Sales: A Dark Art or a Misunderstood Science?
Business owners will appreciate that as you grow your business, you’re often required to wear multiple hats – from being the product manager; to HR manager; to finance manager; to janitor! These are all essential tasks that need to be fulfilled to keep the business moving forward.
Sales is also one of those critical tasks. And whilst the relationship between sales and growth is well understood, many organisations fail to optimise sales opportunities. At best, they make ends meet by relying on a core group of customers for repeat business; and at worst, they try to win new business by cutting their prices and eating into profit margins (refer to my previous article “The Infinite Loop” for why this is a very bad idea!).
Companies that adopt a positive sales mindset on the other hand, enjoy year-on-year growth. They ease into the end of each month, quarter and financial year knowing where sales are going to come from and are comforted in knowing they’ll consistently achieve their growth targets. They don’t lie in bed at night wondering where future growth is going to come from. So how do they do it?
Sales is not a dark art! There’s no magic elixir to consume, nor do you need to sell your soul to make new sales. Organisations that are successful at sales do four things very well:
- They understand the buying decision
- They know exactly what their ideal customer looks like
- They analyse their data and understand what it’s telling them
- They remain steadfastly disciplined in their approach to sales
Let’s look at each of these individually.
The Buying Decision
All buying decisions are a trade-off of price, suitability and experience. Whether we realise it or not, every time we purchase something, we are trading off these three things. As we’re all different, the ratio and importance of these three things will vary for each of us. Accordingly, understanding the customer and their unique and specific needs is paramount to successfully and sustainably selling to them.
Unfortunately, too many organisations fail to adequately invest the time to really understanding their customers’ needs. They shoot from the hip and hope for the best – not a particularly good sales strategy!
The ideal customer
We can’t be everything to everyone. We need to recognise the characteristics of our ideal customers and remain focused on pursuing just those. If we try to sell to the whole universe, we end up chasing our tails, burning leads, and wasting significant time and money.
Once we’ve engaged with our ideal customers through marketing and sales efforts, we need to understand them: their needs, their problems, and their aspirations. Knowing Your Customer is somewhat of a cliché and sounds like an obvious statement. But it’s surprising how little effort most organisations put into truly understanding what their customers are trying to achieve. Without a detailed understanding of the customer needs, you can’t articulate your unique value
proposition.
Understanding the data
There are some critical data points you need to understand if you are to be a world class sales organisation. These include (but are not limited to):
- What’s your sales target for the year and does this align to your growth target?
- What’s your average sales value?
- How many sales do you need to make each year to ensure you reach your sales target?
- How many customers do you need to attract?
- What’s your win rate?
- How many prospects do you need?
- What’s the seasonality of sales month-on-month?
Of course, in professional and consulting services, contract values will vary depending on each project. However, with sufficient data over time, trends and averages will emerge which will give you valuable insights. Sales is not an exact science but if your data is directionally accurate, you will be on the road to success.
Discipline
As with anything in life, the more we work at something, the better we get at it. Sales is no different. Set some time aside on a weekly basis to look at your data as a team and understand what it’s telling you. Most sales meetings turn into a talkfest. Don’t just go through the motions. Use the time to really understand what’s in your sales pipeline and what stage each sales
pursuit is at.
If a sales pursuit has stalled, find out why. Has the customer chosen someone else or is it no longer a priority? Think through what the next best actions are to move sales forward and analyse your pipeline with a 3 to 6-month advanced view to ensure you have enough new opportunities coming into it to avoid a sales drought in the future.
Feedback is a gift. Each time you win or lose a piece of business, undertake a win/loss analysis as a team to understand what you did well and what you can improve on next time. Ensure your sales team understand the customer buying cycle, and if necessary, invest in training them.
Most importantly, embrace sales as a positive experience. The rewards for your efforts will speak for themselves.