How can sales trainers and managers use BA to boost sales?
Observing and assessing what people to say and do in given sales situations is not new. It can have a powerful impact on sales effectiveness when done well. From sales ranging from inside to field sales, from direct to indirect, from simple to complex it is not so much which is the best system but which is most appropriate for the job you need to do. What follows is an overview of the case for BA in improving sales performance.
Why measure what people say or do?
Many of us are unaware of how skilled we are and, more importantly for development purposes, we are very often unaware of exactly how we produced such skilled purposes. We could, of course, ask skilled performers how they have reached their level of ability. Unfortunately, many of their highly skilled performances are by now unconscious with apparently little effort or planning. In fact various research studies of expert performance skills – music, sport, selling has shown such analysis can be really misleading. The prize though is worth it. If we can analyse top performers and are able to develop those skills in others the pay-offs are often double digit sales revenue increases. For example, in my own sales productivity projects, with a range of clients, have produced sales increase ranging from 25% to 100% using a BA based approach.
Clearly, if we want to illuminate why some people are more skilled than others we need to measure what is going on. A crucial factor is to make sure there is a balance between sales outcomes (Lagging Indicators) and the sales behaviors/process used to achieve such results (Leading Indicators). This balance shifts as the complexity and length of the sales increases. It becomes crucial to know how more skilled sales people achieve sales progress, such as:
Get invited to bid
Gain customer’s agreement to visit a reference site
Help the customer develop their RFP
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Back in 1995 I worked with my client Peter Barlow then VP Global Account Management and Major Projects for APV (Food Process Engineering Company) on developing a Major Account Management System. Now over 15 years on I ask:
What’s changed in Key Account Management 15 years on?
Building and maintaining profitable relationships with your most important customers is more challenging than ever. The stakes are even higher of investing reduced resources on a few customers (accounts) with that nagging doubt of “backing the wrong horse”
“… (Managers) often don’t realize or understand how markets change and believe sales to be just how it was fifteen years ago.” (TACK Sales Leadership Survey 2011)
“Doing business with and actually making money from your largest strategic ‘partners’ has never been more difficult….Only a few corporations are getting it right.” (Richard Ilsley, SMCG 2010)
This blog takes a hard look at strategic, key or major accounts (KAM) and why many senior executives remain concerned 15+ years on. To do this retrospective I have drawn on several current experts in the field including a paper by Richard Ilsley of SMCG, TACK International and Mercuri.
In one of my clients in the food engineering sector, I estimated that only 1:12 quotes were successful. What are the implications of this situation, apart from not making your “Nut”?
Effort devoted to lost causes
Good opportunities starved of resources at the right time
Internal relationships between sales engineer and other suppliers
Damaged Sales credibility due to poor forecasting
And??????
A Test
So, here’s a test. At your next Sales Meeting checkout to see if people are on the same page. You might use different terminology but the principle is the same. Can you get your people and those that support them “on the same page”. Here’s some definitions to check out with them.
Sound weird, doesn’t it? Truth is . . . being tied to one training methodology simply isn’t productive.
There’s no “perfect training methodology” – whether it be focused on selling, managing or coaching. Any training should Advance Competence while Advancing Sales. Complex sales organizations need methodological purpose rather than one methodology piled on top of existing methodologies.
Additionally, people have been trained a lot in their lives. It seems obvious that we should also give them credit for the concepts, processes, and skills they have already learned. Adding methodologies (no matter how good they are) risks creating indifference. We know indifference does not change behaviors! Conversely, building commitment relies on giving your people and managers credit for what they already know, while at the same time changing behaviors that do not work.
Regular readers will remember I was talking about how many change projects started in response to the worsening economy yet almost half of the respondents said that a significant amount of change projects failed to meet their stated goals.
This is the third in my Leadership Skills series to help Leaders assess where they need to develop their people skills. In my last Post I introduced the research-based model that led to many useful insights into how to create and manage effective meetings. I covered the impact of Filter and Amplifier meetings which were the names the researchers coined to distinguish the different ways in which ideas or proposals were managed. This Post focuses on people who are difficult for many to handle or feel comfortable with, and you may be one of these people under certain circumstances.
Typically, you will work with one of these people who naturally behave this way and, in certain situations you may change the way you behave, often without realizing it.
How do you recognize you are dealing with one of these mysterious people?
Let’s look at one aspect of behavior – Reacting. It’s a group of behaviors you can choose to use; each of which when used repeatedly will have certain effects on the people you interact with, for better or worse. Let’s take the first of the Reacting Group – Supporting someone’s ideas or position – what’s your most likely response?
Supportive, likable…I guess
Yes that’s right. Secondly, there is Disagreeing with someone’s ideas or position. How are you likely to feel?
Well, I could see them as negative if they are aggressive or defensive…
That’s interesting….funnily enough people don’t see people who are high in disagreeing as necessarily negative, because they are rational, and seen as more objective…if they stick to a person’s proposals or ideas and do NOT focus on the person themselves. If they do get defensive or aggressive they are not disagreeing, they are Defending/Attacking. No surprise there about how such emotional people are viewed by colleagues and family members, for that matter.
OK, so who’s this mystery person… high “disagreer,” or defend/attacker?
Neither, this person is called the LOW REACTOR; they use lower levels of all three behaviors in both their verbal and non-verbal behavior, they show very little reaction to others
So, they are very quiet individuals..right?
Not necessarily. They may, for example, have high levels of Initiating and/or Clarifying behaviors. The only thing they avoid is Reacting.
Why is this Low Reactor a problem?
They give very little feedback about whether they approve of points you present. This tends to make people feel uneasy and people tend to handle them ineffectively. For example, even experienced sales people find it difficult to make their case convincingly when they are faced with somebody whose lack of response makes it hard to judge. One salesperson summed up the difference between high “disagreers” and low reactors.
“You know where you stand with someone who is prepared to disagree. What makes it hard with the Low Reactor is that he doesn’t’ even disagree!”
Some research to back up this comment was presented in the famous Xerox Research Project in the late 70’s (Neil Rackham, Simon Bailey & Linda Marsh, Huthwaite Research Group), one element of which looked at this very point. The researchers showed that while high “disagreers” are harder to sell to, the hardest to sell were the Low Reactors.
How much different were sales people’s success rates?
It was quite striking. The researchers looked at calls which advanced to the next stage or a deal was signed. For average reactors, salespeople were successful in about 11 out of 20 sales, where selling to high “disagreers” only 8 out of 20, and finally, Low Reactors only 3 out of 20 sales.
That’s a big difference…did they find out why selling to Low Reactors was so difficult?
It turns out that there are Five Common Traps people tend to fall into when trying to persuade a LOW REACTOR. Let’s see if you have experienced any of these…
Ok Go ahead… I am sure I have fallen into at least one and not realized it
That’s an excellent point…most people don’t know what’s happening to them … other than this person seems awkward to deal with.
Trap 1 – Losing Control Over Your Speaking Pace
Because people lose confidence in front of Low Reactors they do one of two things, either they talk faster to get to something that will spark interest or they run out of things to say due to the lack of reaction. For example, sellers’ normal speech rate was 119 words per minute (wpm) where it was 138 wpm when selling to Low Reactors and the number of pauses, or “umms” more than doubled. In fact, the number of redundant words significantly increased as well, like “Well, you see…what I meant to say…”
I bet this doesn’t apply just to sales situations?
Quite right, job interviews are another good example of finding Low Reactors – more situational – Interviewers know they are not supposed to support or disagree.
Fascinating, what’s the second trap?
Trap 2: Losing Sequence During Presentations
This was common in any situations where someone needs to make a verbal presentation. If either the decision maker or Leader is a LOW REACTOR or they are evaluating and making a big decision presenters will tend to jump around or lose sequence. In a study of 23 leaders, presenters “back tracking” occurred over 50% more often and “jumping the Gun” occurred 3 times as often.
What’s the Third Trap?
Trap 3: Over-Reacting. (Over-stating to get a reaction)
This is the most common and most dangerous trap to fall into. In a study of twenty-eight trade union officials and their management counterparts researchers actually observed real life labor negotiations and listened for emotionally charged statements. The differences were stark when the low reactor was on either side of the negotiation table – nearly 50% more emotionally charged statements were made.
In another study of salespeople, selling to LOW REACTORS led to a drop in factual statements and overstatements went up from 4% average to 13% with LOW REACTORS also untruths went to 3% from 1%.
Well it confirms that sellers do lie on occasions..doesn’t it?
Yes, BUT, so does the general population…some of the time.
OK… two more to go,…what’s number 4?
The Five Traps
Trap 4: Asking Fewer Questions Than Usual.
Asking more questions is usually a good thing to do with LOW REACTORS to find out where you are if nothing else! Especially; “How do you feel about this point?” Unfortunately 80% of people say they should ask more questions yet only 30% actually do. In one sample of 196 sellers questions fell by one-third to one half.
What’s the fifth trap?
Trap 5: Giving Too Much Information
For example, in selection interviews, law courts and other places where low reaction is normal, people often come away having given a great deal more information than they wanted to. In one study, sales people gave 50% more feature statements to LOW REACTORS.
Do we all fall into these traps?
No. Some people are more susceptible than others.
The 5 Traps: Your likelihood to fall into them
1 Pace 10-15%
2 Sequence 25-30%
3 Over Reacting/Stating 55-60%
4 Fewer Questions – 75%-80%
5 Blah,blah, blah (Talk too much) 75%-80%
What proportion of the population are LOW REACTORS?
That’s difficult to say considering factors like ethnicity and cultural differences – e.g. Scandinavians vs. Italians. What the researchers indicated is that the bigger the decision someone makes the more likely that their reaction levels will be lower. For example, in selling larger sized machines researchers found that LOW REACTOR levels rose from 18% to 46% and when people were making a decision for someone else Low Reacting goes from 16% to 47%.
How do you define Low Reactors?
Typically researchers found that Reacting Behaviors less than 10% of all behaviors identified a LOW REACTOR.But it’s clouded by reaction levels being higher in one-to-one situations, so for groups the number is 7%, and the other problem is with those people who just don’t say much at all.
What is the significance for Leaders?
Let’s look at how leaders could actually set up their people to fail (placing these traps in their way unintentionally). If you are not aware of how your reaction levels drop, and under what circumstances they drop, you can set up your people for progressive confidence loss. Are you a natural LOW REACTOR anyway? It is natural for many leaders, as they rise up the corporate ladder, to learn that reacting either in support or disagreement too quickly can create risks. So, many senior leaders exhibit the “keeping your cards close to your chest” behavior.
Your Low Reacting behavior can deplete your peoples’ confidence and create risk avoidance in their behavior. This can result in lower levels of informal communication, especially from junior staff members. The point is that Leaders may not want to lower their reactions with their people too often. For example:
Can you imagine leaders lowering their reaction levels during big presentations? Given the above traps, less experienced people might suffer a confidence loss and start to think you are disagreeing with them, when in fact you are thinking things through.
How are you going to set and manage team expectations to avoid – or at least manage – falling into one of the above traps?
Think about your expectations when people are preparing next year’s first round budget presentation. How apprehensive were they last time? How did this detract from an effective process and the team’s engagement?
How can you set expectations to improve this process?
For example, you might say:
“I expect that you will give me feedback on the impact of my behavior when making big decisions.” (How are you setting yourself up for unintended Low Reacting?)
“At the end of this meeting we will agree to expectations that I have of you and what you expect from me.”
“Before we start budget planning I expect people to come to a review meeting to assess how effectively the process and people’s preparation helped or hindered during that first round?”
Given that Low Reaction levels will occur, how can you help your people feel more comfortable?
Brief your people when you know your reaction levels are likely to fall. If several subordinates are presenting, it can be helpful to ensure certain reactions are planned. For example, say something like:
“I expect team members to give feedback directed at the expectations we set in the Review meeting…”
“I expect that all feedback will focus on the evidence presented and not how it was presented.”
“I expect that all proposals put forward during presentations are not rejected or accepted immediately.” (We owe it to the presenter to seek to understand and try to help their ideas come to fruition.”)
What Conclusion Can We Draw?
Low reacting levels are normal and often more situational, rather than an indicator of a person’s preferred behavioral style. As a leader, it is within your control to set expectations to avoid and/or manage the negative impact of such behavior.
Low reacting can be turned to advantage, forcing ideas to be fully explored before people react. It also facilitates a sense of team by encouraging Building rather than Reacting Behavior.
What can you do about this situation?
Madness can be defined as “doing what you have always done, yet expecting different results.” So, what expectations do you now have for yourself in terms of managing your reaction levels?
Doing different things is about “purposeful practice” and then getting feedback from others, What mechanisms or structures do you have in place to do this? How are you going to restructure major interactions with your staff to lower their chance of falling into traps?
Great, but how can this help me?
This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog. How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up. Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results. If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.
_________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage
The really effective sales organization has a number of characteristics, for example:
Skills and strategies suited to their market outstanding products or services
In-depth understanding of how these products can solve customer problems
Appropriate rewards and performance measures
Sales support system which actually helps to sell, not just administer
An ability and willingness to learn
Full effectiveness, however, can be achieved only if everyone:
Has a clear and shared vision of where the company is heading
Understands the strategy for getting there and their part in the process
Is rewarded for playing their part
Focuses obsessively on the customer
Some barriers to effectiveness are obvious – if the products are poor then no amount of sales skill can compensate sufficiently to build success. Many barriers are more subtle, and can sap the strength of the company over a long period without being tackled. Such problems usually fall under one the following three headings:
Misalignment
Inflexibility
Internal Focus
Misalignment
Feels like a bad back
There are many ways in which Misalignment is introduced into organization structures and processes; at best they generate unhelpful tensions and frustrations, at worst they lead to departmental rifts and sabotage. Common examples are:
Poor alignment of individuals’ expectations, departments and the company as a whole
E.g. the sales force seeks job interest by selling bespoke solutions, while the company is trying to standardize its offerings
Incentives for interdependent departments or people are not congruent
E.g. Sales force targeted on increased volume, administration targeted on decreased costs performance management process runs counter to company strategy
Sales management sets 30 day revenue targets, while company exhorts the salespeople to develop major accounts for the long-term
Salespeople are expected to cross-sell for other Divisions or countries, but are not rewarded for so doing
Sales management is “do as I say, not as I do”
E.g. Managers use a hard ‘push’ style, while advocating a ‘pull’ or consultative style with their people
Doing what we’ve always done what is going to be needed due to changing technology, markets and competition
E.g. When a monopoly supplier meets competition for the first time so the products no longer ‘sell themselves’
When new products address a different market – for example, printer sales force find themselves selling systems not peripherals
Gaps between stated values and actual values
E.g. “Our customers are our greatest asset ” while salespeople refer to them as “Buyers are liars”
“Our employees are our greatest asset”, while managers show little concern and even less investment
Inflexibility
Many markets are now more turbulent and unpredictable than ever before, and success comes only to those who are ‘quick on their feet’. Unfortunately many players suffer from at least one of the following:
Their sales organization structure and roles don’t match those of the customer
E.g. they offer multipoint direct contact with sales, service, technical support, while the customer wants single point contact
Geographical location of functions and authority doesn’t match the customer’s
Their organization is inherently unresponsive to change
E.g. in rapidly evolving markets, companies operating a traditional hierarchical and functional structure find it hard to compete with those successfully using a cross-functional team approach
• Their people are resistant to change
E.g. Salespeople who have been adequately successful for years have become “order takers”, and the entertaining approach to account development
Managers who find it hard to let go of their traditional, power-oriented style and allow staff the space and authority to really contribute
Technical people who are unwilling to take on the sales role and don’t believe in the new technology
Internal focus
True customer focus involves a lot more than ‘customer service training’; it means that no aspect of the organization should be free from an all-pervading concern with delivering what the customer wants, and a bit more. It means taking your cue from the customer in areas which traditionally have been internally focused, for example:
Company and/ or departmental structure
E.g. Split on arbitrary product/technical grounds, so that several sellers approach the same individual
Performance measures
E.g. Call rates, scrap rates, production volumes, instead of response times, satisfaction ratings, service call-outs
Perception of what is being sold
E.g. In terms of a product rather than the results of using it – a security system rather than peace of mind, a training course rather than increased sales effectiveness
Conclusion
There is no one best sales organization structure, incentive scheme, or strategic approach. If there were, we would not see the huge diversity which exists in the real world, and change would anyway render it obsolete.
The effective organization is never complacent, and audits itself rigorously and constantly, seeking out and remedying any instances of inconsistency, inflexibility and internal focus. It also never fools itself into believing that change=progress;. change follows cycles of learning of what works and what doesn’t, not from a fear of stagnation.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page
Contact: Nick Anderson, Senior Partner, PDS Group LTD E-mail I Web I Linkedin
If we can analyse top performers and are able to develop those skills in others the pay-offs are often double digit sales revenue increases. For example, in my own sales productivity projects, with a range of clients, have produced sales increase ranging from 25% to 100% using a BA based approach.
This is the third in my Leadership Skills series to help Leaders assess where they need to develop their people skills. In my last Post I introduced the research-based model that led to many useful insights into how to create and manage effective meetings. I covered the impact of Filter and Amplifier meetings which were the names the researchers coined to distinguish the different ways in which ideas or proposals were managed. This Post focuses on people who are difficult for many to handle or feel comfortable with,
I bet this doesn’t apply just to sales situations?
The Crispian Advantage 