Do your sales people sit back at drink o'clock on a Friday afternoon and share war stories of prospects and customers doing strange and unpredictable things? Are your sales people, more times than your Sales Mangers cares to admit, left scratching their heads as prospects seemingly operate by their own sets of rules, making it up as they go, with a complete disregard for the sales person's best interests and good intentions? That being the case this next section is written for you, in an attempt to help you or your sales people demystify your customers and indeed potential buyers.
To some people the question 'Are your Customers Crazy?' may seem odd and perhaps a little crazy itself at first glance.
But over many years, I have come to the conclusion that for too many sales people, customers can and are experienced as indeed crazy and mysterious creatures! I've lost count of the numerous stories heard from the lips of frustrated sales people about deals falling over at the 11th hour for no apparent reason.
Clients fabricating obscure stories in an attempt to wiggle out of contracts and change the terms of the sale after agreements have been made.
Deposit cheques bouncing! And prospects defying physics and vanishing into thin air after months of cajoling, pre sales account management and proposal writing.
Sound familiar? Let's explore these apparent strange happenings further.
Most Sales Pipelines are full of Crazy Customers! By crazy, I mean prospects or perceived buyers that have no intention of ever buying your offering from you! They may buy something similar or even identical to your offering and they may even pay more for it, but they will never ever buy it from you.
Why? Because they're Crazy of course! Or at least that's what the sales person thinks.
Think about it for a minute: What sort of lunatic would allow you to muscle your way in on them by cold calling and following them up relentlessly until they agree to see you.
What madman would then allow you to manifest a perceived problem and need and agree to you going away and preparing an elaborate proposal outlining key points, benefits, terms and investment, at your own/companies expense of course? What maniac would agree to you coming back in and presenting to the board, to then leave you hanging for months on end with no intention of every buying from you? This type of behavior is just pure madness! And lets not forget, if the prospect gives you a NO to the agreement; which is rare, more common is the insidious MAYBE, you resemble nothing short of a car park stalker ringing, leaving messages and emailing week in and week out with the hope of getting the order! But with a despondent exhale, your hope of making the sale slowly begins to dissipate, as you realise in your anxious state and the countless promises to your sales managers of it being a 'done deal', it's been 6 months since the prospect returned your last phone call.
Hmmm...
perhaps they're not interested? You ponder.
But how could that be? Look at all the work they asked me to do.
This doesn't make sense! Why does this keep happening to me?! I could have been putting my energy and recourses towards real customers, not these lunatics that keep wasting my time! With a stiff drink and further psychoanalysis with your sales colleagues at Friday drink o'clock you profoundly realise that it's happening to the other sales people as well, no just you.
Thank God! You proclaim! It's not me..
..
it's them! The Customers are Crazy! Are your Customers Crazy? To the uninitiated customers can often appear as random and unpredictable creatures.
In old school Traditional Selling it was once commonly suggested that all 'buyers are liars.
' This philosophy can at times resemble truth, but only when a sales person fails to acknowledge who the buyer really is, more importantly what the customer needs and really wants.
If the buyer tells the sales person one thing and then does another, this is usually a sign that the sales person has not identified the appropriate motivational factors, nor lead the prospect through the right buying process.
In the right buying process, the 'right buyer; being a person who has a genuine problem the sales person can solve or desire/aspiration the sales person's offer can fulfill, feels very comfortable with the sales person's selling style; as their sales communication and behaviors relate to their prospects buying persona.
Some call this relating, we call it Empathy Selling.
Empathy Selling is the polar opposite to Telling-Selling.
Tell-Selling promotes 'The Sell', in doing so fails to provide the sales person with the right information about the buyer; to best solve their problems and/or fulfills their aspirations.
This information, more often than not becomes disinformation, as the sales person then attempts to maneuver the buyer down a preconceived sales process; usually generic with set rules for varying buying perona's and circumstances, without having first having taken the time to ascertain whether it's the right process for the right buyer through the art of effective questioning, listening and then guiding the prospect to the make the right buying decision.
Generic sales processes that are designed with set rules for multiple buying personas are the worst incubators for Crazy Clients.
These type of sales pipelines exemplify the 80/20 principle: 80% of the business comes from 20% of the sales pipeline.
Some even demonstrate more drastic percentages in order or 95/5.
Meaning 95% of the sales persons time energy and opportunity, to put it frankly, is a waste of time.
When the sales person is encountering so perceived Crazy Customers this is a definite sign something is going wrong in the sales process.
In the wrong sales process the sales person has no control over the buying process or creating the right buyer outcomes.
In this instance, the sales person is at the mercy of the buyer, who dictates terms usually based largely on price comparison, as there is no other connection that binds the seller and buyer together.
The relationship between the buyer and seller is validated only by the monetary transaction.
We have all heard the saying thousand times: People buy off friends - not sales people.
This maxim underscored the absolute needs for sales people to put their time and energy towards understanding their buyers better and also demonstrating they genuinely care enough about them to not only waster the buyers time, but as just as importantly their own.