Buyer's Score Card

How do you think a buyer prepares for your sales call? Some do more than you know. One buyer's work on rating suppliers' sales calls gives us insight into how other buyers are scrutinizing our selling. It can also teach us how to be effective salespeople.

A hospital that makes selling better. Ms. Vicki Perfect is the former Director of Employment and Education at Greenville Hospital System in Greenville, South Carolina. She led the project to develop criteria to evaluate vendors and the products and services they sell. The hospital needed to evaluate for a variety of reasons. They needed to better understand the diversity of their needs and to establish a shared vision for the expected outcomes of the product or service. Buyers from different departments were purchasing similar products for different application needs. This was impacting the bottom line of the hospital.

They also wanted to create a shared understanding of the relationship between cost benefits and customer satisfaction. With the hospital industry undergoing significant cost constraints it was easy to select from the lowest bid. However, ultimately that selection of the product or service had an impact on the hospital's ability to deliver quality care. By creating standard selection criteria the hospital was able to evaluate financial impact as well as the service impact of its purchase.

The checkup. Hospital management brought staff from different departments and different disciplines together in cross-functional focus groups. Their assignment was to identify and prioritize their product and customer satisfaction needs. They then developed specific evaluation criteria. These criteria were to address the hospital's operational needs; impact on patient care; product or service presentation/quality; and provide references from other companies. Cost was also a factor. Each vendor was rated on a 10 point scale for each item. Then each item's weighted priority was factored into the results.

The operation was a success. The hospital found that the evaluation criteria resulted in decreasing the time it took to purchase the products/services and deploy them throughout the hospital. The members of the cross-functional teams became champions for the products/services that were actually selected and used the selection criteria as a mini-education tool to implement the product or service in their department. An added plus for the hospital was that this effort developed intelligent buyers so that the hospital, rather than salespeople, determined what they wanted and needed.

So the next time you prepare for your sales call, remember that your customers may be doing their own preparation as well. Ask your customers about their purchasing criteria. If you're going to be evaluated for your selling, you might as well know what your customer is looking for. It's one way to deliver just what the doctor ordered.

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Maura Schreier-Fleming is president of Best@Selling (http://www.bestatselling.com/). She works with business and sales professionals at company and trade association meetings to make selling easier and more productive. She is the author of the book Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results. She can be reached at 972 380 0200 or info@BestatSelling.com.

Danger Signals and Warning Signs

Life is filled with danger signals and warning signs. If you pay attention you can avoid the potholes and the problems that they cause. An oil leak in your car can be fixed with a $3 gasket. If ignored, your engine could seize and you'll pay $2000 for a replacement. Selling has its own danger signals and warning signs.

Not reading is dangerous. You need to learn about changes in business. Change is a warning signal. Any change is an opportunity for you or your competition. When staff or company needs change, salespeople need to respond quickly to ensure that their products continue to meet customer needs. Reading the newspaper is a source of knowledge about change. When you read the newspaper, you learn about changes in business that impact your customers' businesses and then your own. How else can you easily learn about mergers, strategic focus issues, competition, growth and failure to meet business objectives? Remember sales and business books, too. Even incorporating 15 minutes a day of additional reading will have a positive impact on your business knowledge and ultimately your business.

Having difficulty making call objectives for a sales call is a sign you're in trouble. Your job is to bring value to your customers. Another greeting by a smiling face is not a source of value. Objectives that add value to your customers' operations involve avoiding costs, reducing costs, or simplifying an operation for your customer. Planning before the sales call should include the steps to accomplish your objective. Having difficulty establishing your call objective is a clue that you might not be giving your customers a reason to do business with you.

Not knowing key decision makers is a bad sign. All accounts have critical decision makers. The economic decision maker reaches decisions based on cost. The technical decision maker decides based on specifications. The user makes decisions based on satisfaction with using your product. If you're only calling on one decision maker; if you're unfamiliar with all decision makers; or if you're unaware of each of their concerns, the red light goes on. Pay attention when your contacts move on and are replaced by others. You need to reestablish relationships with the new contact by identifying their key concerns and motivators. Forgetting to do the work to make a new contact loyal will leave you vulnerable to the past loyalties they've established with other suppliers.

No systematic process for prioritizing accounts is serious. Your selling time should be given to your accounts based on their probability of buying, their importance to your sales goals, and their need to see you. You need to ask and answer, "When is this account likely to buy? Is this a strategic account because of location, a particular product or volume? Is this a significant problem that warrants my time now?" In all cases the answer will determine what you should be doing and how much time you spend with each account. In all cases determine that your customer's needs are met with your lowest cost solution. If a phone call will work, why make a sales call? All customer contacts should be made after you identify your sales priorities and determine appropriate levels of service according to those priorities.

Do you find yourself saying what you would have, should have or could have done after you fix a problem? This is a sign that you ignored a danger signal. It's so much easier to avoid a problem than to fix it. When you hear yourself saying, "If only I had called on that new project engineer earlier I wouldn't have lost the account" it's time to start looking at your other business. You're probably missing some warning signs there, too.

Maura Schreier-Fleming works with business and sales professionals on skills and strategies so they can sell more and be more productive at work. She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results which is available at www.BestatSelling.com. She founded her company Best@Selling in 1997. You can reach her at 972.380.0200 or info@Bestatsellling.com.

Einstein's Theory of Selling

Did you know that Albert Einstein had a theory on selling? He said, "Doing things the same way you always have and expecting the results to be different is insanity." He may not have realized it at the time, but what better theory to apply to selling? Selling is complex and we face many challenges. We think that doing what we've always done is a strategy for success. Yet the choices we make are critical to our success. As your new year unfolds, what are you planning to do? Is it more insanity or getting different results?

Doing it. What do you want to do different? Sometimes when we're busy doing our job we lose sight of where our challenges are. What has stressed you? Think about all the times you thought last year "if only I could do X," "if only I knew more about Y," or "there's got to be a better way to do this." Maybe it was putting a bid proposal together, addressing the time inefficiencies of business travel, or improving your use of technology. Remember those thoughts and make a plan to incorporate them as goals in your 1999 selling. Write your goals down, set a due date and quantify how you will achieve them.

For some people, it's hard to be creative and come up with new ideas for change. Get others to help you achieve your goals. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are enough salespeople, books and Internet sites that can be ready sources of guidance. Expect that it may take time to see results. Just remember, if you're going to be complaining to yourself this year about something you faced last year, you're contradicting Einstein's Theory of Selling.

Showing it. We can plan to do things differently for our customers as well. How do you show your customers you appreciate them? Lunches are fine, but everyone does them. What else could you do that sets you apart that also builds rapport with your customers? When you read the newspaper and other journals, are you looking for articles that are of particular interest to select clients? What business book (or other book) could you recommend to your customer that would enhance his job performance? Each time you send information that helps your customers, you are also saying you care about them and their business.

What about our customers' expectations? We certainly demonstrate by our past actions what our customers can expect from us as suppliers. We also know the results we have gotten from our behavior. If these results are what you want, keep doing more of the same. If they're not, Albert would say to do something different.

Now that the year is new, you can make it a different one. You can choose what you do in your selling. You can set your own expectations for results. Then later this year when you examine your results, remember that selling is all relative. It's relative to your choices and your expectations. Even Einstein would agree.

Maura Schreier-Fleming works with business and sales professionals on skills and strategies so they can sell more and be more productive at work. She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results which is available at www.BestatSelling.com. She founded her company Best@Selling in 1997. You can reach her at 972.380.0200 or info@Bestatsellling.com.

Breaking Out of Phone Mail Jail

The problem. "I'm sorry, I'm out of my office. Would you please leave your name and number and I'll return your call as soon as I can." How many of us are still waiting for our reply? Several of you have asked for help in getting your phone calls returned. Most prospects don't call back 85 percent of the time. We know that the Economic Buyer, who has authority to release funds, is typically difficult to reach. With the average office worker getting 190 messages a day, it's easy to understand why phone calls aren't returned by other buyers. Technology has made our selling lives both easier and more challenging. Voice mail is a challenge that forces us to redefine our telephone strategies.

Create Interest. If a customer doesn't need your product or service immediately, the probability of getting a reply is slim to none. How can you increase your odds of success? Treat each phone call you make as a sales call (no pun intended). Each sales call has an objective and so does a phone call. The objective could be for an appointment or the return call. You have about 10 seconds before your customer decides if he is interested in you. Prepare what you are going to say. Your message should spark interest and include what you can do for your customer. Present the benefit so it sounds interesting and worth the time to make the return call. This requires you to do research to know what is interesting for this customer.

Change Procedure. Other strategies exist for getting appointments. Just leave a message which says "I've been trying to set up an appointment with you. I know how busy your are. If June 6 at 10:00 WON'T work for you, please call me at (your phone number)." When you arrive on June 6 at 10:00 and the receptionist says, "Do you have an appointment?" you can say "Yes." Try to do this with sales calls that are geographically close to confirmed appointments. You still run the risk of a buyer not reconfirming. At least you won't make a special trip to his location.

Get Through the First Time. Since most prospects return calls to suppliers they know, another strategy is to always get referrals. Selling in the 90s is not only about who you know. It's about getting to know the people who know the people you want to know. This is the principle of networking which states that each person knows about 250 other people. Each one of your customers could be a member of a trade organization, a religious institution or sports facility. Who knows the prospect you are trying to meet? Ask THEM to call the prospect for you to say you will be calling. That introduction will increase the probability that your prospect will return your call or take your call! Whenever you are calling a referral, ALWAYS tell the receptionist "John Doe asked me to call Mr. Prospect." If the secretary screens calls, she will have mentioned the person who referred you to the prospect.

Get help. Sometimes there is even a phone screener before you get to voice mail. Enlist the help of the phone screener and you can actually speak to your prospect. Explain to the screener that "I have been playing phone tag with John Doe. Can you see if he can speak with me for a few minutes about the benefit to him or his company." This has been successful for me after leaving numerous voice mails that went unreturned.

Change times. Another strategy is to call when your prospect has to answer his own phone. Most screeners are out before 8 AM and after 5 PM. Some prospects are still at their desks at lunch time when the screener is out. Calling at these times gives you higher probability that the prospect will actually pick up his phone since the secretary is out.

Always keep trying. This is one area where persistence does pay off. You should not leave 10 messages a day (unless you do want to look like a pest). Trying at different times with different strategies should eventually get you speaking to the right prospect.

Maura Schreier-Fleming works with business and sales professionals on skills and strategies so they can sell more and be more productive at work. She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results which is available at www.BestatSelling.com. She founded her company Best@Selling in 1997. You can reach her at 972.380.0200 or info@Bestatsellling.com.

Its About Time

Pareto is very busy in the sales world. You know the 80-20 rule. In this case, it means that only 20% of salespeople spend 80% of their time on selling activities. Are you in this group? See if you recognize yourself. If not, here’s how you can join the group.

Put your fingers on it fast. Laura Stack is a professional speaker and author of Leave the Office Earlier® and Find More Time. She sees several time wasters that cost salespeople valuable selling time. One of the biggest time wasters is lacking a system to track client history. The system should include notes on conversations that took place, with whom, and when they took place. Stack says, “To be truly organized you should be able to have a prospect call you out of the blue and you should be able to immediately refer back to a conversation that took place years ago.” Without the system, you can’t be effective. You may even frustrate clients who have to repeat themselves and might have to rely on facts that aren’t correct. Stack uses ACT! to take notes while talking with clients on the phone. Many salespeople are unaware that Outlook can be used to track history. The journal feature allows you to take notes and attach those notes to the contact. Stack adds that you can use a manual folder system if you prefer. What is essential is to have a system to aggregate and retrieve client history.

There’s an unexpected time waster—the BlackBerry. It’s hard to use one for taking notes because you can’t type that fast. Stack sees salespeople taking notes on scraps of paper, place mats and even their hands. That haphazard system makes them more disorganized. She suggests, “Understand the features and benefits and decide if it’s for you.” It’s important once you do take notes to enter them into your system as soon as possible so they don’t pile up.

Get to work fast. Another time waster is when salespeople lack a plan or poorly plan their daily activities. It starts by having a system to schedule follow up tasks like telephone calls. If you tell a customer you will call in two weeks, you must follow through. Some salespeople think they can remember everything they promise. That’s far too taxing. Instead, a technology supplied or manual system works well to keep your promises. She says, “People will work with someone who is reliable more than someone they like.” Some inefficient salespeople begin each day thinking, “Who am I supposed to call today?” Stack says that when you come to work each day you should already know whom you’re supposed to call and what you’re supposed to do. If you work in inside sales, your planning can be the last task of the previous day. If you do a lot of driving, a week out is sufficient and more time is required for air travelers. In addition, at the beginning of each month Stack recommends reviewing activities for the coming month.

Work on selling. Stack sees many salespeople wasting time on activities that take them away from selling. One activity is constant email checking which she suggests reducing to once per day. She sees salespeople who take notes on spiral notebooks only to waste time flipping back through the notebooks to locate a particular piece of customer information. She often hears complaints about completing reports that are time wasters. Yet when she asks, “What have you done about it?” she often gets the response, “Nothing.” Stack reports, “If leadership knew, they would care as it’s directly impacting the profitability of the sales force.”

You may think you don’t have time to plan your selling. You really do. Stack says, “Organization is an enabler. Once it’s in place, it allows you to make more sales. It’s a launching pad to reach more sales revenue.” Sounds like it’s time to take the leap and join the 20% that are selling more effectively.

Maura Schreier-Fleming works with business and sales professionals on skills and strategies so they can sell more and be more productive at work. She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results which is available at www.BestatSelling.com. She founded her company Best@Selling in 1997. You can reach her at 972.380.0200 or info@Bestatsellling.com.

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Maura Schreier-Fleming is president of Best@Selling (http://www.bestatselling.com/). She works with business and sales professionals at company and trade association meetings to make selling easier and more productive. She is the author of the book Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results. She can be reached at 972 380 0200 or info@BestatSelling.com.