How Does Your Company Define Salesmanship? - Sales …salesperformance.com/.../Pro-articles/SPC-How-Does-Your-Company-Define-Salesmanship.pdfHow Does Your Company Define Salesmanship?

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How Does Your Company Define Salesmanship? By Michael J. Webb

Almost every executive I’ve talked to in the last seven years has acknowledged that their

sales and marketing operations are a mess. They struggle to find enough prospects, yet

many of their brochures have little content people want to read, and their websites are not

optimized for search engines (or anything else, for that matter). Salespeople work their

hearts out trying to find sales opportunities, and once found, too many prospects continue

to stall, or look for lower prices.

When a sales department is not making its numbers, it is natural to assume there must be

something wrong in the sales department.

Yet that assumption deserves to be challenged.

Actually, there are lots of unchallenged assumptions in the way most companies go to

market. Most companies haven’t even considered what should happen when prospects hit

the “submit” button on their websites. They leave the marketing up to the marketing

department, and the selling up to the sales department (who likely have received some

sales training). Unfortunately, at best, the whole organization is oriented to sell the way

customers bought 10 or 15 years ago.

Obviously, the Internet and search engines have a huge impact on businesses. Some

people believe corporations struggle with sales and marketing these days because

business executives don’t understand and are fearful of the new world of fully integrated

(Internet) selling and marketing.

In truth, the problem goes deeper than that. The problem goes to how you define

“salesmanship” in the first place.

How Does Your Company Define Salesmanship?


Salesmanship is Not Just the Sales Department’s Problem

Suppose you were MasterLift (www.masterlift.com) and needed to sell more forklift

trucks. Your business is mundane. You sell to facilities managers, logistics executives,

and, yes, to workers who drive those trucks. How do you grab attention, and even launch

a new product line in a market like this? Do you:

• Invest large sums of money in branding, product, or channel development?

• Hire hotshot salespeople and pay them big bucks to bring in business?

• Command your distributors and salespeople to work harder?

• Analyze the sales process in agonizing analytical detail?

Of course, none of those is the right answer.

Figure 1: “Pimp Your Lift”

http://www.masterlift.com



The right answer is to re-examine what your customers want, and find a way to give it to

them. Masterlift’s prospects and customers were going through the same old channels

they always went through. MasterLift realized that the bottleneck in their sales funnel

was at the top: getting the attention of more people who need to buy lift trucks.

MasterLift found something their customers wanted that no one was offering. They

created a simple initiative that attacked their bottleneck simply, and brilliantly. Figure 1

illustrates their clever idea, which they call “Pimp Your Lift.” A great short video tells

the story at http://www.smartinitiatives.com/?p=224 .

It is a great example of salesmanship, isn’t it? Figuring out what your customer wants,

and giving it to them. That’s as old as the hills. Yet, Masterlift’s sales department is not

primarily responsible for this initiative (though they probably supported it

enthusiastically). Further, while the Internet surely makes this marketing campaign less

expensive to conduct, and engages the audience more effectively (you can create your

own truck “design” on a web page, for example), the campaign could have been created

and implemented even if the Internet didn’t exist.

We’ve been trained for decades that marketing and selling are two different things, yet

MasterLift is great evidence that when the sales department is not making its numbers,

the solution to the problem might not be in the sales department.

Salesmanship is in the Sizzle and the Steak

“Fine,” you say: “That is nothing but sizzle.” Perhaps “pimp” is not your taste, or

something like that won’t work in your market – or perhaps someone else has already

won that battle and you’re suffering as a result. What is good salesmanship then?

Consider another mundane, yet brilliant, example – Figure 2 illustrates all the essential

characteristics of effective steak-and-potatoes salesmanship – albeit in a print ad.

http://www.smartinitiatives.com/?p=224



Figure2: Johnson Controls Ad



This piece is obviously valuable to readers who are responsible for management and

maintenance of buildings. The headline makes it easy to understand the point. It delivers

the steak, not just the sizzle, because it conveys valuable information – and makes an

offer that is easy to follow up on.

This is “direct response marketing,” and it has worked marvelously since it was invented

and written about over 80 years ago by Claude Hopkins in his book “Scientific

Advertizing.” Often called “salesmanship in print,” the actual salesmanship is in the

planned steps that result in a buyer’s actions.

All businesses in all kinds of industries can follow the pattern illustrated here. Although

the example is from a trade magazine, it precisely mimics the behavior of an effective

salesperson:

• go where the prospects and customers are

• earn their respect and trust by informing them of something they need to know

• make it easy for them to take the next step

It is easy to see how this approach would work on the Internet too:

• Pay-per-click ad campaign è Landing page è Opt-in è White paper (valuable

information) è Inquiry for an assessment

It is interesting to note that all around us on the Internet we are seeing the wholesale

automation of all kinds of sales processes, and it has little or nothing to do with the CRM

software companies struggle to get their salespeople to use.



Salesmanship is Pay for Performance

A good salesperson’s skills are extremely valuable, and difficult to develop. That is why

they are usually well paid for performance. Likewise, direct-response marketing is also

about pay for performance. Businesses must make money!

And, customers will buy things that make money for them.

The genius of the free market is that people who find better ways of doing things are

rewarded. Value is created when people take actions. Customers take actions when they

pay attention to your headline, give you information, consider your offer, and, ultimately,

when money changes hands. Interacting with them to earn their trust is essential if you

are ever to earn any of their money. The battle ground is across the entire range of your

relationship with customers:

• How your market presence is perceived

• The value added by your salespeople’s interactions with customers

• The capabilities of your product and how it is serviced and supported

Markets reward companies that do any of these things better. Winners in the market are

the companies that cause the largest number of the right customers to move through the

stages of their buying process.

Yet, many excellent salespeople toil for years in companies that assume selling is the

sales department’s problem. Someone else decides the “brand,” designs the brochures

and websites, and the products, and sets their quotas. Someone else sets the service

department’s objectives and budgets.

After all, salespeople are supposed to sell, aren’t they?



Salesmanship is a System

Good salespeople acting on their own study their prospects and customers. They observe

what they do, not just what they say. They search for motives and desires, for hooks and

reasons that support their case. Stereotypes aside, good salespeople are organized, keep

records, and are analytical. They can be counted on to succeed when the things that need

to be controlled are within their grasp.

What happens when the things salespeople need to control are outside their grasp? Are

salespeople supposed to create marketing strategies, or multi-step direct-response

campaigns?

Look around your company and ask the question, “Who’s job is it to make selling easier

around here? Who’s job is it to improve how selling and marketing are done? Who is

making it easier for the customer to buy from us?”

Most companies struggle in sales and marketing because their management system is not

designed to do this job. Instead of clarifying what we are producing (specific sequences

of customer actions), and designing the organization around that, businesses have stuck

with outmoded concepts of what sales and marketing are supposed to do.

Every kid who has ever started a lemonade stand with their buddies learns to put the flow

of activity and customer interaction first; and then assign the people accordingly.

Unfortunately, sales and marketing management wrongly assumes optimizing the parts

will optimize the whole:

• marketers – we want you go up and down the block all day telling people about

our lemonade stand

• sellers, we want you to be pouring lemonade cups whether people buy them or

not, because the more cups you fill on the table, the more chance someone will

buy them



• OK, everybody, since we are not making the numbers, we want you work harder!

By contrast, production management systems in manufacturing organizations are clearly

designed to measure the creation of value via raw material, work in process, and finished

goods. Process excellence assesses every activity against a standard of value add vs

waste. Their languages of production, engineering, accounting, and quality are all

translatable. Every word and generalization can be traced to specific observable aspects

of reality – and this is done often.

Sales and marketing management is hobbled by myopic assumptions that marketing is

about the “Four Ps,” and salespeople are accountable for results. Executives and

managers fret about why the sales forecast is so unreliable, why they can’t get

salespeople to do what they are supposed to (such as to sell “solutions” instead of

products, and make quota). They spend money on “branding campaigns” without

knowing what steps they will get customers to take, or how to measure them.

Your company probably has some great salespeople. Yet it is quite likely that the

corporation itself lacks systemic salesmanship altogether.

Salesmanship Responds to Customer Needs

This unseen problem is exacerbated as markets evolve. For example, with the

development of the search engine in the last 10 years, the world has seen a dramatic shift:

virtually every person on the planet is looking for information on the Internet to help

them solve their problems.

This does not obsolete salespeople by any means; however, it changes the role they are

required to play. The work of conveying information and taking orders is accomplished

far more effectively by a web page. Further, salespeople can no longer find enough

business on their own through prospecting, making cold calls, or traditional territory

planning.



The work of contacting and sifting through great numbers of prospects to find the ones

ready to buy is accomplished more effectively by a campaign similar to the Johnson

Controls ad campaign described above. Prospects want to research their problems and

your potential to help them via the Internet rather than talk to salespeople, who might try

to twist their arm before they are ready to buy.

When the prospect is ready to talk to a salesperson, they want that person to be able to

offer knowledge and insight tailored specifically for them. The Internet and search

engines cause the scope of activities required for customer relationships to exceed the

salesperson’s span of control. Salespeople will always remain a critical part of what the

customer needs to help them solve their problems, but salespeople cannot do the entire

job alone.

That means that companies must organize and manage groups of people to accomplish

the task salespeople used to do on their own. And that means they require a management

system that clearly distinguishes value add from waste in sales and marketing.

Salesmanship is a Science

Unfortunately, the management system most companies and salespeople live with is not

designed around the principles of salesmanship, much less the principles of the scientific

method. As a result, senior leaders find themselves literally “up a creek.” Their sales and

marketing information systems cannot accurately project revenues or identify waste, and

they have no paddle with which to move in the right direction.

Salesmanship is a science – the science of getting your customers to act so they can be

happier and more productive. Companies need a management system that enables

everyone to know whether their actions are accomplishing the goal, or detracting from it.

Just as in lean process excellence, sales process excellence means everything you do to

find, win, and keep customers must create value for them. Value for the customer is

created when customers take actions.



You can start now, today in your company, by getting your marketers and sellers together

to define the stages your customers go through (it is called the customer’s journey). Get

them to clarify observable customer actions and attributes. Start measuring the flow and

the characteristics of customer inquiries, opportunities, and deals, as if they were assets

like inventory, because that is what they are.

It doesn’t matter whether individuals are in the sales department, or the marketing

department, or the service department. What matters is that your team succeeds at

increasing the flow of customers.

Corporate salesmanship is in the simplicity and clarity of the steps you want customers to

take and the effectiveness of how you encourage them to act. The science is in tracking

the information you need to know about their actions, which means: measuring their

responses. What responses? The potential list is immense:

• Market-perceived value (a kind of survey)

• Opt-ins

• Webinar attendance

• Salesperson’s qualification scores

• Customer’s assessment scores

• Number of times you say “No,” or “I don’t know,” to them

• Service requests

• Satisfaction surveys

• Referrals

• “Net Promoter” scores

• Anything else that provides evidence of customer actions

Which data is most important? How do you know what it means? What should you do

with the data? All these are the province of the quality and productivity sciences.



Once you have measures like the ones listed above associated with the sequence of the

customer’s steps along their journey, you have the makings of a production system as

predictable as any other. Applying the quality and productivity sciences will make more

money for you and your company very quickly.

For example, a software company developed a detailed assessment for measuring

observable characteristics they believed were associated with deals that would close.

After gathering this data from a large enough number of sales opportunities, a statistical

analysis revealed startling insights about their sales process. Knowing which of their

assumptions were right and which ones weren’t enabled them to develop forecast

indicators that have been more than 90% accurate for several years. (Of course, forecast

accuracy has a huge ripple effect on working capital, and accurate forecasts make lean

manufacturing much easier to achieve.)

Another company was frustrated that so few leads from their website resulted in closed

business. Since their website had been designed around their products instead of any

customer purpose, they realized there was no way to know why prospects were visiting,

or what they wanted. When they recast the website to address customer interests, they

learned how to separate real prospects from everyone else, including tire kickers,

students, and existing users. They reduced the quantity of leads to their call center by

more than half, but the quality increased a like amount. The result was a 20% increase in

revenue and a 46% increase in profit.

Finally, a company president was unhappy that his sales force seemed unwilling to follow

the process that had been laid out for them. They towed the line when he was inspecting

their behaviors, but seemed to fall back on old habits when he wasn’t around. We learned

that the process had been defined around very aggressive ideas about what salespeople

should do to follow up with customers, virtually hounding them to take a demonstration

and then to buy. Of course, customers resisted this kind of behavior.



When the sales process was redesigned to appeal to what customers wanted, providing

salespeople with appropriate information customers needed at the stages of their buying

cycle, and not trying to force customers to do what they were not ready to do, things got a

lot better.

If you design the sales process so customers will follow it, salespeople will follow it too.

Further, they have less need to protect themselves or hide critical information.

Conclusion: Good Salesmanship Makes More Money

Salespeople played critical roles in each of the above examples. Yet companies cannot

achieve their revenue objectives by relying on the sales department alone. The whole

company must unite in a common view of

• the stages customers go through

• what we do to get them to do what we want

• the data that proves whether they did it or not

For years people have wondered why revenue-generating organizations are so immune to

improvement, why they can’t be managed, measured, and improved like manufacturing

processes have been. The reason is that people have unwittingly assumed that the sales

process is something salespeople do, when in fact it is something their entire company

should be doing, and hasn’t been.

A proper view of the sales process crystallizes what adds value and what doesn’t,

whether it is a headline for an ad campaign, an adroit sales presentation, or an insightful

service call.

If it gets the customer to take the actions we want them to take, it makes money and is

great salesmanship.



About the Author

Michael J. Webb, president and founder of Sales Performance Consultants, is the

foremost expert on sales process improvement. Michael has helped business executives

of Fortune 500 as well as tiny start-ups to improve sales and marketing results by

eliminating waste and making the sales funnel flow faster. His website,

www.salesperformance.com supports the Sales Performance Improvement Forum, a

professional educational society for the advancement of sales process improvement.

Michael delivered the keynote address to the first two conferences ever held on applying

Six Sigma to marketing and sales. He has helped companies such as MAQUET, Thermo

Fisher Scientific, Marriott, WaterFurnace, DDI, and many others to identify bottlenecks,

change behaviors, increase close ratios, and improve forecast accuracy. He also has

extensive sales training facilitation and field coaching experience with hundreds of sales

people and managers in the U.S. and Canada.

Michael is the author of “Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way” (Kaplan, 2006) and

numerous articles. He has held professional certifications with APICS, and ASQ, and has

a BS in Mathematics from Southeast Missouri State University.

http://www.salesperformance.com

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