Who's Closing Who?

There’s nothing more sacred in sales than the idea of closing.

It’s the stuff movies are made of.

But it’s an old paradigm that has been fading for years.  

Do salespeople in the 21st century really “close” CIOs and IT Directors?  More likely, these buyers may or may not select your product, after a lengthy period of investigation, trial, and internal discussion among multiple stakeholders.

An articulate statement of the salesperson as “closer” appeared in the Harvard Business Review in 2012 and seems as old school as it gets:

"Dominance is gaining the willing obedience of the customer. The customer listens to your opinions and advice, internalizes your recommendations and agrees with them, and when you close the sales call follows your course of action. Your personality greatly influences the way in which you establish dominance during sales calls…

A salesperson’s goal is to gain dominance over a submissive customer.”

Submissive?  Today, buyers are just as intent on dominating the sale as salespeople.  Asking salespeople to engage in a fight for dominance sets them up to lose.  

It’s true that salespeople need the internal drive to steer a sale to a successful conclusion, and need to take the wheel when the ship seems off course.  When things are not working during a sales cycle, it’s critical to get to the bottom of things and figure out how to get the process moving forward again (or whether it’s time to move on).

Today, buyers see themselves as co-pilots at the very least.  It’s essential that 21st century salespeople learn how to navigate towards happy outcomes while sharing power with their prospects.

This may not be true in all situations.  There may be products and markets where there are few alternatives and buyers must bend to the will of salespeople in order to get what they have to have.  But with most technology products there are multiple vendors, the differentiators are thin, and, thus, the tables are turned.  

Most importantly, buyers of technology are often not just looking for a one-time purchase, they are looking for a relationship with a company they will need to engage with for years, who can improvise, customize, and demonstrate the ability for give and take.  

In this century, the most successful closers will likely be those who are better advisors, catalysts, orchestrators and negotiators than dominators.

VOLUME IS YOUR FRIEND

You will lose sales.

Get over it.

The best salespeople who ever lived lost sales.  Babe Ruth struck out, and so will you.

Stay focused on the volume and quality of your opportunities.  Or, in baseball parlance, quality at-bats.  

Feed the top of your pipeline, and qualify well.  Do those things, and you’ll have plenty of happy customers --- singles and home runs --- over time.   

P.S.  The same holds true for those of you responsible for named accounts.  You won’t have hundreds of those, but within each account, don’t get hung up on one individual.  Broaden the breadth and depth of your relationships within the account.      

I remember being focused on signing a key reseller in the legal industry.  There were only a handful of resellers in that vertical with the kind of installed customer base that could transform our sales velocity.   We simply had to sign them.  

The challenge was that their key decisionmaker seemed less than interested.  Even after I tracked him down at an event and introduced myself in person, he was very skeptical about partnering with us.

He agreed to give us a hearing, so we scheduled a phone conference that would be attended by at least a dozen of his consultants.  At the start of that meeting, he expressed his tentative decision:  no sale!

Fortunately, during the seven months prior to this conference, we’d slowly built up a base of fans among the consultants.   I’d met some in person.  Some had tried our product.  Many had asked their customers about us.

When the consultants around the room heard “no sale” they sprung into action, eagerly talking about how this was in fact the right product at the right time for their customer base.  Twenty minutes later, the principal had come around, and we had a new partner.    

Volume is your friend.

THE EFFECTIVE SALES EXECUTIVE

“The effective executives I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and their abilities, in what they do and how they do it, in their personalities, their knowledge, their interests --- in fact in almost everything that distinguishes human beings.  All they have in common is the ability to get the right things done. “

That’s Peter Drucker, back in 1966.  I didn’t read The Effective Executive until 2001, but when I did it changed my life.  

Much, if not all, of what Drucker writes applies to salespeople.  He outlines five habits that are required to be effective:

1.  Know where your time goes.

2.  Focus on results.

3.  Build on your strengths.

4.  Do first things first.

5.  Make good decisions.

A friend of mine once told me about a mantra she had received, which for me seemed to summarize Drucker perfectly:  “Focus, and Deliver.”

Some of Drucker’s gems:

“It is amazing how many things busy people are doing that never will be missed.”

“Meetings have to be the exception rather than the rule.”

”If I had a son or a daughter, would I be willing to have him or her work under this person?”

“The first rule in decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement.”

After reading the book, I began to ask myself, nearly every day:  what is the mission-critical inch of my business?   It was my way of running a daily Drucker diagnostic, to ensure that I was laser-focused on the most important thing I could contribute to my company that day.

I couldn’t possibly do justice to Drucker’s words, so I will simply say:  read the book.  And if that’s not enough, I’ll leave you with this:

“The [executive] who focuses on efforts and who stresses his downward authority is a subordinate no matter how exalted his title and rank.  But the [executive] who focuses on contribution and who takes responsibility for results, no matter how junior, is in the most literal sense of the phrase, “top management.”

The Three Things Sales Managers Should Do

I once read, and never forgot, that a manager only has to do three things for salespeople:  

Empower me.  Direct me.  Care about me.  

Let’s take them one at a time.

1) Empower me  

Give people the space and authority to do the job.  Managers should ask themselves:  am I letting the salesperson do the work?  Or am I stepping into his/her deals regularly, because if I don’t I’m afraid they will go south?

This can be more art than science.  And managers are ultimately responsible for the fate of a company’s sales opportunities.  But if you aren’t giving them a chance to fail, you aren’t giving them a chance.

(salespeople also need to ask prospective employers:  how much autonomy will I have, i.e. will you be calling all the pitches from the dugout?)

2) Direct me

Tell salespeople what you want.  Communicate your expectations.  This can be as simple as setting a quota, but if that’s all you ask for, that’s all you should get.  

If your direction is “just win baby,” you have no right to expect, for example, ethical play; teamwork; or any number of other possible deliverables.  

3) Care

Show your people that you care about them.  Don’t just say so (praise).  Do so.  Let me count the ways:  return emails promptly; take them to lunch; or just ask them how their weekend was.  

There’s no greater motivator than letting people know that you care about them.   Even the most financially rewarded, highest achievers want to feel valued.