THE SAME SELLING MISTAKE FOR 50 YEARS WHY YOUR SALES REPS & CHANNEL PARTNERS STRUGGLE TO SELL MORE PREPARED BY CHRIS BENNETT This white paper is broken into seven sections. The purpose is to introduce a new perspective on driving massive revenue growth. 1. Discover the big problem. 2. The big dilemma. 3. How big is this selling problem? 4. How did we get here? 5. Where do we go from here? 6. The golden opportunity ahead. 7. Low risk method for driving massive revenue growth. This is 01 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY / THE PROBLEM especially important for manufactures, How professional sales people work is continuously evolving. Or is that just an illusion? Digital transformation, new research about how buyers buy, the sales rep tech stack, new vendors, consumption models, new sales methodologies, more information than ever before all change how sales pros work. telcos & But one thing is not changing; Selling Mistakes. master agents This is especially important for manufactures, vendors, telcos and master agents who rely who rely on on channel partners for the bulk of their selling. channel partners for the bulk of their selling. The big selling mistake being made 50 years ago is still the main one being made today. Tragically, by the majority of all sales pros and channel sellers; the research below is overwhelming evidence of that. At Chris Bennett Sales Training I have seen it with my own eyes too having trained 10’s of thousands of sales pros in 75-80 corporations over the past 26 years. Many people think that for the last 50 years selling has been primarily dominated by a consultative selling approach first developed by Mack Hanan in the 70’s. And while it might sound true it is not. The last 50 years has seen a few small pockets of companies or sellers engage with the consultative approach; fully, correctly, consistently but still to this day the majority of sales pros talk product/solution too soon, too often and they really don’t understand their prospects / clients nearly as well as they should or think they do. Consultative selling is not the norm; salespeople talking product/solution too soon in the norm. And that is the big selling mistake. LEADING WITH SELF 1. Look at all the companies that continue to direct their sales reps to lead prospecting calls with their value proposition or lead with a product demo. 2. Or all those tech companies whose sales reps show up for first meetings with some sort of a technical specialist in tow and a power point deck and then proceed to show 17 slides focused on their own company & why their tech is number one. 3. I was just in two partner portals of multi-billion dollar global tech manufacturers. This is the place they aggregate resources for their partners to help them sell more effectively. 100% of all the content I saw was product knowledge. Not a single lesson on how to understand their prospects / clients better or on asking questions. Not one. Many master agency portals are set up the same way. Not a single lesson on how to understand your prospects. 02 THE BIG DILEMMA: FIX THE MISTAKE OR PUSH ON? Are We Really Ready for the Big Push Forward! Today there is a big push to be a challenger seller or an insight seller or a provocation seller. The purpose of which is to proactively bring new ideas to help your buyers. There is even a call to reinvent consultative selling to keep up with the times and the new buyer preferences. And while that all sounds good even logical like the next great paradigm for sales effectiveness they all depend on one critical factor. They all depend on a deep, accurate understanding of the buyer’s business to maximize results. And that’s a big problem because the majority of sellers still talk too much and ask too few questions in the sales process to deeply understand their prospects / clients. What does it mean to deeply understand your prospect / client? And that’s Here is a broad list of some basic information your direct sellers and channel sellers have to know: a big 1. The landscape of the business; growth trends, market share trends, earnings trends, problem cost trends, big changes, trigger event, competitors, competitive situation and trends. because 2. Facts and figures; head count, # of locations, description of how they provision services and networks today etc. the 3. Partners and vendors; why did they select them, contracts, current prices majority of 4. Goals & priorities (desired outcomes) main business goals and departments goals sellers still talk too much and ask too few questions. 5. Main corporate strategy by which they are efforting to achieve goals (organic growth, acquisitions, blockbuster product releases, first to market…?) 6. Critical success factors 7. Key metrics associated to the goals and priorities; how much do they need them to move 8. Top 3 challenges they are dealing with relative to their main business goals and projects 9. The # 1 biggest challenge in their eyes 10. # 1 challenge clearly described in granular detail 11. What do they think the solutions are 12. What have they tried to date to fix it 13. Can they fix it in house 14. What are the costs in $ associated to living with the # 1 challenge; lost sales, lost customers, re-work, rebates, overtime, productivity issues, costs etc. What % of your direct 15. Their vision for the ideal this year, next 3 years sellers or channel sellers 16. Budgets actually know all this stuff 17. Who are all the buyers (champion, KDM, blocker, coach) in their top 20 accounts? 18. Buying process 19.DMC 20. Expectations 21. How is success measured 22. Time lines 23. Who else are they talking to about this And on the list goes. What % of your direct sellers or channel sellers actually know all this stuff in their top 20 accounts? If your direct sellers and channel sellers do not know details around the aforementioned items then they do not deeply understand their prospects & clients. How safe is it? How safe is it to layer advanced selling skills onto a sales force that doesn’t yet fully understand their clients because maximizing the value of the new methodologies DEPENDS on having a deep knowledge of your prospects and clients. If they don’t know the information in the aforementioned list…how “wow factor” and relevant are the new insights going to be to the buyer? Case in point: Picture three different businesses all in the same vertical. One is focused on the quality of the customer experience to grow sales, one is focused on selling to a specific market vertical, and the third is focused exclusively on selling a specific type of product into that market. Three similar businesses in the same vertical with three totally different growth strategies; if you don’t know which is which how relevant is your big new idea going to be? The 50 year old selling mistake rears its ugly head again and again to affect many considerations for; preparing, fielding and managing a sales force. SO DO WE NEED TO TAKE A TIME OUT ON THE BIG PUSH TOWARD the “next gen” sales approach until the majority of sellers stop making the 50 year old selling mistake and lock down the basics of asking more questions before they start selling? DO WE REALLY KNOW OUR CLIENTS? I did a project for a large global tech giant and discovered that the dominate belief across their AM teams was that their customers were not interested in moving any work to the cloud and they were not in the market for cloud services. Turns out after some digging that 63 of their major enterprise customers had in fact already purchased cloud services and these AMs didn’t even know about it. We think we know what is going on in our account base; it is mostly not the case. Cause: too few questions. 03 HOW BIG IS THE PROBLEM? 1. What % of your sales reps regularly uses written questions during their customer conversations? 2. If you are a vendor, manufacturer, or master agency how much effort and resources do you put into providing your channel sellers with training on questioning protocols and lists of the proper questions to ask in their meetings? Not very many, right? So how can you expect your direct sales force and channel sellers to really understand their buyers if they don’t use a proven, structured framework for asking the correct questions? In the absence of a meeting focused on asking and discovery we have too many meetings still based on showing and telling. Research shows the problem (talking too much/asking too little) is alive and well. 1. “The # 1 complaint about sales people: they don’t ask enough questions.” - Gretchen Gordon The big 2. # 1 reason sales pros fail: they spend too much time talking and not enough time selling listening. - Spiro CRM study / Adam Honig mistake is 3. The# 1 mistake sales pros make is not enough understanding the prospect’s problem. alive and - Grant Cardone well. 4. The # 2 biggest complaint buyers have about their vendors is they don’t take the time to fully understand my business. - The Challey Group 5. “Deals are won and lost on discovery” - GrowthPlay 6. The # 2 biggest mistake sales reps make is “they don’t listen to my needs”. - Harvard Business review 7. The # 1 mistake sellers make: “they talk too much” - Sales Hacker January 2018 based on a one million call study 8.