Sales Versatility: The Key to Sales Effectiveness

A sales force that can deliver your company’s value proposition to the marketplace is critical to effective performance. However, the true key to success is having salespeople that can adapt that message to the needs and preferences of the customer. Salespeople that recognize their customers’ individual behaviors and styles, and adapt their sales strategy to more directly meet those preferences, has proven to be the key to sales effectiveness. Research has shown that versatile salespeople can be over 50% more successful than less adaptable peers.

How can you become more effective?

Begin with owning the communication process (i.e.- personally enable bi-directional communication), learn your own social style and characteristics and learn how to identify others’ social styles. Then adjust your own style to accommodate that of the client in order to communicate more easily and effectively. Clients are more comfortable if you adjust to how each prefers to communicate.

Some clients connect with salespeople that talk at the same pace or who ask and listen; some are relationship or feel oriented; others are to the point, time conscious and tell oriented; while others prefers to listen and gather all the facts.

Many years of research indicate that people are divided equally across four primary communication styles or social styles: Driver, Influencer, Compliant, and Amiable. Because each style represents about 25% of all clients, less adaptable salespeople only share social styles and easily communicate with one out of every four customers. The other 75% of their customers pose a communication disconnect and challenge which negatively impacts performance. When a customer is easy to work with, typically it is because you have the same social style and naturally understand each other. When a customer seems difficult to work with, it is because your styles are different and are out of sync.

Consider the following scenario: a salesperson (influencer type) meets with a C-level executive (compliant type) to determine the most critical business priorities of the company and initiates a question. As the executive digests the question, considers a clarifying question, or has thoughts about the context of the question, the salesperson becomes anxious about the length of time the executive is taking to respond and as a consequence begins to second guess why it’s taking so long (e.g.- Is it the question? Is the question clear? Is there a better question?). The salesperson, acting on their own behaviors, decides to rephrase the question and ask it before the executive answers the first. In turn, the executive digests, seeks to understand, etc. and now has two questions to decipher. Clearly, two different styles are at work here and neither is taking responsibility to communicate easily or effectively.

If we know and understand our behaviors, we are then able to adapt them to make every situation effective. Behavioral knowledge begins by assessing how others see you and learning your own behavior characteristics. You cannot adapt your behavior until you know your tendencies.

Once you understand and appreciate behavioral styles, you can begin to build the ability to act in ways dependent on the situation. With sales versatility, you can assess the situation and alter your behaviors for effective communication, decision-making and conflict resolution. Applying sales versatility to fit the situation leads to success.

Consultative Selling

Today’s business environment offers less frequent opportunities to provide products and services to new customers, competition for new accounts is high and customers are very sensitive to cost. Under more typical market conditions, sellers have ample opportunity to find new customer prospects. The relative scarcity of new prospects can lead sales to increasingly focus on convincing the competitions customer’s to switch, first and foremost on the basis of lower price. In turn, lowest price sales can produce unfavorable margins.

 

The consultative sales approach addresses these and other issues prevalent in this type of selling environment. A consultative approach seeks to align the interests of buyer and seller and aims to provide customers with the lowest total cost of ownership. Consultative selling attempts to broaden the playing field by spreading competition over a greater range of deliverables, providing value to customers beyond just products and services, and building loyalty among customers. The approach requires ongoing buyer/seller relationships.

What distinguishes a sales consultant from a conventional salesperson, even when both are selling similar products and services, is the nature of the relationship between seller and buyer and the value this relationship adds to the products and services being sold. The consultant discovers and uncovers, educates, advises, is a customer service representative and an advocate for the customer. The consultative sales approach requires sales consultants to:

• Take the time to understand the customer’s business; it’s objectives and obstacles preventing success.
• Understand the products and services offered in sufficient depth to be able to answer customer questions fully and accurately
• Have the know-how to recommend an appropriate mix of products and services, tailored to the specific needs of the customer
• Have the ability to work with the customer to financially justify a solution and determine ROI
• Be familiar with contracts and disclosure documents and be able to explain them accurately
• Develop a solution for each unique customer
• Encourage communication and adopt a customer-in service mentality

The objective of a consultative salesperson should be to determine the immediate and near term needs of a customer and create a solution that addresses those needs at the least total cost. Successful sales consultants invest the time to understand their customer’s business in order to know which solution(s) are appropriate and deliver the most differentiated value.

Because the result of a successful consultative sale is a long-term relationship, transparency and complete understanding between buyer and seller is essential. This not only requires contracts and disclosure documents that are easily read and understood, but also depends on sales consultants who fully understand their products and services and can explain them, along with the costs and responsibilities that accompany them.

Consultative selling is appropriate for those individuals that understand the benefits of long term relationships, who want to maintain profit margins, build and maintain a full pipeline, reduce end of quarter hockey-stick effects, improve performance appraisals and build or maintain a stable business through new customer acquisitions as well as referrals from satisfied customers. 

Those who pursue the approach can identify their success not only by direct personal rewards but also corporate benefits that include fewer customer service issues and complaints, higher margins, and lower employee attrition rates.

Selecting Sales Winners

Which sales professional is best for an organization?

Requirements listing industry experience, established relationships and a database of relevant contacts, abound. These expressed needs are frequently used as a first-pass screen and bin-out of sales professionals.

While industry contacts, relationships and experience can be useful in opening doors and understanding relevant macro level business issues, does this constitute the basis for best-fit salesperson?

A typical selection process including preparation, identifying, screening, interviewing, and selection takes effort and time. A selection process resulting in hiring mistakes is very expensive. Consider the recruiting cost, fully burdened salary, training cost, management time loss, cost of mistakes on the job and lost opportunities.

Selecting a sales winner begins with a definition of each of the selection process steps and their purpose. For example, an interview can be defined as a conversation with a person in order to predict whether or not they will be successful in the job (i.e. – predict success). Success is determined by evaluating behavior (an action or reaction) in a specific situation with a known result. A sales job requires a series of tasks in a number of situations with corresponding behavior characteristics to match. In order to predict success, identify and solicit past behavior to determine future behavior.

Selecting Sales Winners mandates a process that takes the time to prepare the critical quantitative and qualitative job requirements that identify the “must have” qualities and characteristics necessary to meet expectations. Once this profile is established, Sales Winners can be screened in (not out) for interviews based upon accomplishments, trends and patterns.

An effective set of questions will provide information that will help predict success. Quantify behavior through the use of questions that ask about results achieved, actions taken, and examples that demonstrate. The most effective questions are those that require an answer with a specific fact, that requires the person to describe past behavior and that provide examples of specific situations that are similar to those on the new job.

Selecting Sales Winners is a process that requires you to know what you’re looking for (must-haves) up front, preparation in advance, use of effective questions and requires active listening. All too often, chasing the “best-fit” candidate can prove challenging…to say the least. In the end, the final hiring decision is made based upon a winner that meets or exceeds requirements.

What do you think it takes to select the best?