Sales Trainer

November/December 1998- Published by the North American Building Materials Association Volume 15, Number 19

Training and The Sales Manager

By: Bob Ayrer

The sad fact is that the terms "manager," and "training" are misleading. It implies that you can "manage" people. You may manage resources, assets, information -- you must lead people. It is also true that you cannot "motivate" people -- you can only stop de-motivating them! We also "train" animals; we teach people. In the following, "training" means teaching.

The most often misunderstood function in a sales plan is the training of staff. The first rule of training is that nothing stays fixed. Training is an ongoing process that occurs whether you want it to or not. Your choice is not whether you train or not. The choice is whether you train your staff deliberately, to the achieve positive results; or, unthinkingly, to behaviors that may not be positive to the goals of the enterprise. Each time you interface with your employees, you are "training" them. Each time you answer a question, solve a problem, make casual remarks, ask a question, you are training the people around you. Often we unconsciously train employees to bad attitudes and behavior.

We will discuss three principal areas of training -- Product Training, Process Training and Strategy Training.

Product Training

It is impossible to talk about product training separately from the other two interrelated elements -- process and strategy. We will cover the interrelated elements at the end of the chapter.

A great deal of effort and resources are committed to creating marketing information relating to the product. Engineering information, physical application information, physical properties, credibility information -- all assembled and presented in graphic art masterpieces to entice a customer to buy. Little consideration is given to integrating the marketing pieces into the format that will help a sales person "sell." It should not be inferred that the information is not essential and, in some industries, a valuable selling tool. The point is that all too often the product information is standing alone and not integrated into the selling process.

In selling, you are asking a buyer to make three buy decisions -- You, Your Company and Your Product -- generally in that order.

A basic misconception made by most sales people is that purchasing agents or buyers are as knowledgeable as they sound. We, as sales people, educate the buyer to speak the jargon of our industry. In the basic communication process, we attach our own depth of understanding to industry-specific terms when we hear them from a prospect, and make the fatal mistake of assuming the buyer has the same depth of knowledge that we attach to the terms. More often than not, there is very little depth of understanding of the real meaning of the terms when they are used by the buyer. This will vary from industry to industry, but in 90% of the cases, the seller will have far more specific knowledge of the product or industry than the buyer. It is the seller's industry. Buyers are only involved part time with the relatively few products that they purchase.

In the sales communication training, You Must Be Out Of Your Mind To Be In Sales, sales people are taught to listen naively; that is, to hear prospects from their frame of reference and not the sales person's. If sales people don't learn this vital skill, they will spend their career hearing their prospects' needs in their own terms and their own understanding and not the terms and understanding of their prospect. This is why the average sales person ends up selling to themselves instead of their prospect! This usually results in the classic prospect response, "I'll think it over!"

The basis of most product information is the egocentric idea that the buyer is as enthralled with the "facts" about our product as we are. Because the average buyer only knows enough about your product to be dangerous, the real function of product knowledge is to establish credibility and trust in the sales person and the company. Once there is a high level of trust in the knowledge and credibility of the sales person and the company, the buyer will interpret the information received positively and as being in their best interest.

Until you make the first two sales -- yourself and your company -- you will not make the third sale, your product/service. Unfortunately, many sales people never progress past the first two sales to make the only sale that pays commission!

Unless your product information is an integrated part of your sales plan and process to begin with, you must make it so. That is product training that will move merchandise.

Process Training

The most often omitted element of a good training program is the sales "process" training. Most often the training program bypasses this step and goes immediately to the strategy training.

It is this bypassing of the process training that has made it impossible to rely upon a sales person's prior experience as a reliable indicator in the hiring process. Moving from job to job, learning only strategies that were specific to the employer's target market and product at each stop, does not equip a sales person to be confident, effective, and self-actuating in an ever changing market.

Sales people who know only strategies will never take full responsibility for their selling career. These are the sales people that look to their manager to answer their questions, direct their activities, solve their problems and define their behavior. All too often, we make the management mistake of giving sales people the responsibility of making sales without the authority to direct themselves. The average sales person may seem to avoid taking responsibility for his/her performance. This is more a comment on the type of management the sales person has had in his/her career.

The sales "process" is the theoretical architecture of selling to which you can attach the appropriate sales strategy to be in full control of your performance. Think of "process" as the "What" of your selling behavior. In this "What", you will define the sales progression -- you will define the objectives and goals of your selling process. In the behavior strategy you will define the "How."

The selling ritual has some definable and critical benchmarks that must be met to be successful. A prospect must be taken through certain steps and pass certain critical points along the road toward the sale. If the sales person tries to take the prospect too far, too fast -- or worse yet, tries to bypass an important milestone, the sales process is out of step with the prospect. You would not think of trying to close the sale before a need is defined, would you? Many sales people (and many sales trainers) think that you can salvage a poor sales interview with snappy closes and clever lines to "overcome objections." You will not salvage a poor sales interview with a snappy close; and no professional sales person should be wasting time overcoming objections. If you fall into the trap of "overcoming objections", you will inevitably end up playing the "Straw Man Game." (You know the one; "If the prospect can stand up more objections than I can knock down, they win. If I can knock down more objections than they can stand up, I win.") Winning this game may occasionally make a sale, but it won't create a solid, long term customer.

Do not confuse an "objection" with a "concern" -- an objection is a point raised to slow down the sales process or end it: A concern is a buying signal.

If you fall into the "Straw Man Game", the first point raised will have some legitimacy. The second objection will only be 25% legitimate, and the objections raised after that will have no basis in reality. The sales person and the prospect are now playing "Stump The Chump."

How do we define the selling process? The process is the ritual that is customary to your sales philosophy. It will follow a predictable progression and have identifiable objectives at each step of the way (the benchmarks).

The nearly universal ritual of selling is; Approach, Establish Rapport, Inquiry, Summary, Presentation, Action Plan ("close"), Finalize and Reinforce. The emphasis given to each of these functions varies from culture to culture. If you are selling in the Middle East, or to some Asian cultures, the Rapport Building may take from one day to six months -- and you dare not try to progress too rapidly for fear of violating some taboo of the culture. The American selling culture has the shortest Rapport Building ritual, sometime only one or two sentences. The difference in this rapport building area has frustrated many an American business person trying to deal in different cultures without knowing the ritual.

The Approach phase will vary, depending upon the culture and the level of decision making involved. If your marketing plan requires high level decision making, penetrating the "Good Old Boys Club" through referrals or social contacts, country clubs, golf, etc. may be effective. If you are in detail sales (as pharmaceutical sales people do in calling on doctor's offices and pharmacies, sales people calling on insurance agents, independent markets, taverns, etc.), a cold call may be appropriate. The development of your strategy will give you the "How."

The Inquiry should only be conducted with the prospect's permission. The inquiry will establish two critical points; one, to establish clear communication and to move the sales person into the prospect's reality; two, to establish the criteria for decision making.

If you are going to do a complete needs analysis it will be necessary to take your prospect through three levels of need, the "Perceived Need", the "Qualified Need", and finally, the "Special Concerns" of the buyer. How do you do that? You look for the "Pain/Gain" issues that will be the real reason that your prospect will make the final buy decision. Using the seven "W's" of inquiry, WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHICH, WHY and HOW; Using these open question leaders ("open questions" being the questions that cannot be answered with a "Yes" or "No"), you will investigate the various areas that give you the information you need to define the problems beyond your prospect's "Perceived Need" (their original perception). It is the expansion of the perceived need that we call the "Qualified Need" (the additional issues that separate you from the competition). In all of this, you will identify the "Special Concerns of the Buyer", the emotional issues (pain/gain) that will be the real buying motive.

The process of Summary is to make sure that you confirm your understanding of your prospect's needs and get the prospect to acknowledge and agree to the Qualified Needs and the Special Concern issues. When you have confirmed your needs analysis with your summary, your prospect is no longer a moving target -- he has taken a fixed position. Fixed targets are much easier to hit! A national survey of sales people from all industries identified the fact that successful sales people identify -- and sell to -- only three or four points -- often less. If you do not summarize your inquiry in three to four points, you run the risk of confusing the prospect and will wind up with the classic, "I'll think about it!" dodge. This is a key benchmark in the process; and you should not go forward until there is agreement that all of the items are "on the table" and that you understand the prospect's point of view.

The Presentation

During your inquiry you should have discovered the decision making process of your prospect. It is becoming increasingly less likely that, as a professional sales person, you will be making "one call close" sales. More often you will be required to work your way up the decision making ladder, through the "Flak Catchers", to reach the real decision makers. How many levels will depend upon the nature of and spending authority required for your product or services. For our analysis we will use an extended scenario in a multilevel decision process requiring extra budgetary authorization.

If, in your initial inquiry, you find that you are dealing with a preliminary "Flak Catcher" that can say "No" but not "Yes" -- what then? Your objective for the call (all calls must have an objective) is changed to selling the Flak Catcher on the process of presenting you to the decision makers. If at all possible, avoid leaving it up to the Flak Catcher to sell your program -- they have a vested interest in protecting their posterior, not in selling your product. Keep in mind that the things that are pain/gain issues to the Flak Catcher (and will make him/her disposed to your program) are not the same issues that interest the Boss. If you absolutely cannot get through the Flak Catcher to the decision makers directly, then you will have to equip the Flack Catcher to sell your program as well as possible. This last area is more strategy than process; but it is necessary to demonstrate the types of presentations required in the process.

Your inquiry turned up three to four issues that are the pain/gain emotional issues of the Flak Catcher. Your presentation should only touch on those issues. If you are dealing with the decision maker you can use a straight "Feature, Advantage, Benefit" format. The "Feature" is a physical property or application of the product or service. The "Advantage" is what that property or application does, and the "Benefit" is how this will relieve the pain or facilitate the gain issues identified in the inquiry (always relating them to the special concern of the buyer). If you must work through a Flak Catcher, you will make your presentation using a "Feature, Advantage, Benefit, Benefit" format, giving a benefit for the Flak Catcher and a benefit for the decision maker. If you are making a presentation to a panel, you must identify the key players and make your presentation to their pain/gain issues. Usually a panel presentation only comes after a meeting with the Flak Catcher. Try to enlist the Flak Catcher as your inside "coach" to identify the special concerns of the key players.

As you can see from this scenario, the strategy flows from the process used. It is understanding the process that keeps the goals and objectives clear in the mind of the sales person. Without this process knowledge, a sales person can easily become distracted and sidetracked, never advancing the sales process toward the sale close.

Simply learning a sales strategy does not equip the sales person with the necessary tools to make the adjustments and adaptations necessary in a changing environment. The sales person must understand, and be able to intelligently apply, a selling process.

Once you are in control of the process, you can easily develop a strategy and the appropriate behavior to deliver the strategy. Sales people who can develop a strategy in their own idiosyncratic style, meeting the objectives of the sales process, are more likely to succeed than the ones who are memorizing someone else's sales strategy. It is this combination of process objectives, and the personal strategy behaviors, that is the sales manager's primary tool for ongoing coaching, evaluating, instruction -- the ongoing training program. Taking control of the process and strategy is the sales person's key to self-actualization. The sales person now has the responsibility for his/her own performance, the authority (authorship) to adapt the strategy, and the clear objectives of the process. The sales person who knows what is to be done, knows that it can be done, and wants to succeed meets the requirements of the Goal Motivation Model. They are now EMPOWERED! When people are empowered they become motivated, self-activating sales representatives who are not only capable, but willing, to take responsibility for themselves. It is the prime responsibility of the sales manager to create empowered sales people.