Knowledge
TechMine Coffee report: good sales practices
The first “TechMine Coffee” meeting of the new year 2018 took place as part of TechMine’s new initiative, Business Hub, a club bringing together entrepreneurs who want to develop themselves and their organizations faster. Good sales practices, the problems, strategies and challenges that accompany sales in daily business practice: these are the topics we focused our attention on.
Having discussed, during previous meetings, basic issues such as:
– building a sales funnel
– acquiring clients for the funnel
– sales process
– preparing for sales conversations and meetings
– negotiation techniques and strategies
this time attention was devoted to more advanced problems: the role of emotions, examples of good sales practices, ranking the importance of clients, the problem of “unwanted” clients, and the importance of analyzing the causes of lost sales.
Among the fifteen entrepreneurs gathered were representatives of various kinds of companies: from consulting, through services, to product and manufacturing companies, mainly related to IT, but not exclusively.
In a free discussion those gathered shared their experiences of working with clients. They expressed, among others, the following views, beliefs and observations:
A situation in which the client “knows better” than the consultant or supplier, wanting to buy something that, according to the supplier’s knowledge, is unnecessary for them or may even harm their business. The problem that arose is partly ethical, but on the other hand volenti non fit iniuria: no harm is done to one who consents, so of course you should honestly present your opinion and then leave it to the client’s decision.
The problem of valuing clients, which comes down to the “ABC” classification rooted in Vilfredo Pareto’s law, also known as the Pareto principle, according to which 20% of causes produce 80% of effects. We divide (for our own knowledge) clients by decreasing value for our company (invoice values, profitability, after-sales problems) into three classes: A, B and C. Class A covers the clients most important to us, requiring special attention; class B includes clients of lesser value, while class C is everyone else. The essence of the ABC classification is to direct the effort associated with sales service for group C rather at clients that are more promising or more important from the point of view of the usefulness and long-term development of our company.
Consequently, the question arose of how, then, to deal with clients classified in class C. When qualifying clients every effort should be made not to offend the client (apart from pathological cases), but on the other hand to gently discourage cooperation. The simplest technique may be setting a prohibitive price, but it was considered that honesty is better: informing the client that we do not currently have the resources to carry out their order, or tactfully discussing the problems the cooperation with them has caused us so far.
The opposite situation, when despite our best efforts we were unable to close the sale, too often in the opinion of those gathered remains without analysis, whereas knowledge of the causes of failure has a significant impact on organizational learning and improving sales processes. The simplest method of obtaining such knowledge is simply a phone call to the client, or a meeting with them and a discussion (without explaining how badly they did by not using our offer; humility is rather recommended). It is worth gathering such knowledge.
Most of those gathered represented small and medium-sized enterprises with different business models. In such companies formal sales procedures are usually not implemented. They should not be introduced in a purely formal way; they should result from a real, recognized need. At a certain size of company, pathologies appear consisting in theoretically very busy salespeople not generating revenue adequate to their apparent efforts.
The role of reaching the right people in the client’s organization with the offer was emphasized. We often sell to the wrong person, not the one who actually makes the buying decisions. Analyzing the influence of the people who are key for the seller is important. One should not be ashamed to ask who influences decisions and try to reach such a decision-maker.
In general it was emphasized that a salesperson should listen more than talk. Asking about the budget the client has at their disposal is nothing inappropriate; it is worth starting the conversation with such a question, or even with giving our price, open to negotiation of course, but within reasonable limits.
Regardless of the scale and size of the company, it is important to treat the client in such a way that they are convinced they are important to us and respected. For example, you should definitely call back when you promised to. You have to make an effort to win clients, but “not too much”: persistently returning to a client who does not want us is a waste of time and an irritation to them. It is better to allocate resources to other promising clients.
You should always be sure of the value you deliver, and be honest with yourself and the client. When we act with such conviction, the client “takes it over” as their own and is more easily convinced of our product or service.
Apart from sales processes, or despite them, there are salespeople-artists who act in a way known only to themselves and break sales records. They should be observed and not discouraged.
The conversation proceeded in a very dynamic way and it was hard to end it, despite the time we had allocated for this meeting running out. We thank everyone present for such a high level of openness and dynamic discussion. We will certainly return to sales topics during future “TechMine Coffee” meetings.
