Hey, Jay here,
I have recently been asked by quite a few people to write some blogs on the new generation sales paradigm that I have alluded to in some of my previous posts. So, here we go….
Part 1.
I thought I’d start by looking at the old paradigm of sales and why it is no longer valid in our brave new (information-rich) world.
The old methodologies - the sales processes that have come and gone through the ’80s and ’90s - including the hard sell approach, the consultative approach, the SPIN approach (to mention a few well known sales methodologies), all presuppose that the sales person must have all the answers and inevitably position the product as a means to an end. Most of these sales approaches use the product (and therefore product knowledge) as leverage in the sales process, often to invite interest and buy-in from the client to the sales conversation itself.
Most ‘good’ sales people that I have met, have been trained (at some stage) to “close” at every opportunity.
Most of the ‘good’ sales people have also admitted to me that they are often at a loss for how to make sense of buyers and what really motivates them to buy. Motivation is only one part of the buying puzzle. As we’ll discover buying is much more complex than just motivation.
We have been told time and time again, by industry training guru’s to become adept at handling and resolving objections and to become product experts, to learn more about our product and industry than anyone else. We have been told that we should “question, understand, identify, empathize and test” in order to prove that the product can overcome the client’s objection(s). (Ziglar on Selling, 1992).
Well here’s the rub! The old paradigm, (the above approach) actually creates most of the issues that it tries to resolve. Sharon Drew Morgan, (a breath of fresh air to the sales industry) was the first to get her head around this concept many years back, and so brought awareness of the gap between our aspirations and behaviour in the sales environment.
Sharon Drew’s concept of objections are a perfect example of this. Morgan says that objections* are created through the process of putting forward a product/solution without helping the client find the context for change.
According to Morgan, the biggest hitch in the old paradigm approach is that as a process it does not help the buyer to make a decision.
As a people coach, I have to agree.
Change is not something that happens easily for us humans because change is actually quite a complex process. We have to go through a contextual or perceptual shift, in order to change the status quo (the current situation).
To sell is to ask the buyer to change their status quo. The buyer firstly needs to understand what has to be considered in for change to occur? They need to to look at the consequences of not changing versus the potential payoffs of changing. They need to consider the impacts of action versus inaction. They need to test and challenge, and be challenged through the process. Does this all sound like mumbo jumbo?
Well another way to look at this is that a buyer will only buy from us once they are motivated to change and have made a decision to change, by identifying why things ought to change, and deciding that it’s time to make that change now.
Here’s a story that may help get a better understanding of what I am talking about.
I was recently in a friend’s car, driving to Sydney from Katoomba (about 2 hours on the freeway) and I noticed that the oil light was lit up on his dashboard, and that he seemed totally oblivious to it. When I enquired about it, my friend, Jason, told me that it meant nothing because it ‘always’ came on and therefore must be faulty. I thought on this for a while and asked “How would you know that it was time to get that fixed?” “Well”, answered Jason, “when the car breaks down, i’ll know something’s really wrong”. We laughed. I then asked about what Jason’s plans for the next few weeks were, only to uncover that he was planning a long distance trip (in the car) with his partner and young baby. Nothing more was said on the subject. The next week I caught a lift across town with Jason and guess what? The car had been serviced and the red light had been fixed.
The paradox is that unless a client can figure out why they are maintaining their current context – that is the structure of the status quo, there is no motivation or appetite for change. If the seller pushes their solution without first facilitating this part of the change process, they only serve to strengthen the buyers resolve to maintain the status quo. Doh!@
Here in Australia, a few years back there was a customer satisfaction survey conducted by Gallup that indicated that the sales process itself was one of the main causes of customer dissatisfaction, staff attrition, increased costs and reduced profits. I witnessed this first hand in the Telecommunications industry (here in Australia) as well.
Every business at some stage must face the reality that the old paradigm sales process is incongruent with current cultural norms, values and principles (many of the same values that they promote as part of their brand) held by most businesses and consumers. They will eventually, through market forces, have to accept that the old way of selling is no longer a successful strategy for market longevity.
So, if this old paradigm sales process has worked in the past, why doesn’t it work today? Has the culture, the mindset and the values of the population really changed that much? And if so, how has that happened?
The answer is yes, in the last 20 odd years we have seen more cultural change than ever before.
This is the result of a combination of factors, including the huge technological advances we have made. The emergence of mobiles, computers, mass-market access to high speed Internet (and therefore data), easy access to low cost travel, globalisation of markets, shifting societal values, etc.
Because of this, buyers are no longer interested in being provided with information that they themselves can research on Google, particularly from a sales person whose primary motivation is in making a sale!
Buyers want, and need, to make their own decisions, and they need to figure out how to do that before they become interested in how our product or solution might fit what they’re looking for.
So where do we start as a sales person? How do we begin the journey of changing the way we approach the buyer?
Selling is actually a process rather than an outcome. It has a structure and a context. It also must be built on rapport and trust. The sales person must create a shared feeling (Morgan calls this the ‘we space’) of trust and integrity, where the client feels comfortable with, and engaged in - the process.
As Morgan says, ‘without rapport there is no buyer. Without a buyer, there is no sale’.
The new generation sales paradigm begins with one overarching frame of mind. That is, the seller does not and cannot possibly understand or know the buyer’s business or personal situation as well as the buyer does. The sales person cannot possibly understand the complexities involved in the buyer’s environment. How could they? Even the buyer usually doesn’t know! If the buyer cannot see how to adjust their environment to accommodate a new solution (representing change), they will resist change itself.
If that’s the case, then sales people can stop kidding themselves and stop wasting energy chasing shadows. All that energy can then be harnessed to facilitate change.
Sales people must become coaches and coach the buyer through the process of change in order to help them understand how to buy.
The consequences of not facilitating change in this way are well known; long drawn out sales cycles; a high number of callbacks, huge time wastage, increased average handling statistics, high-level management intervention, and high associated costs (therefore eroding profits). It impacts on the bottom line, and it can be avoided.
What kind of beliefs do we need to have to be able to accept this new approach? What do we need to adjust?
Who do we need to become to facilitate an ecological interaction that allows for an ongoing customer relationship?
That will be the focus of part of this series.
I hope this helps!
As always, please feel free to leave your comments – all comments are more than welcome!
Jay
* Objections are actually a very useful feedback signal telling us that we are approaching the buyer in a way that’s creating resistance. Objections then become a very useful sales tool in the new paradigm approach.
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