To Dance or Not to Dance

Written by: Miller

You have been there. And you know what to do. We have all been there. It’s that crucial time: The sale is yours for the taking. You can feel it. It’s time to use your experience from all those years of selling. It’s time to use those tools you have used in the past, since they have worked so well for you before. It’s time for you to grab the spotlight, take a deep breath.. and dance. And when major sale is on the line, boy can you dance.

Dancing is very effective, but there has to be a better way of making sales calls. I have observed salespeople for more that 10 yours, and my observations about sale people and how they perform on sales calls are:

1. Most salespeople use “sales success patterns” on their sales calls. I call these success patterns tolls.
2. Salespeople have an average of three success patterns, or tools at their disposal.
3. Tools are usually thought up and applied during sales call in reaction to something a prospect says or does. This is also known as the “a great idea that just came to me” method.
4. Salespeople rarely practice tools. They prefer winging it, or using whatever tool comes to them during the sales call.
5. Most salespeople add a new tool to their tool kit less that once a year. Can you imagine any other profession – doctor, lawyer, or firefighter, for example—saying they rarely and new tools to their tool kits? A doctor who won’t learn about a new drug, a lawyer a new law, a firefighter a new piece of equipment?

Salespeople get stuck in their ways, it seems. They measure their success by how they do against quota, then go back out and do the same things again. Oh sure, they subscribe to the theory, “What’s good enough to have gotten you where you are today is not good enough to get you to where you need to be tomorrow. “ And yet they think sales training is analogous to a lobotomy. Salespeople would rather plug away with the few tolls they have that spend time getting good at new ones.

Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Who could blame them? Most sales training asks you to swallow the whole thing, give low what you are doing, and change the way you sell. Not too many salespeople want to give up their success patterns. But the market is changing. Your customers are changing. So are your products. How your customers are buying, as well as what you are selling is different than it was even 12 months ago. Decisions are being made faster; customers are more demanding. And because you’re still using your tools from a few years ago, it’s all coming down to price.

If all things are equal, a deal will come down to price. But if all things equal, why do we need salespeople? It’s a salesperson’s job to create and sustain a value difference.

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