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If there existed a holy grail of B2B sales, it would reveal the secret of what it takes to get procurement to sign the purchase order. And the best loved theories of selling are all around why people buy. A recent Harvard Business Review article on 7 Reasons Salespeople Don’t Close the Deal by Steve Martin who teaches sales strategy at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business breaks this mold. Featured in the August 2017 issue of HBR, the article draws on survey based research to turn the spotlight on an exciting new insight – Why people don’t buy in B2B sales conditions
Citing a new study of more than 230 buyers, the article points out that buyers rate just 12% of the salespeople as Excellent. 23% are felt to be Good, 38% are perceived as Average and a sizeable 28% are rated Poor. What is even more disquieting is that the “underperforming people lack self-awareness to know that buyers don’t value them, nor do they understand why”. Lessons of why a deal fell through or a client walked away are never learnt.
Based on interviews with buyers, here are the top 7 mistakes that many B2B salespeople make, which according to the author, results in loss of business
They fail to earn trust and respect The question to ask is: How does the Customer see the Salesperson? One more Seller/Supplier with whom they do business | Strategic partner important to their business | Trusted advisor whose counsel can be counted upon. Salespeople who are seen as trusted advisors have a huge advantage over competition. But buyers surveyed rated a mere 18% of the salespeople they met as trusted advisors
How to avoid this - Figure out where you are on the value chain with your Customers at present. Then make conscious efforts to move up and become a trusted advisor
They are poor at conversing with C level decision makers
It is conversations with C level decision makers that make or break deals. Lower rated salespeople are out of depth in understanding C level thought process and speak those levels in their language. Hardly a third of the salespeople were found to have this capability
How to avoid this – Go beyond the comfort zone of meeting only lower and mid-level people and seek out opportunities to interact with senior leadership to gain an insight into how buying decisions are made
They can’t clearly articulate their solution’s strategic value to Customer’s business Buyers within Customer companies look for reasons and arguments in favour of a specific purchase that they can provide to their senior management. Strategic value of a buying decision usually includes things like higher revenues, lower costs, competitive advantage secured and lowered risk through standardizing operations. The survey cited in the article discovered that only 54% of salespeople could clearly explain how their solution brought value to the buyer’s business
How to avoid this – Listen to the buyer’s concerns carefully and carry out in-depth research into how your product or solution solves problems and opens up opportunities for your Customer
They are seen as self-centered Asked why they were reluctant to meet salespeople, the article says, buyers that were surveyed gave the following reasons:
Clearly there seems to be a perception issue that needs fixing
How to avoid this – Instead of solely focusing on revenue, help buyers accomplish their goals
How to avoid this – Instead of solely focusing on revenue, help buyers accomplish their goals Says the author: “Study participants were presented with different closing techniques to understand how they would respond. Overall, hard close techniques such as ‘This is the last time we’ll be able to extend this offer and we need an answer now’ were rated least effective”. Buyers might equate this with a ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ mindset in the seller and refuse the offer outright. On the other hand, soft close techniques offering fresh benefits for additional investments were rated most effective
How to avoid this – Adopt soft close approaches that empower buyers and give them a feeling of ownership of the buying decision
They don’t assuage buying risk concerns that typical B2B buyers perceive B2B buyers are typically answerable to multiple stakeholders within their organisations, which makes them fixated on buying risk. This explains the iterative requests for proposals, intricate evaluation spreadsheets and elaborate proof of concept requirements for every single product feature. After all this, the deal often does not go through as the salesperson hasn’t alleviated the perceived buying risk in the decision maker’s mind.
How to avoid this – Understand the risk concerns and internal dynamics unique to your B2B Customer and take pains to assuage specific buying risk anxieties your Customer may be experiencing. Also, as the author points out: “Tolerance for risk fluctuates by function and by industry. Not surprisingly, IT and accounting have less risk tolerance than marketing; dynamic, creative fields such as fashion and media have more risk tolerance than government or health care”
Personal chemistry counts for a lot in sales activity. Reasons for poor chemistry, listed in the article include:
B2B is H2H. Businesses buy and sell through humans. The same markers for credibility in inter-personal relationships such as appreciation for empathy, aversion to intrusion and fear of risk.. apply in the B2B space as well. Being good at listening to what is and is not being said, asking instead of telling, are some examples of learnable skills that drive success in selling.. H2H and B2B.
“Every business leader is, in a sense, a teacher” says Prof Mitchell Petersen, Kellogg Business School faculty and Glen Vasel Professor of Finance. Writing for Kellogg Insights Petersen spotlights how the job...
Read moreYou have heard it before - “Play is serious business”. You don’t need a major in psychology to figure that out.Children learn almost all essential life skills through the medium of play. And they have loads of fun doing it.
Read moreTill a few years ago, most software companies sold “licences” for their products. Higher the headcount of employees in a buyer-company, greater was the potential for generating revenue. There is however, a tectonic shift from...
Read moreAccording to conventional sales wisdom, a lead first becomes a prospect. Later when objections are overcome and the deal is closed, that’s when the prospect gets ‘converted’ into a Customer. Not really, say Frank V Cespedes..
Read moreWho does this describe? – ‘Uncertain, stressed and anxious?’. That’s an easy one, you would say – A salesperson on his first call. Don’t the buyers have it all? They are so well informed and so precisely aware of their needs..
Read moreWorld over, companies spend humungous amounts of money on their sales force. Do those spends make their sales force effective? A Kellogg’s Insight article titled Sales Force Effectiveness based on the research..
Read moreYou are in negotiations to land that one large year-end deal. With that sale in your pocket, you will sail past your annual sales target by a big margin. And your bonus will double. Then comes the bad news...
Read moreFear, it is said, is a negative kind of wish. And to the salesperson nightmare is a word that begins with an ‘O’. Don’t we all wish for smooth-as-breeze sales with no objections? But let’s borrow the buyer’s hat for a minute.
Read moreSpeaking of forecasts, anyone with some vintage in sales would relate to those “awful 48 hours” that Mathew Bellows talks about in his article Stop Guesstimating Your Sales Forecasts in Harvard Business Review May 17, 2012
Read moreThe challenge with world’s favorite questions is that they have no definitive answers. And everybody claims to have one. Yet every now and then, someone undertakes brave new research that attempts to come up with serious answers.
Read moreIn the beginning was the Word, declare the scriptures. But in the holy book of sales, in the beginning was Awareness. And with it, someone who went by the dark-sounding description of Suspect.
Read moreTransactional hiring and training doesn’t seem to cut it When it comes to training spend, sales trainings get a bonanza.
Read moreWhat would you give to learn the one thing that swings sales deals? If you are willing to wager your year’s bonus on it, hang on. Because it is not one thing really, but six things according to research findings shared in an article published in Harvard Business Review (June 23, 2017).
Read moreFacts are stubborn”, declared Mark Twain, adding in the same breath “statistics are more pliable” And that includes sales statistics, he should have said. Consider this notorious nugget, quoted ad nauseum in sales meetings
Read moreThe question pops up amidst tinkling of glasses, minutes after your first drink at a social event. No, you get ready to explain, I am not in sales, I am in Production Engineering.
Read more