An article by prof. Willem Verbeke

Most of the time I tend to download every morning the web pages from International Herald Tribune and so I follow the news. Most of the time I read the articles which other people before me did indicate and suggest as inspiring and yes I keep up with especially the articles on Health (as they report a lot about endocrinology, the meaning of sports) and Science (as they report a lot about biology and molecular genetics). Sometimes I think I should also subscribe to The Economist in order to stay ahead of the news; the Economist is known for its clean reporting of major events in the world. Apparently and former student of mine who is now director of a large human resource firm did send me an e-mail which included an article on selling in The Economist. The Title of the article is: “Ice to the Eskimos; Can the dubious art of selling become more scientific?” 

The article is interesting in that it gives us immediately some interesting insights: sales is an important if not the most important function in a company as they and less so from other departments bring in the money! Still not much attention is being paid to sales! It also suggests that while sales is important not many people want to get into sales. I asked to 110 students in my class about 110 what they liked the most: marketing or sales? Guess what they answered? Only 2 of them wanted to get into sales.  This trends among students seems to be normal and it is this given “only special people want to get into sales” that is the basic idea from where I start teaching about selling, when I train salespeople and also when I do research in selling. The basic idea I have is that salespeople somehow are special and they have a passion, which is to help customers solve their problems. Of course helping is quite complex as it also involves convincing people, believing in your product and willing to go the extra mile for a customer. Just a last detail, look at the job ads these days the only job that is most mentioned is sales and yes not marketing as such. 

I did not tell yet what is the reason why The Economist writes about sales. Apparently two books have appeared on selling which were noted by the editorial board on business topics as special and they reflect two different opinions. The first book is called the “Sales Growth: Five proven strategies from the World’s sales leaders”. This book is written by people from McKinsey, specifically Thomas Baumgartner, Homayoun Hatami and Jon Vander Ark. Not surprising, they state that sales should be perceived as a science: due to the fact that sales visits can codified on data bases it is possible to better analyze  sales processes and then reengineer the sales processes. 

The other book that was noticed was from Philip Delves Broughton who wrote “The art of the sale”. He conceives sales as a social game and became more inspired by the psychology behind the sales.  The 80/20 principle seems to shine through: most of the important business generated (especially in business to business) comes from a few very good salespeople and they bring in the real business. I like to call it they bring in the key accounts. They are the rainmakers who make a difference in the company.

This difference in approach will always be the dichotomy within marketing: there are those who believe that data will allow us to better predict and manage business as we get better insights in how actions and results correlate. Then there are those who believe that you got to understand people. Of course both opinions are correct, but if you look around most specialists take one or the other more for granted. 

If you ask me? My viewpoint is more and more biological – that is salespeople still got to talk to a customer and have a deep conversation. Not everybody can do this and given the intense competition, those who better understand customer’s problems always will win no matter how good the sales process is organized. So already many times I have called this a mindset and this mindset is what drives my view about selling. 

Just to conclude: reading this article in the Economist made me happy and it is nice to see that other people see this contrast in mind-sets as clear as I feel we should do.  Only then can we better think about sales and also makes sales forces better. 

Do you have sales call anxiety? Of course you have. Here’s what to do.  

Many salespeople suffer from sales call anxiety even if most wouldn’t like to admit it. One example of sales call anxiety is when you don’t like asking the hard questions that really count in a sales meeting. Those questions should help you find out what the customer’s real pain or real issue is. Instead, you end up talking about side issues that are not so important, or about things you do like talking about – just your own products or your own company.

How do you get respect as a salesperson? To answer this tough question, I always get salespeople to think about a visit to the doctor. Let’s focus on the questions the doctor might ask you.  

The doctor asks: “How much do you drink?” You answer: “A little bit.” Hmm…You know that “little bit” is not even close to the truth. If your doctor lets you get away with this “little bit” answer, would you respect him?  

Suppose the doctor now goes on and asks: “But how often do you drink?” And you reply: “Um… well, just about every day.” Would you respect this doctor now? 

 Suppose the doctor asks further: “But how many glasses do you really drink in a day?” And you answer: “Three glasses of wine.” Would you respect this doctor now? Maybe a bit, I guess.  

So now the doctor asks: “But how big are these three glasses a day?” Suddenly you find yourself admitting: “They’re big glasses… altogether they add up to a whole bottle of wine.”  

Now that’s a big difference! According to your first answer, you only drink a little bit but according to your last answer you’re drinking at least five bottles of wine a week. That’s a lot, in fact, if I were you I’d watch out for your liver. But seriously now, the point I’m making is that most patients (including you) will have more respect for the doctor who probes for the in-depth answers rather than one who settles for only superficial replies. The doctor you respect asks the harder questions.  

That’s how you get your customer to respect you. This little medical case tells us something about how customers might be perceiving you, especially if you stick to just asking the easy questions. If you don’t ask good questions, customers probably won’t respect you. In fact, they might feel they are wasting their time with you. Customers like straight talking, because that helps them express their own pain. In fact, by asking the hard questions, you will help your customer to rephrase how they see their own pain (sometimes referred to as needs and issues). This ability to rephrase the customer’s pain differently is what we call shaping. 

So, why don’t salespeople ask the hard questions? This has something to do with our fear conditioning, which is the dark side of sales call anxiety. What is fear conditioning? Think about the following story: You’re walking down a street and see a nice house. It looks good and that makes you feel good too, doesn’t it? Suddenly a huge dog runs out of the nice house, barking wildly and bites you. Ouch! How do you feel about this house now? It’s become a “scary house” because now you connect your fear of the scary dog with the house it came out of. This connection, or association, is a conditioning process that occurs in the brain: the neurons between the amygdale (which activates when we feel emotions) and the hippocampus (which activates when we recall facts) get connected. Each time you recall that house your amygdale (emotions/fear) gets activated and this activates the production of cortisol, a hormone.  

Scientists have discovered that cortisol affects our memory. It works to reinforce our perception of the “scary house.” Each time you think of this house (you don’t actually have to see it) your brain produces cortisol and this amplifies the memory in a negative way. Even talking about the house will set off the same fear response, because words can also trigger cortisol production, which, in fact rules our behavior. The secret, of course, lies in knowing how to stop this self-defeating fear response. 

Talking in a fearless context: One way to overcome fear is to practice talking in a situation where you feel no fear (= no cortisol production). The problem is, as you prepare yourself for this ideal sales conversation you’ll probably recall (hippocampus = memory of facts) what happened last time you tried talking to a customer and, whoops, there you go again, feeling anxious and fearful about the customer. That’s bad.  

Believe me, you can beat this. One good way is to find a way of thinking or talking about your customers in a non-threatening way – in other words, you’ve got to be able to talk about them without producing cortisol. Now, one person who you can share your ideas with might be your colleague. But get this: I often talk to salespeople and many of them tell me that they are more scared of talking with colleagues than with customers.  

Okay, so we don’t like showing our vulnerabilities to colleagues, perhaps even making mistakes, because they might gossip with other colleagues and this might hurt your reputation in your firm.  

Coping with anxiety: Still, it is very important to find a colleague you can trust, someone with whom you can share your fears and ideas about customers. If you can share your ideas and feelings in a non-threatening way you will stop that negative cortisol production in your brain that creates the fear response. In a safe situation you can script how you will approach a customer in real life. You might ask the harder and deeper questions! Then you won’t just overcome your fear, you will also gain the respect of your customer.  I hope you can find colleagues in your company who are mature enough to admit that they, too, have issues about customers. Share your feelings, thoughts and fears, then you can stop suffering from sales call anxiety.   

Recently we at Professional Capital had a chance to train 10 European Account Managers from different nations in France. It was a great experience, we met very intelligent and successful account managers and we were once again able to learn from interactions and discussions with them. In the end we felt that most of our ideas were validated, on this blog I'd like to share some of them with you.

1)    Back to fundamentals: there is an important need to go back to the basics of selling; what sales people basically do is help people at a client company to get things done in such a way that their projects thrive, this of course helps their company. To do so requires a lot of creativity but most important humility, taking responsibility and entrepreneurship.

2)    Making ideas versus falsely taking credit: Many account managers realize that most of the ideas come from customers and they take these initial ideas inside the firm (that is their task or duty). But then they realize that most of their colleagues grasp their ideas only to scream that they invented them using Blue Ocean Strategy language.  It frustrates many account managers.

3)    Selfish desires versus rationalizations: Many account managers are baffled by the rationalizations people at business schools teach; some speak about work life balance while in fact they notice that people working at a client firm live in a  selfish way. Account managers are at times intimidated by this language.

4)    Conversations with customers is key: Many account managers know that many of the ideas they get from customers come from  them carefully watching what people say and do. These observations are made during conversations which mostly take place in private. Therefore account managers know that they have to become trusted advisors and keep working with the customer.

5)    Winning by choosing and bending the rules: Many account managers know that the key to success is selection of accounts. Yet they cannot make choices as they are pushed by CRM systems to fill the pipeline. Therefore they have to bend the rules gently.

6)    Knowledge is an endogenous part of key account management: Many account managers have no clue some accounts are key accounts. They are key accounts because the company learns from those accounts and more importantly they gain expertise in the field and customers then come to them. Being an expert allows them to selectively sift through what is important and what is not.

7)    Business School language is poisoning: Most account managers are baffled by the business school language that some teachers preach after stealing it opportunistically from others. This language makes people blind and dumb. Again business is about basics and instinct.

8)    Neuroscience leads the way: Many account managers are interested in neuroscience: they like to know some basic ideas, they especially like to learn how they can use it. Others hate to be confronted with these new ideas. We however believe that some insights in neuroscience can help you be a better account manager.

9)    Account manages do not change the firm; they help the firm to change slightly: firms consist of silos of people. This is a natural thing because people have identities and are proud of themselves. So we should not abolish this natural structure but use it to our advantage. Account managers make projects possible and act as entrepreneurs, operating in and between silos.

10)    Selling inside is more difficult than outside, although many account managers find selling outside more difficult than inside. Indeed colleagues see account mangers as strangers but that is exactly the key to their business; they ought to work that way. Thus the most important skill account managers should practice is networking.

11)    Successful account managers bend the rules: Many account managers are confronted with many rules but they like to change these rules.

12)    Not the managers with the loudest voice in class are the best in practice: what we see during courses is that managers who speak the loudest are not always the strongest. Those that pick up what they can use thrive.

All this points to one important thing: in a training one meets people who already have been working for a long time but they realize that they have probably been doing some things the wrong way for a long time as well as doing things right.

Reactions: verbeke@professionalcapital.nl