CAM Canadian Mover, Fall 2002/Winter 2003: Myles

Why do customers buy products or services from one company versus another? Is it the:

– quality?
– reliability?
– availability?
– price?
– style?
– design?
– all of the above?

Or is it the quality, reliability and availability of the salesperson who represents the company’s product or service that determines a customer’s choice? Is it the design of the sales process that differentiates one service company from the next? Is it the effectiveness of the marketing support that highlights and leverages the capabilities of the sales representative?

What is it, other than price, that differentiates competitors who have comparable offerings?

Whether your company moves one-bedroom households ‘up the street’ or fulfills multi-year, performance-based contracts for large multinational corporations, how do you distinguish your offerings from those of your competitors? What are the sales principles that you use for competitive advantage?

If you lost one or more of your five largest existing customers to a competitor, how would you replace the annual revenue for your company?

Of the top 10 sales principles, I have chosen three of the most basic to discuss here. These three provide the most short-term potential payback to virtually any company that implements them for short-run competitive advantage. This would be especially true if the sales and marketing processes in your company have recently suffered from some neglect.

The Top Three Sales Principles

Sales Principle #1: "80% of life…is showing up."

Is your sales force "showing up" every day, being responsive to every opportunity? What obstacles might be preventing them from "showing up"?

Sales Principle #1 is appropriate to both acquiring new customers and retaining current ones. The absence of your salesperson makes the heart grow fonder for the sales representative of your competitor.

Likewise, the timely presence of your sales representative can influence and win opportunities where your competitor’s salesperson is absent.

Do you know what percentage of your salespeople’s time is spent "selling"? Would you be surprised if you discovered it was less than 20%? If true, what are they doing with the other 80%?

Who do you consider to be responsible for sales in your company? Is it an individual or is it every employee? If your company enjoys having a pervasive sales attitude that engages every employee in the sales process, then does your current implementation reinforce the need to "show up" every day, all day, in response to every opportunity?

Sales Principle #2: Does your company engage in "objections handling" in its training schedule?

How frequently is this aspect of basic sales discipline practiced in your company? Do you know of competitors whose salespeople practice on a daily basis?

Sales Principle #2 is one of the most basic areas that can yield substantial short-term sales returns. A small, but focused, investment in these confidence-building sales techniques can yield substantial returns.

If your core business (or future growth) is low-value moves, especially of the ‘home-owner’ type, then this principle should be a company focus. (If your core business is dependent upon ongoing revenue streams flowing from a relatively small number of large, sophisticated, corporate customers, then Principle #3 is more relevant to your immediate needs.)

In service-oriented companies that have a relatively high turnover of sales staff or rapidly changing offerings (for example, price or product changes, or frequent new competitive offerings), salespeople require a sales process that incorporates "objections-handling clinics" every day, for a period ranging from one to three hours.

Many of today’s most successful sales organizations make available to their salespeople scripted examples of objections and management responses.

Sales Principle #3: The 7x (Seven Times) Sales Principle is a key ingredient to developing and selling new concepts that either differentiate you from your competitors or allow your company to successfully sell at a price higher than your competitors’.

Does your sales and marketing team practice the 7x Principle?

Sales Principle #3 applies most if your business engages in complex transactions (i.e., not simple one-time or cash sales). Mastering the 7x Principle will produce selling proposals that are more meaningful to your customers.

The 7x Principle is not a repetition seven times of the same sales pitch. Rather, it is based upon the following premise: when a complex or sophisticated business problem requires a comprehensive solution, that solution needs to be communicated seven different ways on seven different occasions using more than one medium, in order for that business solution to be fully understood, including appropriate and relevant context.

The implication of this scientifically based premise is that a one-call close in such a sales situation is at best improbable and likely impossible. Therefore, your company’s sales process should assist your sales representatives in productively and effectively following up six times, when necessary to make sales.

New and additional perspectives and context on both the customer’s business problem and your proposed business solution will emerge between the first and seventh iterations of the sales pitch. The result will be a modified and converged understanding of both the problem and the solution, as the latter gradually becomes a joint customer/seller discovery.

When it comes to the moving business, can you think of how these three sales principles might apply to your company or how your current implementation might be further improved?

Tie-in to Customer Sales Satisfaction

The key to high customer satisfaction is to have no customer expectation gaps. Therefore, setting the customer’s expectations on each element in the joint problem/solution to an achievable level needs to be managed...every day.

Customers can be regularly satisfied through the effective, responsive sales representation of your company’s business services. This should deliver healthy revenue growth year after year.

Although there are other sales techniques and principles in the Top 10, these three basic ones, in my experience, produce the highest payback in the shortest time, with the least investment and the broadest representation of sales skills.

When a moving-services company combines all three principles into an integrated sales process supported by aligned marketing investments, and benchmarks itself relative to its competition on a regular basis (e.g., quarterly), that company has the basics in place to create the closed-loop feedback process required for ongoing sales, revenue and profit improvements. The effectiveness in deployment is then just a matter of regular disciplined practice.

Don Myles is Vice-President and General Manager, Partner Services, IBM Canada Ltd. He has extensive experience in managing just about every facet of one of Canada’s largest companies.

He will be a keynote presenter at CAM’s Annual Conference, on November 26, 2002. Drawing upon over 25 years of experience as a driving force behind one of Canada’s most innovative and consistently successful sales forces, he will speak on the multi-faceted and crucial role sales and marketing play in business today. His presentation will address everything from the importance of technique in the initial approach to crucial strategies used to close the deal. His sense of humour and genuine love for the sales process will make the experience both instructional and motivational.

Three Key Principles of Sales and Marketing in Service Industries

The Top Three Sales Principles

Tie-in to Customer Sales Satisfaction