Revenue Journal®

No matter what you're selling, but especially if you're selling something technical or complex you can't assume that "the way we've always done it" will work for you now. "The way we've always done it" usually means that the salespeople have minimal training, and are set loose on customers.

Big Mistake. It was a smaller mistake back when salespeople could be "order takers," (I think that phrase was last heard sometime last year), but it's a catastrophic mistake now. Why? Because buyers have changed their behavior. Companies that adapted to those changes are doing OK. Those who haven't are slipping, fast.

The most significant change I see in buyer behavior is an increase in impatience. They have no patience for websites and salespeople that don't answer their most pressing questions. That's the first big hurdle you must overcome. Then, if you manage to answer their important questions, and meet their "Critical Criteria," they are impatient to make the purchase. They want your product or service NOW.

Let's look at these two dynamics separately. We'll do it using a fairly simple real-life example, but one that can be applied to even the most complex type of sale.

I don't do this very often, because I always have an abundance of original content, but, in conventional blogger style, today I'm going to refer you to two other articles.

Actually, I wrote one of them, so perhaps my resort-to-convention post only applies to one of the articles - a great post in Ray Wang's blog, "Software Insider's Point of View," posted by John Ragsdale, VP of Research for SSPA, formerly of Forrester.

In John's article, "Reality Check: Sales reps matter more than product," he says:

"I don't think developers and marketers at high-tech companies have any idea how many deals they are losing, based on the personality of the sales rep." [More]

All day long, salespeople talk.

They're supposed to be selling. In other words, they are supposed to be making it easy for the customer to understand what they have to offer, to get their questions answered, and to make a buying decision.

But, unfortunately, as good as many of them think they are - and as good as you may think they are - what they are saying actually makes it difficult for the customer to understand what your company has to offer, and make a buying decision. The answers raise more questions than they answer - while leaving the original questions unanswered. And, they force the customer, who had been almost ready to buy, to back away from buying because of all the new doubts that the salesperson raised during the call. If you listened in on the calls - you would be shocked by what you heard.

Some time ago, I wrote an article about how software buyers were mired in the "skepticism swamp." It's even worse now.

If you're selling software, you have to be able to overcome the massive amount of disbelief that has built up in buyers' minds, thanks to all the promises that have been made to them - and broken. Everyone promised higher productivity, increased efficiency, and plug-and-play. HA.

What everyone delivered was installation headaches, integration nightmares, missing-in-action service, and navigation that required that you know the program intimately before you could do anything useful with it.

Today, software buyers and users consider each purchase an investment - of time and grief, as well as the money.

Every business starts with a dream. Every buyer starts the buying process with a dream.

Every business can turn into a nightmare. And, every buying process - especially those involving large, expensive, important purchases - can turn into a nightmare.

These dreams - and fears of nightmares - drive the decisions and actions of both business owners and buyers.

We've all seen this at work in extreme cases, where an individual will let their own fantasy world overwhelm reality to the point where they lose their job or their business, and the people who supported them along the way.

But these situations are rare. The more usual, day-to-day situation is one where the seller and buyer are trying to find common ground, to negotiate a realistic solution where everyone can be happy.

Long-time readers are probably wondering if I've gone off my rocker with that title. No worries, I'm not suggesting that you do anything stupid or lewd. But there is something that you can learn from any performer, even the most superficial ones.

Having come from a show business family, I learned at an early age about "stage presence." It really boils down to the fact that when you're on stage, you're in character. Even if you are a bit player in a crowd scene and you're the person at the very back of the crowd, you are still on stage. You must be in character and engaged the entire time you are on stage. If the main character in a musical is singing a solo, and you are part of the "listening crowd," your role as a listener is just as important as the soloist's role.

What does this have to do with sales? Imagine that you are part of a sales team, pitching a potential client. Someone in your group is presenting.

A group of consultants are in a conference room, pitching a new client. One of the consultants is making the pitch. We'll call him the salesperson.

So far, the client has been alert, sitting up straight, listening, eyes fixed on the presentation being displayed in the conference room. Then the salesperson says something that disturbs the client, and the client shifts in his chair. His brows furrow a little. His eyes are no longer open wide, but squinting slightly. His hand comes up to the front of his face, palm on his chin, fingers over his lips.

The client has just sent a signal to the presenter. It is an unmistakable signal, if the presenter is properly attuned to body language. The signal says, "Hmmm. Wait a minute. This doesn't sit well with me."

We had a lot of reasons for moving from Silicon Valley to the New England coast, about ten years ago. None of them had anything to do with the weather, though we liked the idea of having "seasons." We also wanted to live on the water for less than, say, seven million dollars. We had many family members here, and both of us were born here - although we also both moved to California when we were young. Many of our clients were on the East Coast. And it looked like it would be a great place to sail.

This background sets the stage for my little salesman's story - a perfect example of selling the wrong way, using the "tell, tell, tell" method instead of the "ask then tell" method.

In the course of our search for a house in New England, one April day we were being driven around some waterfront neighborhoods in Connecticut. The real estate broker was a typical congenial salesperson, a large man who had obviously enjoyed his share of drink, food, and smoke. He was chatting away as he drove us around. We didn't say much, because he was doing all the talking.

I've mentioned before that I buy a lot of software online. Recently I undertook an extensive search for software I could use to efficiently build outlines for books and other large, complex documents, because the outlining function in Word is pitiful and slows...the...creative...flow...to...a...crawl, and has a klutzy expand/contract outline function.

I must have looked at 25 programs, and trialed at least 10. For all of you out there selling software online, I have some very specific advice for you, from a buyer's point of view.

I get a lot of calls from PR folks. Each call is a sales call, which is why I'm talking about it here. Anyone who sells for a living - and that includes CEOs and entrepreneurs - can learn from the mistakes that PR houses make. This article will also help you manage your PR folks, who are probably making these same mistakes.

PR people call me because they have a story they want me to "buy" and write about. Their methods, for the most part, are pitiful. It's sad, because just about every person who calls is a decent human being who wants to do a good job.

Most of the calls come from young females who have been hired to call editors, reporters, and bloggers and try to line up an appointment with the company's CEO. They must all attend the same school of Dysfunctional PR, because they all say the same thing:

Hi, my name is Jennifer. I'm calling because XYZ company is rolling out a new widget. Did you get my press release? Would you like to interview the CEO?

I'm sad to say that they've been saying this same thing to me since 1984, when my monthly columns started appearing in a marketing magazine. After hearing the same pitiful pitch for 23 years now, it would be easy to be impatient and cross. But I was young and in PR once, so I try to help them.

Here's the first sentence of a website selling an email security solution:

"In today's business world, email has become critical to daily commerce. But, it also contains serious threats, threats which have increased dramatically over the last few years. You can't afford to ignore those threats."

Whoever wrote these words has obviously never spoken to a real IT person, who has been fighting an endless battle against spam for years. Actually, even a technophobic grandmother who does nothing but email on her computer knows that email contains "serious threats" which have "increased dramatically."

In any sales situation, the seller wants the buyer to buy. The buyer, meanwhile, is considering the purchase - and alternative courses of action. Most sales training gurus would call those alternatives "objections," and salespeople are trained to "counter" those objections.

But this usually backfires.

Here are some typical "alternative courses of action" that could be floating around in the buyer's mind as she listens to a sales pitch:

I'm in the midst of rewriting about 50 "sales plays" for a client. These are intranet-based instructions for salespeople making outgoing calls to potential clients. Each "sales play" describes the product or product combination being sold (the "offering"), the target audience for that offering, what's included in the offering, why the client should be interested, and suggested voicemail, phone call, and email copy that the salesperson can use when pitching the offering to a client.

Rewriting these sales plays is reminding me how impossible it is to be a salesperson who is depending on copy written by copywriters who have never had to make a cold call. The plays I'm changing, although each one is written about a different product, all use the same language. They all talk about the customer's need and the product's benefits.

A perfect example of the buyer being "fed a story" by a vendor.

I recently interviewed a network security manager while doing customer research for a client. His name is Alan. He works in the IT department of a large UK company. His story is similar to those I hear from countless others around the world who describe their buying process to me.

Alan's story shows quite clearly how vendors lose sales because they deceive their clients.

Let's assume someone really good-looking swept you off your feet with promises of a life of bliss. You dated, got engaged, and then tied the knot.

About five minutes after you left the church together in your limo, your new spouse suddenly turned into the ugliest, meanest, rudest person you had ever met. A broken heart and many months later, you were free, and you vowed to yourself: "Never again."

This is the mindset of today's software buyer. Especially those considering big-ticket, enterprise-wide programs.

These people are Skeptical, with a capital S. They have already been badly burned by "revolutionary" systems like CRM and ERP. Some of them almost killed their own companies trying to put these systems into place (and almost did it again when they had to remove those same systems).

Think you can impress these buyers with flowery promises? Not anymore. Think they'll believe that "It will be different this time - we will actually take care of you?" Ha! Think you're going to convince someone to champion your solution to their CEO? Dreamer!

They don't trust any promises; too many promises have been broken by everyone in the software business, from Microsoft (the biggest promiser and promise-breaker of all time) on down.

No wonder it's so tough to sell software.