO).

Quality can include various factors, such as products and/or service capability, delivery methods, quality, track record and social factors l Terms and conditions of contract: either draft or non-negotiable.

Early in the process (depending on the value and procedure being followed) you may have to complete a pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ), sometimes called a selection questionnaire (SQ).

These contain a range of mandatory and discretionary criteria that suppliers must meet to be able to continue.

They include company information and due diligence questions about legal and financial standing. They may also explore your basic capability to satisfy the requirements. Where this information is not obtained in advance via a PQQ or SQ (or because it has been done when establishing a framework), it will be required as part of the response to the ITT or RFP. There are various mechanisms in specific industries and within the EU to reduce the duplication involved in creating PQQs and SQs through centralised reusable documentation. Do your research to see if there is a route for you, as it could save time.

During the response process and depending on the procedure, as well as submitting the proposal/ bid/tender, you may have to give presentations or demonstrations, participate in negotiations or reverse auctions, or submit a best and final offer (BAFO).

REACHING A VERDICT The buyer that has been the point of contact for the formal proposal response will organise the buying committee (on which they may or may not participate) to assess the proposals in accordance with the published evaluation criteria. The proposal may be split up and scored by individuals and then reviewed independently. These measures are designed to ensure fairness – the evaluation approach is a logical mechanism to enable the buyers to reach an unbiased decision.

However, you will ideally have got to know and understand the members of the buying committee early in the procurement exercise – early engagement enables you to build understanding, value and empathy into your proposal, which can make a significant difference to the buyers’ perceptions.

WINNING (AND LOSING) Once the buyers have reached a decision, they will notify the winner(s) and the loser(s) via a decision notice. There is always a 10 day standstill period after this announcement to give unsuccessful ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

SELLING TO THE PUBLIC SECTOR Pros

Cons

Massive expenditure Persistent marketplace Good payment ethic (within 30 days for SMEs) High likelihood of repeatable success once established

Long timeframes High sustained effort Complex and rigid processes Political factors can have unexpected consequences

Focus on fairness

High visibility of failure

bidders the opportunity to object if they believe there has been some unfairness in the process.

There is case law in the UK showing this can be a successful approach, but only make a challenge if you are sure you have a genuine case, not just because you are upset about losing.

After the contract is awarded, the buyer is obliged to publish a contract award notice confirming the date the contract was awarded, the award criteria, the number of offers received, the name and address of the successful tenderer(s) and the value of the contract. The buyer must also feed back to the unsuccessful bidders their scores against the evaluation criteria, the winning scores and why there was a difference.

Unfortunately, there are variations and exemptions from this useful rule, such as when a decision is made within a framework minicompetition or clarification process. So again, be sure of the facts before you cry foul.

Always seek additional feedback, not only to understand how you can improve next time, but also to show the buyer you are a professional organisation and to start the process of impressing them for the next procurement.

SHOULD WE, OR SHOULDN’T WE? Entering any new market is a major undertaking.

You need to do your research and be sure you have a winning proposition. You need to understand the way the new market operates and have a plan with realistic timeframes and resources to deliver a return on your investment.

If you decide to go ahead, plan for success in a two-year timeframe (not overnight), and measure progress by a solid set of metrics. And remember, there is good support out there for you.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

See: ukpublicspending.co.uk/breakdown Public Sector Classification Guide. ONS. bit.ly/2MPU7DM EU procurement thresholds. bit.ly/2pmF9gH Tenders Electronic Daily. ted.europa.eu Tracker. BiP Group. trackerintelligence.com (no endorsement implied) Tenders Direct. tendersdirect.co.uk (no endorsement implied) Sell2Wales. sell2wales.gov.wales Public Contracts Scotland. publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk eSourcing NI. bit.ly/33yF0Wo

WINNING EDGE 39

GET INSIDE THEIR HEADS! KAREN GREEN explains how to understand buyers’ thinking and the underlying psychology behind it

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SALES PSYCHOLOGY | FEATURE

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id you know that the average close rate for all industries is 21%, according to Hubspot, which analysed 8,900 companies segmented by 28 industries – and which has a useful calculator that allows you to see how well you are doing against your industry average (visit hubspot.com).

Many sales fail because buyers think, “I don’t want to take the risk.” How do we stack the odds in our favour and increase success with our pitches and presentations?

I believe it is all about getting inside the head of the buyer and understanding some basic psychology.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE I was first introduced to the concept of cognitive dissonance at university. It has been defined as “the feeling of discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs. When there is a discrepancy between beliefs and behaviours, something must change in order to eliminate or reduce the dissonance.”1 Here’s my way of understanding this: you have bought a stunning dress that is more expensive than you can afford. Imagine the dialogue you have in your head on the journey home – “I can’t afford it, I should have saved the money for something more sensible, but it is beautiful and it was a bargain, I will use it so much, I will look amazing, etc.” This is the cognitive dissonance that can also cause stress and therefore we need to bring the two together and justify the cost as a worthy investment...

So, if we then begin to apply this to the buyer of our products and services, what are the sources of cognitive dissonance in the buyer’s mind and how do we seek to reduce them so they can buy happily without restraint?

KNOWING YOUR BUYER My background is in retail. I started as a Saturday girl in my father’s department store, was a buyer for Tesco and Boots, and then sold a load of different products into UK retail as a commercial director. I have used this knowledge, plus my studies over the years, to develop my 3x3 matrix of the buyer’s mind, which looks at nine key

THE 3 X3 MATRIX OF THE BU YE R’ S MIN D

FEAR OF CHANGE HOW ARE THEY FEELING? BUYER PERSONALITY PERSONAL

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WORRIES ABOUT YOU

RESOURCES

MARKET CHALLENGES INTERNAL POLITICS PERSONAL GOALS

BUSINESS GOALS CORPORATE

potential sources of dissonance, how easy they might be to change, and whether they are personal to the buyer or more corporate. Using this framework, you can work out your own personal strategy to reduce the sources, create the perfect pitch and increase your success.

1. BUYER PERSONALITY The buyer’s personality will influence how open they are to persuasion and risk, and also determines what type of information they need to improve their openness to persuasion. One of the best ways of understanding this is to examine how an individual ranks in the four areas of behaviour – dominance, influence, steadiness and compliance (DISC).

Dominance More focus on accomplishing results, the bottom line and confidence: l Sees the big picture l Can be blunt l Accepts challenges l Gets straight to the point.

Influence More focus on influencing or persuading others, openness and relationships: l Shows enthusiasm l Is optimistic l Likes to collaborate l Dislikes being ignored.

Steadiness More focus on cooperation, sincerity and dependability: l Doesn’t like to be rushed l Calm manner l Calm approach l Supportive actions.

Compliance More focus on quality, accuracy, expertise and competence: l Enjoys independence l Objective reasoning l Wants the details l Fears being wrong.

So, the buyer that is high C is going to want to see loads of analytical data and proof of the sales proposal compared with the high D who will want to see the bigger picture and how quickly they can get there.

But how do we profile the mind of a complete stranger? Let me introduce you to Crystal Knows (crystalknows.com), which is a very ingenious WINNING EDGE 41

FEATURE | SALES PSYCHOLOGY

plug-in that analyses LinkedIn profiles and, using DISC profiling, enables you to profile your target buyer. The app will tell you not only what their DISC profile is but match it with yours and let you know the best way to approach that introductory email or phone call.

“Your job is to find the key sources of worry and stress for your specific buyer – and then you can reduce these”

2. HOW THEY ARE FEELING How they actually feel on the day will always depend on the day, but social media is a great thing and you can build up a lot about a person’s profile. I love Googling buyers and seeing what they have published, looking on Facebook and generally getting an idea of what interests them.

We need to enable the buyer to be able to articulate the “why” they should buy something before they go ahead. Understanding the buyer’s worries and addressing them in the right way (ie. using their DISC profile) is key.

3. FEAR OF CHANGE One of the biggest challenges is actually getting the buyer to want to change, as this creates risk and dissonance. They fear it will create more work, involve interruption to supply or be worse than the supplier they have at the moment. So before even contacting the buyer, create the desire to change. Let them see you in the press, on social media and making such a noise about your business that they are a little bit interested before they even realise they want to change. By the time you contact them, you’re almost there.

KAREN GREEN is a founder of consultancy Food Mentor, which helps owners of food industry SMEs to create profitable sales growth. She is author of the best-selling book Recipe for success, and a keynote speaker on successful selling and negotiation.

She has worked as a buyer for Tesco and Boots, and as a commercial director for several food businesses.

Email karen@foodmentor.co.uk or visit foodmentor.co.uk

8. INTERNAL POLITICS Internal politics can have a major impact on buying decisions. This is an intangible element that is difficult to research, so again, good networking is key. Finding others who do business with your target can help in determining the culture and current internal politics.

4. PERSONAL GOALS Not easy to find this out, but you can seek this information at the first meeting or via networking if you know anyone who knows the buyer. They might be new to the role and keen to make a good impression, but this might make them more risk averse. They might be ready for promotion and looking for a stunning big win that you might be able to deliver for them.

9. RESOURCES The resources – time and money – that the buyer will need depends on your product or service.

Sometimes time is not available for the buyer to utilise or implement what you are offering. I have a client who was offered 12 hours of free financial mentoring to help grow her business, but she didn’t have 12 hours available at the time to take advantage of this offer. And then there is money – your buyer might not be able to afford what you are offering. Then again, if you have chosen your potential customer correctly, their budget should not be a deal-breaker.

5. MARKET CHALLENGES Market challenges dictate how the buyer is performing against their competition and how you can help them become more competitive against rivals in the marketplace. If you can offer something to help them deliver that, they are far more likely to have a conversation and ultimately make the purchase. Understanding your competitive advantage is so important to help the buyer realise they need you.

6. WORRIES ABOUT YOU This is a huge source of concern and dissonance for the buyer. It could include fear that: l What you have offered isn’t enough l You will let them down l Your product won’t sell (if they’re retailers) l Your service won’t help them l You will impact their personal goals and aspirations (which sounds a little dramatic but that is what is deep down in the buyer’s psyche).

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7. BUSINESS GOALS Business goals tend to be fixed and are therefore less easy for you to change. For example, I watched a very successful brand present a new mayonnaise to Planet Organic, which only sells free range eggs. The eggs used in the mayonnaise were not free range, so it was a non-starter. So, you need to know the customer’s business goals and how you fulfil these. Study their website, read the company reports and Google them. I set up Google alerts for all my target customers, which can also be incredibly useful.

1 Sharma MK (2014). The impact on consumer buying behaviour: cognitive dissonance. Global Journal of Finance and Management 6 (9): 833–840. bit.ly/2B7jlrZ

REMEMBER – BUYERS ARE HUMAN So that is the complete list of the influences that are going on in your buyer’s head. The key is to remember that they’re human, just like you and me, whether we’re buying a new item of clothing or a set of headphones. Your job is to go through the matrix and find the key sources of worry and stress for your specific buyer – and then you can reduce these to a point where they can happily discuss buying from you – and you can develop the perfect pitch to them.

ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

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Source: CSO Insights: Selling in the Age of Ceaseless Change

DON’T RAGE AGAINST

THE MACHINE

JIM PRESTON urges sales professionals to embrace advances in artificial intelligence

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e’ve all heard stories about how robots and computers could replace millions of jobs and how artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing our working world. There’s been a lot of scaremongering about how AI is a threat to humanity – and yet more stories about how algorithms are getting recording contracts, robot dogs are jumping over fences and so on. Regardless of the industry, machine learning and AI are everywhere.

And it’s not simply hype. Consider this – when you’ve been shopping, have you had more interactions with real people, compared with your experiences 10 years ago? I suspect not. A considerable proportion of our shopping is done online, with our only human interaction being with the courier who delivers our package – although in future, even these roles may vanish 44 WINNING EDGE

as drones drop off our Amazon purchases.

In supermarkets, we may use self-checkout without interacting with another human being.

That said, B2B purchases are often more complex than B2C purchases, making smart salespeople more important. Indeed, sales enablement platforms have been helping salespeople stay on top of the data deluge – but with smarter buyers and ever-smarter AI coming into play, where can machines help us, and where can they hinder us, in changing times?

HUMAN WORKERS: AN ENDANGERED SPECIES? Consider this question – when was the last time you got advice from a colleague in a shop or online? Probably not too long ago: not all of our purchases are simple, self-service arrangements.

This is especially the case with more expensive or technically demanding purchases, like a car, a new laptop or a B2B purchase for your organisation, like a CRM suite or other sales and marketing software.

As we know, a lot of B2B purchases involve multiple people – 6.8 on average, according to CEB1 – and 81% of these buyers will buy based ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

SALES AUTOMATION | FEATURE

on experience rather than price or even product, according to SiriusDecisions.2 While in some situations, humans are losing ground to AI, in others they are making gains, especially in B2B. The big caveat is that buyers must feel understood and sales reps must add value, rather than just churning out content and sales patter.

AUGMENTED HUMANITY Despite the rise of machine learning and – eventually – AI, machines are not good at handling the complex and ambiguous world of human interaction. Unfortunately, humans often aren’t good at this either. With customers’ expectations increasing, it’s something businesses can’t afford sales employees to fall down on. We know from our own experiences that customers begin to tune out if they are presented with too much content and information – and that’s true in our own lives as sales professionals too.

For example, a sales rep must often remember details about products, services, the customer’s products and services, details about the other stakeholders involved in the organisation, and the context of the overall buying process within the company – and that’s before you start recalling the nice-to-have details like the customer’s birthday, hobbies and so on. As salespeople, we haven’t always been good at listening, although this is improving across the industry – but actually remembering all of the information we hear is yet another challenge.

The asymmetrical nature of the buying process has made this an even tougher process – customers have more content and are better equipped than ever before. Most of them will be at least 60% of the way through the buying process before ever contacting a salesperson for help, so they’ve done their research, whittled down a long list of vendors to a shortlist, and are approaching you from a privileged position of power and authority. It’s no longer enough for salespeople to be smart and charming – they need to offer buyers something they don’t already have, while also playing catch-up, fast.

This challenge has a very real impact on sales performance – I read recently that 57% of sales staff expect to miss their targets in 2019, which is very alarming. Not only is it uncommon for sales staff to admit this, but it’s not just a small number of underperforming staff – it’s a serious industry-wide issue.

SMART CONTENT It is possible for salespeople to stand out using content, but only if it’s done in a smart fashion.

A dusty catalogue from yesteryear or a PowerPoint presentation for another sector is simply not going to cut it. This is where ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM

JIM PRESTON is director of sales for Showpad, the sales enablement platform, where he is responsible for leading the mid-market sales team and growing the business across the UK, Ireland and Nordics. He has over 15 years’ experience of business development with leading global SaaS companies, including Salesforce, Pitney Bowes and Neopost. Visit Showpad.com

1 The new sales imperative.

Harvard Business Review, March-April 2017. bit.ly/2lLoKiA 2 SiriusDecisions buyer insight reports, based on 2017 B2B buyer study. bit.ly/2VlKy3v

“augmented humanity” comes into play – AI can augment rather than replace salespeople in the customer journey. Systems can analyse available data, such as which content was most used by a customer in a similar sector, in an organisation of a similar size, giving the sales executive some meaningful insights.

Today, various technologies do already capture data from these engagement tools, but it is collected in a decentralised and unstructured way. By introducing data science and AI to sales conversations this can be automated, which already drastically reduces the time a seller needs to spend on administration and increases their productive selling time.

AI can summarise meeting notes and send those back to the seller, manager and CRM system. Furthermore, with the help of natural language processing (NLP) all of the collected data can be structured in key concepts (such as pricing negotiation and competitive fear uncertainty and doubt) and fed back to the seller in the form of recommendations on what the best next steps should be, based on historical success – driving sales efficiency.

After all, if there is one certainty in life, it is that we are notoriously bad at taking notes or collecting any other relevant data coming out of each conversation. A large proportion of what is said in customer conversations gets lost – and that is a huge and very literal cost for companies.

Consequently, reducing the mental pressure on sales staff through smart technology helps them to focus on what is truly important, such as the evolution from being a “consultative” or “challenger” salesperson.

UNDERSTAND TECHNOLOGY AS A BUSINESS ENABLER It’s unlikely that we’ll ever completely trust AI assistants or systems to give us enough information and advice for a complex B2B purchase, because the old adage holds true that people like buying from people – and they need to feel trust in an expert’s advice before making a significant, complicated purchase.

As a result, salespeople must lose the fear of digitisation and whether they’ll be replaced by robots. Instead, they should see technology not as an adversary but a business enabler. In a similar fashion to the industrial revolution, although there continues to be disruption as machines replace some roles, the majority of jobs turn into “human plus machine” roles. This “augmented humanity” has the potential to make the sales professional an efficient and trustworthy consultant, able to cope with the vast amount of data at their fingertips – and triumph in sales situations faster and more competently.

WINNING EDGE 45

BOOK REVIEWS

BECOMING A COACH A main review of a coaching book plus a good one on objections. By MARC BEISHON

A

weakness of British salesforces is sometimes said to be the quality of sales managers. While frontline salespeople are among the best in the world, especially in complex B2B selling, the transition to moving up to sales management is often not so successful, partly because there can be little training and systematic processes to ease people into what is a highly challenging role with much at stake. This contrasts with the US, where selling is approached more consistently as a science and as a management discipline that requires training and development.

The ISM’s qualifications – at diploma levels 4 to 6 – have been helping to fill this sales management gap of course, and there are numerous commercial courses. But there are still few university sales courses, and the ones in place were no doubt encouraged by the admirable Beth Rogers, who ran the pioneering sales management MA at the University of Portsmouth, and who also wrote the book, Rethinking Sales Management, way back in 2007, which developed mainly strategic issues and was featured in Winning Edge.

One crucial aspect of sales management is development of salespeople, and in particular coaching them, rather than training. It’s one of the skills likely to be missing in many a new sales manager, especially those focused on process and spreadsheets. It’s why there is much current interest in sales enablement tools that support salespeople with content and playbooks. Keith Rosen’s book, Sales Leadership: The essential leadership framework to coach sales champions, inspire excellence and exceed your business goals, is a playbook style volume based on a coaching model he developed and first introduced in a previous book, Coaching Salespeople

COACHIN G SHORTCOMIN G S Rosen sets out reasons why managers don’t coach: n They think they’re coaching but they’re not, and inevitably learn the wrong lessons. A telltale sign is a manager who says things like, “Coaching doesn’t work”, “Sometimes you have to just tell them what to do, which is much easier”, or, his favourite, “Coaching just takes too long”

46 WINNING EDGE

n They had awful training.

Sometimes managers go through terrible coaching training n There is no company wide alignment on what coaching is and how to do it n There is no plan or process to ensure consistent, effective coaching n They’re not being effectively coached themselves.

into Sales Champions. With our usual health warning that Rosen is American, he has taken his model to many countries and seems to have found much success. His insights into sales coaching do look to be powerful in this later book, which refines his model. Setting out a key question early, he says: “The key to being a great leader is understanding what your people want and expect from you, but more important, why they want it.”

Rosen’s view is that coaching is an integral part of company culture, or it should be – and that it applies also to the ways that salespeople interact with customers as consultative sellers as much as coaching internally. It’s about putting “people before results”, and if you can’t change the company as a whole you can develop a coaching “subculture” in your own team. A coaching framework “consists of well‐crafted, precision‐ based questions to facilitate the conversation, which empowers people to self‐reflect and arrive at a solution or new insight on their own”. An abbreviated definition of coaching is simply “the art of creating new possibilities”.

Rosen puts forward a simple coaching framework – there are three questions, including “why” that need answering in every interaction: l What? What’s going on? What’s the topic of this conversation? What’s the objective? What help is the coachee looking for? Gather the facts by asking questions to accurately assess the situation.

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BOOK REVIEWS

l Why? Why is this happening? Why is the coachee in this situation? Uncover the gap or the root cause. Is this a training (mindset and skill set), coaching, advising, or observation‐sharing moment? l How? Tactical action‐oriented: How are you going to move forward and create a new outcome, possibility, or healthier way of thinking?

What usually happens though is that sales managers just ask what’s going on and then say here’s what you need to do, missing the “why” (and also often “who”, “how” and “when”). This is the build-up to his LEADS coaching model, which stands for Learn (to set objectives), Enrol (to set the environment and expectations for coaching), Assess (to uncover “what” and “how”), Define (to uncover “why”), and Support (to uncover who”, “how” and “when”). This is the essence – and Rosen also sets out types of questions to ask in these stages, and there are lots here – core, assumptive, learning, expansion, messaging... the idea is that you “coach the gap”, but there are only three main types of response you get: l The coachee provides a fully developed solution and/or possesses a high level of self‐awareness.

They recognised the gap... l The coachee provides a partial solution and/or an average degree of self‐awareness l You know for a fact that the solution or approach the coachee provided is inaccurate, would be ineffective, extremely risky, resource prohibitive, or achieve a low success rate, and/or the coachee has a very low degree of self‐ awareness...

Rosen considers that you can do this type of coaching in a 10 minute session and he asks you to think about using this approach in a typical phone call with your reports and not necessarily in a formal coaching session. In the bulk of the book he gives a lot of examples of how to turn conversations into coaching ones in various situations, such as deal and pipeline reviews, and along the way he spells out differences between training and coaching, the differences between impromptu and scheduled coaching, and how to turn team meetings into team coaching.

On scheduled coaching, he says: “One non‐ negotiable is for every coachee to come prepared to a one‐to‐one coaching session with a clear agenda. An unprepared coachee leads to coaching failure.” Performance reviews are given short shrift – you should be coaching all the time so that such reviews are essentially redundant. (And they often turn into results review.)

There’s much more in the book – on building trust and buy-in, on various conversations, and common mistakes. It’s a down-to-earth book that can help fill a big gap and is not an overly pushy sell for Rosen’s method.

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FOUR TYPES OF DEAL OBJECTIONS There are essentially four types of objections you encounter in the sales process: Prospecting – simple reflex responses during prospecting calls owing to people being too busy and seeing little value Red herrings – irrelevant issues introduced by buyers that divert attention that cause you to lose control of the conversation

Sales Leadership by Keith Rosen is published by Wiley and is available on Amazon

Objections by Jeb Blount is published by Wiley and available on Amazon

Micro-commitments – request brush-offs for your attempts to move to the next steps in the deal that stall pipeline velocity Buying commitments – objections that shut down your deal. They can be many – price and budget objections, timing objections, status-quo objections, need to talk it over with my boss or committee objections, and many more...

SELLING BOLDLY The second book is by Jeb Blount, whose book on emotional intelligence we thought highly of.

Last year he brought out Objections: The ultimate guide for mastering the art of science of getting past no, which we now have a copy of. It isn’t a book he was intending to write – he was focusing on negotiations and thought at first that there wasn’t too much to say on objections, which tend to be covered in one section in most sales books and courses. He changed his mind because a lot of questions he got asked at a session where sales pros hurl questions at him were on objections.

In a foreword, another expert, Mark Hunter, makes an interesting point – in sales, context matters in almost everything you do, as “every prospect, sales conversation, territory, company, and product are different”. The one exception is objections, as “you face objections and the potential for objections, no matter your unique situation”. Objections are a shared reality for all salespeople, he notes.

Blount writes that “asking” is the most important discipline in sales, and “asking with confidence is one of the most difficult things for humans to do”.

He takes you through how to be assumptive and confident in asking (“the reason I’m calling is...”) but then your ability to handle and get past objections “is where the rubber meets the road in sales”. There are four types of objections in the sales process, he says (see panel above), and you need to use what he calls “objection turnaround frameworks” – and Blount warns that he’s not giving you scripts – and books that do are mostly a waste of money, he adds.

Instead, he continues with some good psychology about the “science of resistance”; why objections are not rejections (but can feel like them) and not something to be “overcome” (but you need to handle your own emotions about rejection); and trying to avoid objections is “stupid” and you need to “prospect” them. Then Blount takes you through the four objection types in detail.

This is a well written book that should get you thinking more clearly about how you handle objections – and emotions – in the sales cycle.

WINNING EDGE 47

ISM PROFILE

SALES DEVELOPER Winning Edge meets WILL OFFEN, an experienced sales strategist, trainer and coach – and a Champion of the ISM What is your sales experience?

It can be a little scary to realise that I’ve been in sales for over 50 years... I’ve spent many of them creating, building and repairing sales businesses, both for myself and others. I’ve helped new teams learn their craft, rebuilt sales operations that have fallen apart, and established new sales offices in diverse places, such as Africa, Russia and China.

What brought you into sales?

I can’t remember, but I do know that I became hooked on the profession and have never considered any other. I’ve enjoyed a fantastic life from a career that has allowed me to work in over 50 countries, and has never failed to be interesting and challenging, working with both international and local businesses. I can’t think of another profession that offers such rich diversity and opportunity.

to understand that the single, most powerful key to sales success is the skill to interact effectively with the prospect and truly understand what they want and need, even better than they do themselves.

What has been your biggest challenge?

My biggest challenge over the years has been to convince businesses that there’s more to selling than simply making sales – it’s about creating a great client experience and developing trust and respect. It’s about producing a win-win “I believe the Institute is result. I still find it hard to understand now at its most influential, a how businesses fail to concentrate on the importance and value of customer and position richly deserved by client introductions – both as a vital its long history and service income stream and also as a major KPI. to the profession”

What is your current role?

At the start of 2017, I decided I wanted to reach a wider audience, including those that have less opportunity for the high-level training available to corporations with deep pockets. I reduced my corporate work to start developing online learning, based on my keynote programme, Be Highly Effective. I mix this with coaching for consultants and small business owners, who so often struggle most with sales purpose and processes. I’m still travelling the globe, speaking and consulting, but I’m now more selective in the contracts I accept.

What is your selling style?

I don’t consider myself a “natural” salesperson, and I’ve never been comfortable with many traditional sales techniques – the manipulative presentations, over-promising and heavy closing, etc. Amazingly, there is still an enormous number of sales dinosaurs who believe this is how to sell. Instead, I chose what I describe as diagnostic selling – listening to clients and helping them find the correct solution for their needs. This took away all the pressures of selling, both for me and the prospect, and even in the early days, without knowing exactly why, I was among the top performers. As I developed, I realised that my selling style was based on connecting with clients, actually enjoying the process of interaction, and allowing the sale to develop – of course, with the right guidance from me in the process. I came 48 WINNING EDGE

What are you most proud of?

As leaders, I believe we must always be finding reasons to congratulate our teams. In this context, we must count ourselves as part of the team and find reasons to be proud of ourselves and our achievements. Personally, I am most proud of the help I have given to so many people. Reading words like, “Our future success will mainly be thanks to you”, is a constant source of satisfaction for me.

What advice would you give to an aspiring sales professional?

Develop a deep sense of awareness and always be seeking knowledge. And keep this Nelson Mandela quote at the forefront of your mind: “I never lose, either I win or I learn.”

What do you like about the ISM? I first joined the ISM over 40 years ago. I believe the institute is now at its most influential, a position richly deserved by its long history and service to the profession. As a Champion of the ISM, I believe there is no better list of benefits or independent support structure available for the profession.

What are your future ambitions?

Developing the Be Highly Effective brand into an online knowledge resource is a 10 year project.

My team and I are busy writing and producing the course material before releasing it early next year.

My aim is to create a source of value for people who want to achieve more than average performance in sales, business and leadership.

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ISM MEMBER BENEFITS

Don’t delay, benefit today!

Did you know that as an ISM member you are entitled to a wide range of benefits and services? We can help you progress throughout your sales career in a number of different ways, such as by providing learning opportunities through our high quality content and insight from senior leaders within the sales industry

ISM MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS INCLUDE: PROFESSIONAL RECOGNITION Displaying your membership designation, such as EISM or FISM, from the leading professional body for the sales industry demonstrates your commitment to ongoing development as a sales professional.

It also significantly strengthens your customer proposals and enables you to stand out from the competition QUALIFICATIONS We offer professional and accredited sales qualifications approved by the government’s qualifications regulator, OFQUAL REGIONAL EVENTS ISM events provide great networking and learning opportunities as we invite senior speakers to present on topics relevant to the sales industry CPD SYSTEM Track your continuing professional development (CPD) activities, such as event and webinar attendance, and sales-related reading. Engaging with the ISM’s CPD system ensures that you are kept up-to-date with industry knowledge and enhances your ongoing professional development

ISM MENTOR SCHEME All our mentors are ISM Fellows.

They come from a range of sectors and are on hand to provide guidance and support to other members, assisting in their professional development. The scheme operates on a one-to-one basis, with mentees choosing the ISM mentor they would like to be paired with, based on which profile best matches their specific individual requirements SALES LITERATURE Members can borrow the best in informative sales and business books for up to 21 days across a range of titles and topics VIDEO LIBRARY Bite-sized thought leadership interviews with senior professionals from a wide variety of different industries, including both SMEs and large blue-chip organisations

WEBINARS Our webinar programme brings the wisdom of top sales leaders straight to you, with essential insights into improving your sales techniques WINNING EDGE Free subscription to the ISM’s industry-leading quarterly magazine, which comprises news, comment, advice and thought leadership on all aspects of the sales profession FREE LEGAL HELP Access instant, authoritative support from Lyon Davidson solicitors LIFESTYLE DISCOUNTS On travel, insurance, shopping and more, bringing down the cost of consumer and business purchases A 30% DISCOUNT On all purchases from leading business publisher Wiley

ISM RECOMMENDED READING Further videos, podcasts, articles and blogs relevant to your ISM membership level, helping develop your career through professional knowledge and understanding

For further information, visit ISMprofessional.com

Become an ISM Corporate Partner The ISM is proud to partner with a wide range of organisations, from major blue-chip companies such as Aggregate Industries, AO, Geberit, Redrow, Siemens and Virgin Media Business, to many smaller firms, education providers and others

Corporate Partnership with the ISM provides unique engagement, learning and networking opportunities.

Join us and boost your sales performance REAP THE REWARDS OF CORPORATE PARTNERSHIP WITH THE ISM: l Position your organisation as an ISM Partner, dedicated to sales methods that are professional and ethical l Align your organisation with the ISM’s code of conduct l Reinforce your organisation’s professional status, enhancing customer conversations and sales proposals l Benefit from a sales skills audit – to identify key areas for salesforce development and coaching l Achieve company-based Professional Sales Certification for your sales teams l Access OFQUAL-approved sales qualifications

l Support your sales staff with a continuing professional development (CPD) plan l Attend unique networking events with top business leaders and sales experts l Influence the ISM’s mission to gain Chartered status, to elevate our representation of the sales industry l Strengthen existing recruitment and retention strategies l Deliver and/or take part in webinars to the ISM’s global audience l Be part of BESMA (the British Excellence in Sales Management Awards) – the UK’s top sales awards

Find out more…

If you are interested in enhancing your brand’s credibility, while developing and recognising your salesforce, ISM Corporate Partnership can help!

For more information, email Tom Moverley, ISM Director, at tmoverley@ismprofessional.com or call him on 020 3167 4790