The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Getting a meeting is one of the most difficult steps in building a business relationship. If you’re in sales, you need that meeting, commonly known as the needs analysis, to determine how you can help. When we ask prospects what their needs are, they often don’t know. And if they do, those needs only scratch the surface.

Scientists say that the universe we can observe is only about 5-10% of what is really out there. Why do they believe that? Because what they can see happening cannot be accounted for just by what they can see. Dark matter and dark energy haven't been proven, but scientists believe they exist because of the effects they see. 

For business owners, like scientists, what is visible and conscious is probably only a fraction of what is really going on. You want to be looking beyond what the prospect tells you they think they need, to what is really happening. 

So how can you know what is really going on?

Some sales go from step to step and lead smoothly to an agreement and an order. Other times, things stall and you’re not sure why. It might happen at one of the three tipping points in the sale process. There are many reasons a stall can happen, and there’s a quick way to determine what is helping and what is hindering the process.

At some point in our life, we’ve had someone tell us to draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper, and write all the pros for a decision on one side and the cons on the other. The formal name is a “decision balance sheet.” Ben Franklin was known to use them. What makes this simple exercise effective is that it helps us put on paper what we already know — but haven’t thought enough about. 

Another variation of this process is a force-field analysis. It’s used in social science. Our founder Steve Marx applied it to the sales process. The force field approach looks at the forces that are influencing a situation. It looks to see if they are driving movement toward a goal (helping) or blocking momentum toward a goal (hindering). 

Salespeople are hired to sell. When a salesperson can’t close a deal with a prospect, it can seem as if they’ve failed. The often-quoted idea that a good salesperson can sell anything to anyone is rooted in one of those lingering old-school, outdated ideas that the selling process is a contest to be won at any cost.

It’s true that in every sales process, someone is going to be convinced to say "yes." Either the prospect will say, “Yes, I’ll buy this” or the salesperson will say, “Yes, you’re not going to buy this.” But what gets so many salespeople off-track and spinning their wheels on lousy prospects is the belief that the only right answer is the prospect saying "yes." 

Top salespeople are often the veterans. They have deep relationships, and when there is an RFP (request for proposal) or a big contract up for bid, they know just how to zero in on that transaction and bring home the biggest share of the business.

The prospect has already decided they are going to spend that money for your product or industry. It's the "money on the table" or the low hanging fruit, and the issue was always about beating the competition.

Transactional business is critical to secure, and the big wins take hard work. But those successes can blind even the best sales reps from rocking the boat enough to look for more opportunities.

We’re at in interesting time in professional branding. Few are questioning that they need to work on building a personal brand, but most still want to know how. How do you suddenly become a master storyteller about the one thing that is hardest to talk about—yourself?

Let’s look at building a brand from the perspective of sharing the things you love, the things you care about, or the things you enjoy. For example, let’s look at how building a brand can be like creating and sharing a playlist of your favorite songs. 

• Specific Tastes — Some of us have very specific tastes. We might only like rock, pop, or rap. We don’t venture far from our core tastes, but we know what we like, and we know it well. We’ve become sort of an expert on that genre, or favorite artist. We’ve identified the others that share our tastes. Seth Godin would say they are part of our “tribe.”
• Eclectic Tastes — Some of us have more eclectic tastes in music. You might jump from Classical to The Cure, or Count Basie to Coldplay. For you, there is something they all have in common, but most may not share your interest for this much variety.
• Casual Tastes — Some of you aren’t that into the details of music, but you still like to listen to music. You’re happy to let your others curate your mix. Your casual approach means you’re more likely to listen to what’s popular. You know what you like and there is often a channel or service to cater to you.

The lone wolf salesperson doing their own marketing, lead generation, closing, and account management has been dying a slow death for years. Specialization, delegation, and outsourcing can help you increase your efficiency, but only if everyone is doing what they do best.

Good salespeople are looking for a new job every day. They need to be “hired” by their clients and prospects on a regular basis. When I was a sales manager, how someone applied for an open position was my indication of how they would approach a prospect. Even now, as I’m going through applications for designers, I think of how my actions parallel that of a busy prospect.

Salespeople look for opportunity. Yet sometimes getting the first appointment or even connecting with the decision maker seems impossible. You might say you have “a snowball’s chance in hell” of moving the deal forward. Unless something changes, unless “hell freezes over.” Then your snowball’s chance doesn’t look so bad.

It’s the same way with certain clients and prospects. Your chances of getting that appointment may seem impossible. What could make your chances look better today than they did yesterday? What could make them look fantastic tomorrow?

How can you make the seemingly-impossible possible? 

By finding the valid business reason you need to move forward with the prospect, that’s how. Who you know and what you know will improve your odds of finding a really strong, door-opening, valid business reason. 

When a fad reaches saturation, it’s often ready to start dying out, or at least transition into something else. Since it seems that everywhere you turn, someone is talking about the mistakes and must-haves for your personal brand, has this fad run its course? Are you a skeptic or fanatic for personal branding?

Where do you stand on personal branding?

• Do you read the hype about a personal brand and roll your eyes?
• Or are you an established thought leader in your industry?

A leader’s success or failure is dependent on the actions of those they lead. Good sales mangers understand that actions begin with attitude and motivate their team to direct their talents to selling and delivering effective solutions for their clients. The insights of military leaders often apply in business, which is why Sun Tzu’s Art of War is popular reading within the ranks of management.

Success or failure is a result of what people think, feel, and then do. Xenophon was an ancient Greek warrior and philosopher who observed that what soldiers think and feel will affect their actions.

Let’s look closer at three observations he made and how they apply to sales management: