Myth One: Spending a disproportionate amount of your available sales cycle selling time with a decision influencer will increase your sales success.

Reality: Hitting sales targets is a time management issue. How many prospects do I have? Which are qualified? How many can I talk with or see in person in a single day? How quickly can I move them through the required sales steps and how fast can I get them to take an action step to buy from me? These variables all are relevant in selling.
Decision influencers (usually middle-level managers) are communication liaisons for your business value. When you present and sell them, you are asking to have a non-professional salesperson communicate your business value for you to the decision makers. When focusing on middle-level managers, you are saying A) you do not have the sales skills to get to the decision makers B) you are hoping they will be able to discuss your business value as well as you can. Can you sell middle-level managers? Yes, but it is a slow non-preferred process.

Myth Two: Dropping prices will increase sales in the long-term.

Reality: Time and time again, every business segment that has followed a commodity-based pricing schema has failed. Selling down and by price is a short-term sales model that cannot sustain financial integrity. Repeat customers buy value; single sale customers buy price.

Myth Three: Business networking is better than cold calling for lead generation.

Reality: This is another urban myth propitiated by those who do not want to cold call. Sales reps who will not cold call are half-cycle salespeople. Yes, networking can create leads, but the quantity and the amount of time involved consistently will never match your efforts of cold calling 50 C-level executives each day. Networking is a long-term, minimum volume lead generation technique for salespeople. Cold calling is the sales pipeline of success.

Myth Four: Sales training is a cost center.

Reality: Most CEOs do not spend enough on sales training. They believe that it is more important to invest in development or operations staff training than sales training. In fact, sales training is more important than technical education and is a true business profit center investment. Without sales, you don’t need development. CEOs can always subcontract development work – but try subcontracting your sales!

Myth Five: Clients buy technlogy or business services.

Reality: Clients never buy technology or business services. Account managers who sell business services or technology usually sell less. Clients buy pain management.

Myth Six: Because you were successful in the past, you should be successful this year.

Reality: Salespeople often defer to a comfort zone of auto selling – doing the same things year after year. This repetition implies that all prospects and customers are the same – that they are not individuals and that they don’t change. Buying needs a changing. Do you know what will drive them to action steps in 2009 oder 2010?

Myth Seven: Marketing department responsibility should be focused on brochures, web site communication, and tradeshow management.

Reality: PR is not revenue; marketing is not revenue; and advertising is not revenue. Revenue is revenue. The marketing department’s primary business responsibility should be creating qualified sales leads for the sales team.

Myth Eight: It is the sales management’s responsibility to close sales deals for you.

Reality: Sales management’s responsibility is to help you sell as a salesperson. That means increasing qualified lead traffic, supervising operational issues that affect your deals, updating your sales training skills, and acting as an intermediary with corporate management. That does not mean going to every sales presentation or meeting every Fortune 1000 prospect in person. Many times, this becomes the norm instead of the exception because sales management usually carries the department’s quota as a whole and revenue is revenue. Why pursue sales management if you have to close every deal?

Myth Nine: The more strategic partners you have, the more sales leads you will generate.

Reality: Strategic partnerships and alliance management is a full-time job. It is definitely quality over quantity that counts. Most firms have many strategic relationships that are worthless. Like any investment of time and money, alliances need to be quantified with an assigned quota for revenue generation and minimum expectations of lead generation volume to warrant the relationship. Partnerships must have an annual ROI or their time and effort is worthless.

Myth Ten: Question-based sales probing will increase sales.

Reality: The fact is asking detailed questions of prospects too early in the engagement process actually ends most sales cycles. You cannot cold call or engage a vice president of a large company the first time, start pinging them with probing business questions and expect them to answer. This myth is propitiated through fluff sales training programs and books designed for insurance and car salespeople. To achieve sales success to senior management, you must first earn their respect as a business peer, not a vendor. You must validate your knowledge about industry pains, so you can earn the right to ask investigative questions about their business needs when it is appropriate.
The key to sales success is not using probing questions too early. Instead, act like a strategic advisor and communicate your business value up front — EARN THE RIGHT to ask probing questions.

They are worth thinking about, aren’t they?
Heiko

Hier mal ein Beispiel für die Hürde “Preis”.
Verkäufer zum Interessenten: “Ein Projekt dieser Grössenordnung kostet normalerweise um die xx Euro. Passt das zu Ihren Vorstellungen, oder eher nicht?”

Grundlage für unsere Entscheidung, ob wir weiter in einen Kontakt investieren, ist ein “Ja” oder ein “Nein” unseres Kontaktes auf ein attraktives Angebot von uns.

Wenn Ihr Kontakt nun mit einem “vielleicht” antwortet, dann hört der Verkäufer gerne ein Ja und der Interessent meint oft Nein. Wer jetzt ohne Klärung weiter geht, weiter investiert, geht auf dünnes Eis.

Die Gründe für ein “vielleicht” sind oft:
Der Verhandlungspartner hat nicht die Macht zu entscheiden, oder unser Angebot war zuviel auf einmal. Wie man die beiden verschiedenen Fälle behandelt, dazu gleich mehr.

Vorher noch kurz zur Fragetechnik, um heraus zu bekommen, was beim Gesprächspartner los ist. Die richtige Frage an dieser Stelle beginnt nicht mit “Warum”. Ein “Warum” drängt den anderen in die Defensive, die Rechtfertigungsecke. Und dort wollen wir ihn keinesfalls haben, nicht wahr?

Die richtige Frage beginnt mit “Wie” oder “Was”. So schieben wir den anderen nicht in eine kontraproduktive Verteidigungshaltung, sondern zeigen, dass wir seine Bedenken respektieren und bekommen echte Information auf die wir sinnvoll reagieren können.

Beispiele für gute Fragen:

~ Wie kommt es, dass Sie an dieser Stelle zögern?
~ Was hindert Sie daran, hier mit Ja oder Nein zu antworten?
…

Und wie lauten Ihre Fragen an dieser Stelle?
Heiko van Eckert