The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Clients of The Center for Sales Strategy know that it’s more important to know your prospect than your product, and that well-defined needs lead to the most dramatic revenue opportunities. But finding customer needs is not enough.

What you’re looking for is an assignment.

The Difference Between a Need and an Assignment

A need is a way you can help (and chances are, you’ll find a lot of these). But an assignment is an important need for which the client has said they want your help. 

Consider narrowing the list of needs to the client’s most urgent and important priorities in order to sell bigger with questions like these: 

• “We’ve talked about a lot of areas where it sounds like I could be of help to you. If you had to narrow it down to one or two priorities that are important right now, which would they be?” 

• “If we could only focus on this list of needs by working on one thing at a time, which item would come first?”

I see more and more companies investing in their future by focusing on the next generation of leaders, the up-and-comers who they expect to drive corporate growth in the years, even decades, ahead. These companies are adding more people to their corporate staff to build programs and experiences that grow hard and soft skills (you know, mid-level managers go away for a few days, several times a year, to learn how) as well as to create mentoring programs and to provide opportunities that allow future leaders to emerge.

But once they're trained to lead, do they have the opportunity to implement what they learned?

Often, the answer is no. They're not allowed to lead. Consider the irony. At the same time that I see so many firms spending all this time and money on training future leadership, I see too many of them pulling decision-making away from their managers—removing the need for these leaders actually to lead. The irony is painful to observe.

Workshop experiences and mentoring programs go only so far. If you want managers to make good decisions, the first step is to let them make decisions. And too many companies are going the other way—transferring decisions to corporate staffs such as HR or Legal, defaulting to various algorithms, or just replacing field decisions with standardized responses listed in a rule book.

This is a very dangerous pattern. Managers with prodigious potential and tons of training, but no decisions to make, atrophy. Not only do they not hone their decision-making abilities in the real world, they lose confidence in themselves and interest in the job. Those that don’t seek a better position elsewhere simply learn how to hide behind the cape of their corporate Superman or Superwoman. 

This week's posts touched on a lot of things: easing writer's block, helping with our online brands, mosquitos (!!!), and the reason people won't give us the time of day. Enjoy the variety!

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• On Monday, Dani Buckley helped unstick my writer's block by teaching us how to create lead-generating headlines for blog posts. Bookmark it, and refer to it when you can't think of something to write about.

• Tuesday, Greg Giersch taught us three ways we could build (or batter) our online reputations. I know I learned something about my brand, did you?

The short answer:  There’s never enough of it.  (Time, that is.)  But the more elaborate answer will help you get prospects to make time to see you.

It’s important to understand that people don't grant appointments based on whether they have the time.  (Not the ones worth seeing, anyway.) They allocate their time to people who they believe have the capacity to understand and help with their priorities.

So the question becomes, how can you figure out, in advance, what some of those priorities might be?  Their company priorities are likely to be conspicuous at the company website (look on the home page, the press/news release page, and in the annual reports or investor section of the website, if that applies to this prospect).  You might find some insights as to the prospect’s professional priorities by snooping around on their LinkedIn profile, or other networking sites.  And perhaps their personal priorities might be clear when you look at their Facebook, Twitter, or other social sites.   Finally, dig around for some industry news or consumer trends that might be relevant to this prospect… and dig for other research that speaks to challenges they might face or opportunities they may have.

If the prospect matters, it’s worth your time to figure out what matters to the prospect.  Find their priorities, and they’ll find the time of day.

Only pregnant mosquitos bite people. They bite to suck the blood, which feeds their eggs. The female mosquito needs the additional nutrition found in blood because it provides the protein and iron necessary for her eggs to develop. 

As a salesperson, you need to keep the mindset of a pregnant mosquito. The “blood” you need is new customers with needs. Many b2b salespeople move into this mindset only when they need to—when they lose a big account or get behind budget. If you want to be the best, this month, next month, and every month, stay on the hunt for new blood customers—not occasionally, but all the time. You always need fresh blood.

This week's posts

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• On Monday, Mike Anderson told us we're all in positions to be disrupted. It's our choice whether we want to be on the side of the disruptors or the disrupted.

• Tuesday, Matt Sunshine revealed the solution to ending the struggle between internal sales and marketing departments, and his solution is elegant.

It happened in sixth grade, and yet I remember it like it was yesterday. Another student said something mean to me about the way I looked, and it stuck. I will never forget it. I can remember times at work when I felt hurt by something someone said as well—such as the time when a manager at a previous job told me my idea was stupid, but didn’t explain why or suggest a different approach, so I had no idea which direction to go. But I have a hard time remembering as vividly the times when people have praised me. I think I’m pretty normal in this respect.

Have you ever received criticism you just couldn’t shake? It probably won’t take you long to remember a time when you got negative feedback that really hurt. That’s because we’re actually hardwired to remember the negatives.

The Negativity Bias

It is scientifically proven that bad news makes a much bigger impact on our brains than does good news. Scientists call it the brain’s “negativity bias.” It’s an important survival skill that helps us stay away from dangerous situations, but it also causes us to easily recall criticism and the unpleasant things people have said to us.

I often coach sales managers to provide salespeople with regular feedback on performance, and I encourage them to make it a top priority to give both positive feedback and constructive criticism. Both forms of feedback are extremely important because managers who give only negative feedback are likely to have more disengaged and demotivated salespeople.

The Happy Hour Rule Conquers Negativity When Coaching Salespeople

Look at the calendar. If it is Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday—or sometimes even Saturday or Sunday—your industry and your career are likely going through or preparing for a disruption. No one is immune.

Ask anyone who used to sell compact discs containing recorded music. Ask the guy who used to sell those phones that were tethered to a wall. Ask the staff photographers at the Chicago Sun-Times. Ask the guy who puts lug nuts on the wheels of every Ford that comes off the assembly line (oh, no, wait… that guy’s a robot now). If you think you’re not going to experience a disruption in your category or career, you might be crazy or have a serious case of denial.

If you’re reading this blog, you are likely employed in sales, management, or marketing. So how do you survive disruption and thrive in a new era? There are two ways. First, you can be the disruptor (that one’s easy to say but not so easy to do).

This week's posts were all about introspection. Look within to lead. From personal branding to finding talent, it was all about asking the right questions.

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• On Monday, Christi Cool wrote about Russian ballerinas and asked if we were good talent detectives.

• On Tuesday, Mike Anderson asked how well we knew ourselves. Do we see in the mirror what other people see?