Rainmaking Secrets

Whenever I feel I am being too pushy with a prospect or client, I think of a Ralph McTell song.

The song is called Sweet Mystery.  It’s about a young man, desperate to make the right impression on his first date:

“One of these days I’m going to do it right,
Take her out to dine by candlelight,
Rent a suit and give my shoes a shine,
Talk about nothing over a glass or two of expensive wine.
One of these days I’m going to do it right,
Get to her door and just say goodnight,
Even if she asks me to come in,
I’ll make myself say ‘no’ so I can call again.”

The young man has learnt from past mistakes: he is thinking long term.

This is unlike the standard advice so many salespeople receive from their managers: “Remember the ABCs of selling - Always Be Closing.”

If ABC is bad advice, then when should you close?

While most customers won’t say “I’m ready to buy – it’s time for you to close the sale,” they will indicate with their body language and words that they are receptive to closure.

If the customer body language is positive, i.e. – they’re making eye contact, sitting forward, and displaying an open body posture with legs apart, then their body is saying ‘yes.’

If the customer is using words such as “when could you install our machine” or “can you guarantee completion of the job in the next eight weeks,” now is the time to close.

You can confirm a prospect’s readiness to buy by stating: “We seem to have covered everything you asked for. Do you have any remaining concerns?” If they do express any remaining concerns, treat this as an objection. Answer the objection and then move on to the closure.

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To understand what we need to do next in sales and marketing, we need to appreaciate where we have come from.

The huge change affecting markets and marketers came in the 1970’s when product-driven selling and marketing began to give way to customer-driven selling and marketing. The cause: A global over supply of product, virtually every category, shifted the balance of power in marketing from producers to customers.

Here is a quick history of the major changes:

Sales 1.0 Customer-Centric Selling

In the 1980’s, product-focused marketing gave way to customer-centric marketing. Relationship Marketing, Solution Selling and Customer for Life became the new mantras.

Sales 2.0 Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Techonology first began to transform sales with the arrival of contact management packages like ACT. Today, web-based CRM makes it possible for sales teams to manage, forecast and report on all phases of the sales cycle. But while CRM has delivered increases in efficiencies and sales force productivity, it has rarely enhanced the customer experience or deliver a sustainable source of competitive advantage.

Sales 3.0 Customer Experience Management (CEM)

Currently, the best performing sales organizations are shifting their orgranizational mind set from CRM to Customer Experience Management (CEM). Their goal: “Right Touch/Right Customer/First Time/Everytime”. CEM increases customer engagement, shorten sales cycles and increases closure rates. The result is a high velocity sales organisation.

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Hot fashion retailer Zara has one plaudits for the way it taps into fashion trends and converts them into hot clothes that are affordable - amazingly fast.

A Zara design can go from concept to store within 30 days. Zara employs over 200 staff in its Spanish design and development team. The team churns out an amazing 1000 styles a month.

The mantra in Zara is react rather than predict. Zara’s designers don’t attempt to predict or share the market like most of their competitors. Zara reacts to what they in the night clubs, on the streets and on the catwalks and tests them in their shops. What sells is replaced quickly. The sale dogs are cut.

Its a magic formula. Customers love it. They get the latest fashions, fast and cheap.

Zara’s short lead times means it continues to deliver more fashionable clothes. Thats why customers return to the store - on average an amazing 17 times a year (most competitors average 3). The lower quantities mean the fashion items are often in short supply. Low surplus stock means Zara doesn’t have to regularly purge its stock with massive end of season sales - so margins remain high.

The huge range of styles gives the customer more choice and improves the odds of Zara getting it right. Because Zara customers know Zara is always updating its stock, Zara spends very little on advertising. Zara’s hot fashion creates massive word-of-mouth among it’s target customer base.

When Ortago Gaona, the founder of Inditex, the owners of Zara, is asked what Zara does, he replies “Zara provides freshly baked clothes.” For the staff this translates into: react rather than predict.

The Zara formula also suggests that before long we will find that a lot more fashion brands will have to own and run their own retail outlets. Zara’s “fast fashion” is built on getting daily feedback from its own stores and using it’s sales associates and store managers as “trendspotters.”

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Every industry I work with is relentlessly under attack from commoditizers.

When Bronco Wine Company, now the fourth largest wine producer in the U.S. produced an under $2 bottle of wine, industry insiders treated the offering with contempt.

The quality had to be CRAP, and I don’t mean CReative Accounting Practice.

Critics and fans have named the product “Two-Buck Chuck.” So imagine the surprise, at the 2004 Eastern Wine Competition, Bronco’s 202 Shiraz won the coveted double gold medal from a field of 2,300 entries.

It will be interesting to watch the reaction to the high-end $3.99 Merlots and Chardonnays, nick-named “Four-Buck Fred.”

You may hate the Two-Buck Chucks of this world, but unless you come with a superior value proposition that sets you apart your business is history.

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I am often asked how long it takes a customer to fix on their impression of a sales person.

I used to answer, “4 minutes.”

This reply was based on research on the time it took job interviewers to make up their mind on the suitability of a job applicant.

However, I now answer “10 seconds.”

In their remarkable studies, social psychologists Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal, have shown that we often form positive or negative impressions of people in a mere “blink” or “think slice” of time.

After subjects watched three two-second video clips of professors teaching, their teaching ratings predicted the actual end-of-the-term rating by the professors own students.

To get a feel on someones energy and warmth, the researchers concluded just six seconds is usually enough.

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