Sales Insanity: 20 True Stories of Epic Sales Blunders by Jason Jordan
FOREWORD
- The goal of doing business is not to prevail on a personal level or to dole out lessons to others — the point of doing business is to do business.
PART I SALES FORCES AND BAD BEHAVIORS
CHAPTER ONE SALES, CONSULTING, AND BEST PRACTICES
- There are, in fact, no global Best Practices with a capital B and capital P. There are simply common business practices that may or may not be applicable, depending on the particular situation.
- Executives desperately want to see what other companies are doing — especially the doings of their competitors
CHAPTER TWO INTRODUCING THE WORST PRACTICE
- Worst Practices are universally bad ideas that unquestionably apply to your situation.
PART II SALES PERSON INSANITY
CHAPTER THREE A FAST PLANE TO NOWHERE
- The selling environment today is different. Sales cycles are longer. There are more stakeholders involved. The politics are complex. Buyers are sophisticated. Competition is intense.
- Today’s professional sellers don’t necessarily succeed because they make ten extra calls a day. They might actually succeed if they make ten fewer calls. It’s all about the quality of the sales effort, not the quantity.
- Persuasion has been replaced with collaboration. Speed has been replaced with agility. Strength has been replaced with strategy.
- The best salespeople plan.
CHAPTER FOUR GOT BACKBONE?
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CHAPTER FIVE I RECEIVED A REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL!
- RFP processes are rarely objective purchasing decisions.
- When you receive an RFP that you didn’t know was coming, the chances are that you’ve already lost.
- A Lead is Not Qualified Unless You Can Win It
CHAPTER SIX LOOK HOW VALUABLE WE ARE TO YOU
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CHAPTER SEVEN IT’S THE ‘ MARKET PRICE ’
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CHAPTER EIGHT LOOK, I’M THE EXPERT
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CHAPTER NINE I KNOW WHAT MY CUSTOMERS WANT
- Our team proposed that they implement an account planning process for those customers that comprised the top 10%. The plan was for the sellers to approach their biggest customers and ask them these three questions:
- How satisfied are you with the products that we are providing you?
- What are your strategic goals for next two years?
- How can we help you achieve those goals?
- Regular communication isn’t the same as meaningful communication.
- Even experienced, talented salespeople become comfortable and inattentive in long-term relationships, and your customers eventually begin to wander.
CHAPTER TEN KILL THE MONSTER WHILE IT’S SMALL
- I think when customers raise objections, it shows that they don’t like something about the salesperson or the product.
- If your buyer raises an objection and you don’t address it, it’s not going away
- Don’t Assume You Know What Buyers Are Thinking
- Never Raise Objections on Behalf of Buyers: Raising objections on behalf of your prospects won’t make you appear more proactive or credible. You have to uncover objections so you can try to dispel them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN THE CUSTOMER JUST DOESN’T GET IT
- The buyer shouldn’t be expected to intuitively grasp the magnitude of the innovation; the seller has to reveal it in incremental doses that keep the buyer’s feet planted in the present while drawing the buyer’s gaze toward the future.
- When it’s time to sell a disruptive technology or innovation, ‘feature-and-function robot’ sales reps will fail miserably.
CHAPTER TWELVE IT’S ALL OR NOTHING, MR. BUYER
- Buyers go into the marketplace only after they’ve identified that they have an issue that needs to be resolved
PART III SALES MANAGEMENT INSANITY
CHAPTER THIRTEEN CRM OR BUST
- Consulting services are not clearly defined products, and there are at least two variables in play until the very end — the price for the work and the scope of the work.
- Take the time to define how you want your business to work before you set about automating it.
- If you’re replacing your current CRM tool, start by replicating the existing tool’s functionality
CHAPTER FOURTEEN WE’D BE BETTER OFF WITHOUT ALL THESE SELLERS
- The Sales Force is the Customer Experience
CHAPTER FIFTEEN OUR SALESPEOPLE SHOULD ENTER THE DATA
- Sales productivity is the product of two distinct factors:
- sales efficiency: Efficiency is about knocking on as many doors as possible
- sales effectiveness: Effectiveness is about what you do when the doors open
- Sales efficiency is about the prudent allocation of sales force resources, particularly time.
- How skilled your reps are at executing those phone calls is a measure of their effectiveness.
- Sales Support Is Cheap: If there’s any way to offload low-value tasks from your sales team to support staff, then do it today.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN GO CROSS-SELL … NO, WAIT!
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN LET THE SALES FORCE FIGHT IT OUT
- Assign a primary owner for each of your large customers.
- Organize Your Sales Force for Your Customers
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN YOU CAN HAVE A TEST DRIVE AFTER YOU BUY IT
- The sales process exists only as a reaction to the buying process.
- A salesperson’s actual job is not to ‘sell’ anything to customer — a salesperson’s job is to shepherd the customer through a buying process.
- The Selling Process Must Mirror the Buying Process
- The Buyer Is In Control — Always
CHAPTER NINETEEN MOTIVATION THROUGH FAILURE
- Management can fall into the trap of relying on incentives as a replacement for good, attentive management
- As a rule of thumb, you should set your sales targets such that two-thirds of your salespeople achieve their quotas.
CHAPTER TWENTY I DON’T NEED BABYSITTERS
- Salespeople may not necessarily want their sales managers to follow them around nonstop, but they sure want their managers to remove internal barriers, resolve customer issues, and fight for their commissions. They expect their managers to communicate important information, shelter them from the mundane, and procure the resources to help them succeed.
- Salespeople Should Not Be Treated as Lone Wolves
- A good sales management team is worth its weight in gold, because it drives greater productivity across the entire sales force.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE DO WE HAVE THOSE COMPENSATION PLANS YET?
- Limit the role of compensation to incentives and rewards and forget about compensation as law-enforcement device.
- Compensation Plans Must Work for Both Salespeople and Management
- Don’t Over-engineer Sales Compensation
- Incentive Compensation Should Motivate and Reward, Not Punish
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO YOUR MATH IS WRONG!
- Trust the Math: Math is not to be ignored. It is not to be manipulated. In the end, mathematical laws will be enforced, and the underlying reality will prevail. Always.
- Open your eyes, identify the problems, and take corrective action. Then your reality will actually improve.
PART IV LET’S KEEP THE PARTY GOING
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE THE END … AND BEYOND!
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