New buying process forces some tough decisions

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In my first book, Rivers of Revenue, I talk about the fact that money is always flowing somewhere. Where do these "rivers of revenue" come from? Needs and desires. People, everywhere, have needs and desires, and they're looking for solutions. If lots of people have the same need or desire, you have a BIG river. Going after opportunities is a matter of identifying the needs and desires you can satisfy, and figuring out how you can satisfy them.

All of this sounds pretty straightforward and logical when you're enjoying a steady flow of revenue. But, if your river starts to dry up, life changes - fast.

Careers and businesses used to last a lifetime. Not anymore. You'll be lucky if what you are doing lasts for five to ten years.

When your river dries up, everything that you did, everything that made sense, everything that "worked" for years suddenly just doesn't work any more. You are stumped. You will have no idea what to do next.

This is what has happened to salespeople, because consumers have changed the way they buy. Their river of revenue has dried up.

Regardless of the industry they worked in, salespeople could behave a certain way, and do things a certain way, and the bucks came in. Their river of revenue was flowing. Life was good. They just had to work really hard - pushing themselves to make as many calls and send as many emails as possible every day - and they could make a decent, dependable living.

Now they are making their calls, but no one is answering the phone or returning their calls. Now they are sending emails and the customer has already made a purchase or is ignoring the email. Now, if they finally get a customer on the phone or a customer calls, they find that the customer doesn't want to hear their standard pitch. In fact, forcing the customer to listen to the standard pitch is a sure way to lose the customer.

Instead, the customer wants a specific answer to a specific question. The salesperson must be able to answer that question in order for the sale to be made. The salesperson can say, "I don't know, but I'll find out," but then he'd better find out quickly, because as soon as that customer hangs up the phone, he's going to go back to Google and see if he can get the answer from someone else.

If the customer finds the answer elsewhere, his buying process will continue to the next stage, with the new source. The original salesperson - your salesperson - will become irrelevant. Someone else will solve the problem that your salesperson could have solved. The sale will be lost.

Salespeople are now looking at their old dried-up river of revenue, swearing and scratching their heads. And, being the stubborn, persistent types they are - which is why they were able to survive as salespeople in the first place - they are sticking to what they know, with that river. They continue to come into work, thinking that if they just keep doing what they've always done, the river will fill up again, and life will go back to what it was.

But it won't. It's gone. The "standard selling methods" river has DRIED UP. Now what?

Now business owners and managers have a really big problem. They have already hired a bunch of aggressive, slap-bam-thank-you-m'am people to get on the phone and "make sales." But customers aren't responding favorably to those types of people anymore. Well, I should correct that - they never responded favorably, but now they have an alternative, as close as their computer keyboard.

Who do buyers want to talk to, in the middle of their buying process, after they've done all their research and they just have a couple of go/no-go questions? They want to talk to detail-oriented, helpful educators. They need someone who knows the product or service really, really well. They need someone who can describe how the customer will solve their particular problem using the product. They need someone who can tell them exactly what they need to know to make a buying decision. They need people who are more like customer service people than salespeople.

Should you try to re-train your salespeople to be more like customer service people? Yes, that is the right and humane thing to do. Should you also recruit new people, who are more detail-oriented and helpful, while still possessing the stick-to-it-tivity of a good salesperson? Yes. Do you start to build better question-answering systems and tools, so "salespeople" can find those answers, fast? Absolutely. I'm in the middle of these types of projects with several clients right now.

Will all your salespeople make the transition? No. Will you have to let some go? Yes.

As painful as these changes are, the shift in the buying process will force you to make another, even more painful decision. You will have to decide who is going to manage your new buyer-friendly sales department.

Will it be the Chief Bully you hired to whip salespeople into a calling frenzy every day? That person who comes to work already fired up, that person who talks to the salespeople the way they talk to themselves every morning ("OK, this is a new day. This is going to be the best day of my career. I'm going to make more calls and close more sales than I have in any other day of my life.")...?

Probably not. I don't know what all those Chief Bullies are going to do with themselves, frankly. Fortunately, a lot of them are near retirement, but many of them aren't. There are going to be a lot of these people on the market, amazed that they can't talk their way into a job.

Can someone who has been the Chief Bully change his ways? The jury is still out on that one, but the following rule about people's behavior: "What you see is what you get," never gets you into trouble.

If what you see is someone who is willing to listen, and works really, really hard to do whatever is necessary, then there is hope. This person should be given a solid opportunity to make a go of it. However, you will still have to be ready to face the fact that it may not work. You also don't have the time to wait years while the person slowly gets with the program.

If what you see is someone who pretends to be willing to listen, but who secretly and sneakily decides to do things the way he has always done them, then you have to bite the bullet and replace that person.

If what you see is someone who pays lip service to the whole idea of buyers changing, but openly continues to operate the same way - and blames his failure on others in the company - you will have to bite the bullet ASAP.

Why am I so black-and-white about this? Because the shift has already happened. Buyers have changed - for good. There will not be a return to the pre-Google days of buying. They are OVER. The longer your company follows the old model, the longer you lose out on sales you would have made if your selling infrastructure matched their buying process. More adaptable competitors will eat your lunch.

Your desire to help and protect one person - someone who refuses to go where buyers have already gone - will jeopardize every other employee you have, and the future of your business.

Tough decisions are ahead. Only the brave and clear-headed business owners and managers will make this transition successfully. Steel yourself.