Keep Selling After The Sale
The sales agreement is followed by the delivery of the product or service. In some cases they are immediate and in others there is a time delay. It is often the case that after the agreement to buy has been achieved we move onto the next deal and a new client or opportunity. In the prospecting phase we can become extremely busy running around town beating the bushes and trying to conjure up some revenues to meet our targets. The delivery of the product or service is usually done by someone in the back office, down at the factory, an agent or a contractor and not by the salesperson.
Schedules get booked up and there is the danger we have not made a sufficient effort to get ourselves into the diary of the buyer, after they have received the goods or service. We may have moved on to the next deals and are fully preoccupied with them. We have received our commission and are happy. Bad move.
We should without fail, always arrange to see the buyer after delivery. We want to know a number of things. If it was a product was it in the format and at the quality standard that they expected. Better to know this earlier rather than later because then we can fix it immediately. In Japan, speed is key and there are so many interlocking pieces in business here. Storage costs are high, so everyone gets by with minimum stock and expect regular top ups, as the business demand increases. Those down the line in the food chain becoming very irate when they have promised something to their own buyers and we cannot deliver it because of some logistical mess or quality issues. We need to be there on the spot to rectify the situation and quickly.
We also need to be there to get feedback on the degree of satisfaction in play. We promise a lot as salespeople and we can be very sold on what we are selling, but sometimes the buyers are less enthusiastic. We want know to what extent that are still sold on the product. In some cases it will be because there is the reorder prospect and in others a chance to cross sell or upsell.
The best time to talk about any of these things is upon delivery, when the client has had a chance to gauge the reality, against what we told them. If the two coalesce then we are in a good position to talk further business. Japan likes to test the seller. Often we are given a smallish order, to see how we perform. Everyone is concerned about mistakes or problems and their risk aversion meter is always finely calibrated in this country. If we pass the test, then there is the possibility of more business. The next time there will be a slightly larger order. This keeps repeating itself, if we show we are able to provide a consistent, reliable level of service to the buyer.
Similarly the client may have many needs, some of which they didn’t mention in the first meeting. Something may have happened in the market or the business since that first meeting or they may just be waiting to see how much they can trust us. Fortunately we are sitting in the meeting room across from the buyer to find out if there is a greater need. If we are still chasing down new buyers, we may be missing this chance to build a deeper relationship with this specific buyer.
We have a matrix we use in our sale’s training for account development. Across the bottom we attach the name of each client for that column. Down the left side we list the name of each product we deal with for each row. We place an A for products or services we currently supply, a B for items which have high probability or interest the buyer and a C for those with less scope for success. What is always horrifying is how many additional opportunities exist to further sell to the buyer, which we do not realise. We get stuck in a rut with only a few possibilities when there are actually many more chances to become a key partner for that firm.
This is how hard it is, “I am very pleased to hear you are so happy with our service. May I ask you if there are other needs you currently have, with which we may be able to assist you?” The trouble is we don’t take the time to seize the opportunity of a satisfied customer, to ask for more business when there is a heightened state of happiness on their part.
This is also the time to ask for a referral. “Do you know anyone…” is a disaster of a question, because if we leave it too broad and wide ranging, they have to process the entire known universe and it is too much for them. We need to narrow it down. “Thinking of your golf group, can you think of someone who would also benefit from the solution you are enjoying today?”. This is much tighter and easier to answer as they see the faces of the members of the group in their mind.
Busy is good, but sometimes we become too desperate and too busy to close the next deals that we neglect the money left of the table from further business or from great referrals to new business.
Action Steps
Be Careful Of Friendly Fire When Selling
Sales is usually a solitary life. You head off to meet customers all day. Your occasional return to the office is to restock materials or complete some processes you can’t do on-line. Japan is a bit different. Here it is very common to see two salespeople going off to meet the client. If you are selling to a buyer, it is also common to face more than one person. This is a country of on the job training and consensus decision making, so the numbers involved automatically inflate.
Even in Western style operations there is more of a tendency to send more than one person to the sales meeting. Often, there is a need for a technical person or someone with highly specialised knowledge to attend the buyers meeting. This can present some issues if there is no plan for the meeting. I was coaching a salesperson recently who related a horror story to me. The person in question is relatively new to sales, so still finding their way. A more experienced salesperson from a different division was joining the meeting. The intention was to provide more than one solution to the buyer.
Without any prior discussion, the accompanying salesperson offered 70% off the pricing in exchange for a volume purchase, in order to grow the relationship. Hearing this, I was so shocked, I nearly blew my coffee out through my nose. There are so many things wrong with this vignette. These are both salespeople on a base and commission arrangement. One salesperson is hacking into the commission of the other, for a product line-up they don’t represent. This is outrageous behavior. If you are in that meeting and your partner blurts out a combustible like that, you cannot reel it back or reduce its lethality. It is stated, out on the wild now and you have to live with that statement having been uttered by your side.
This was first meeting too, so the damage is even worse. Now the client automatically discounts any rack rate or stated pricing by 70%, because that is what you have trained them to do. When you are in a first meeting in Japan, it would be reasonably rare to even get into pricing. The first meeting has some fixed requirements. The first is to build the trust with the buyer. They don’t know you so they are suspicious. They are not sure if your word can be trusted, whether you are smart enough to deal with them or if they like you. This takes a good chunk of time to achieve.
You also have to understand if there is any point in talking at all. Do you have what they need. In order to make that judgement, you need to be asking them questions. What are they doing now? Where would they like to be? If they know that then why aren’t they there already? What will it mean for them personally if this goes well? We have to be running a scanner over them to understand their needs and then match it up with our catalogue of solutions. All of this takes time. We usually only get an hour with the buyer in Japan, so we need to grab as much information and insight as we possibly can and then high tail it out of there. Back at the lab we brew up the perfect solution and craft it into a killer proposal. Now we go back and present the solution. They may want us to email it to them, but with every fibre in our body we resist that option. We never ever want to be sending an unprotected proposal to the buyer. It needs us right there alongside it, to underline the value attached to the pricing and deal with any questions or misunderstandings which may emerge.
We only talk price in the second meeting and we never start with a discount. We offer the set price and this is the anchor that sets the terms of the discussion. We may drop the price in exchange for a volume purchase but by 70%? That is the stupidest thing I have heard in a while in sales. As it turns out, I know the guilty party in this case, so it is even more shocking. They should have more common sense. The problem is they state it and there is nothing you can do. Common sense is not common. The horse has bolted for our hero in this story but we should all take note.
Don’t expect that the people accompanying you to have common sense, especially if they are selling a different line of product from you and they have no skin in the game concerning a heavily discounted sale of your offering. Before the meeting, set the ground rules, just in case. “When we get to my line-up explanation, I will be the one making the offer and that includes pricing. When I state the price, absolutely do not speak. The number will generate some tension in the room. Do not release that tension by adding a comment or a justification or anything else. Be silent as the tomb”.
Fix the way you will both handle the components of the meeting before you get anywhere near a client. Be very direct with what you want. This is your livelihood derived from your commission we are talking about here. Don’t let an uninterested party destroy your pricing arrangements. Once they shoot their mouth off it is too late. You have to get to them before hand.
Storytelling In Sales For Fun And Profit
Salespeople are brilliant on telling the client the detail of the product or service. When you think about how we train salespeople, that is a very natural outcome. Product knowledge is drummed into the heads of salespeople when they first join the company. The product or service lines are updated at some point, so again the product knowledge component of the training reigns supreme. No wonder they default to waxing lyrical about the spec. These discussions however, tend to be technical, dry, unemotional and rather boring. We know we buy on emotion and justify with logic. If we know that, then why are we spending so much time on the logic bits?
Finding relevant stories to wrap the product or service up inside is the answer to getting clients emotionally involved. For example, I could say, “Dale Carnegie has an excellent sales programme that is very complete and comprehensive”. All true but very dry in the telling. Or I could say, “In 1939 Dale Carnegie decided to revolutionise sale straining. In those days, if your company provided sales training you were trained but if they didn’t, you had to work it all out for yourself. Dale Carnegie introduced the first public training classes for salespeople. He created the material with Percy Whiting, one of the top securities salesmen in America at that time”.
The second telling is a story and more engaging. It adds impressive elements about Dale Carnegie’s thought leadership about sales training, his partnership with an expert salesman to create the programme and the longevity of the training methodology. These are all USPs or unique selling propositions wrapped together in a story. In this way they are more easily absorbed by the listener. We think in pictures, so we need word pictures to be employed in our storytelling.
When we read books we tend to best remember the stories being told. We all grow up listening to stories so our brains are hard wired to remember them with just one exposure. A famous American sales trainer Charlie Cullen in the 1950s was one of the first to record his sales training on vinyl LPs. His recommendations on what salespeople should do, were all backed up by examples conveyed through stories.
In more modern times, Zig Ziglar’s whole approach to sales training was telling a series of parables for sales. Growing up in America’s Bible Belt, perhaps lessons communicated through parables came natural to him because of the culture of bible study in those regions. Brian Tracy, another great sales trainer is constantly mixing science and psychology with story telling to get his point across. Gary Vaynerchuk the modern marketing guru is a master story teller. They are almost exclusively about himself, but that is his style – supremely confident, self-opinionated, self-absorbed and constantly drawing on his own experience. He has a huge following of fans, including me. What he teaches is easy to follow because of the way he employs stories to get his key messages across.
So look into your line-up of products or services and pick out the stories that go with each item. It may come from the history. Or it may be the technology. It may be client stories about users and we relate what happened to them. We need to look for an angle that will make the story interesting for the buyer. It should bolster the USPs of the offering and project pots of value. We don’t necessarily need a Hollywood production here in the storytelling. It doesn't have to be War and Peace either. Let’s keep them brief and to the point. If we can engage the listener’s emotions and bring them into the story, then we are succeeding. This takes some work and some creativity. This is why it is often a good practice to involve everyone in the sales team to work together to brainstorm some great stories.
There is no doubt stories work. When I record my own sales talk I realise how many stories I am employing. When I listen to the gurus of sales training their whole underpinning platform is built on stories. They work, so let’s start creating them and using them with our buyers.
Customer Service: Problems and Solutions
Things go wrong. Deliveries don’t turn up or are incorrect. Dates and deadlines are missed. The quality promised doesn’t eventuate or live up to the promise. Internal communication isn’t working well so the coordination of the delivery of the service is confused. One part of the organisation oversells the deal and the other bit cannot deliver on the inflated promises. Customers complain. Japanese customers in particular, really complain. Most of this society is rather muted but they let it all hang out, when they are unhappy about some service or product delivery gone wrong.
PRIDE is the problem. This is an acronym for the usual five suspects causing the issues.
This is the accumulation of how the organisation has divined how to best operate. This involves communication and aligning the features and value of the product or service with customer expectations.
Who does what in the organisation? This includes agreement on tasks and responsibilities and holding people accountable to these. Japan is genius at making sure no one takes responsibility for anything. The consensus decision making system means we are all responsible, so none of us are individually responsible.
How well do the customer service personnel get along with each other and with other departments. This includes such things as attitude, teamwork and loyalty. Marketing hates sales, sales is hated by the back office, everyone hates IT. Because mistakes are so seriously frowned upon in Japan, everyone tries their hardest to shift the blame elsewhere. This leads to internal feuds, strife, vendettas and internal guerrilla warfare.
How the organisation defines and communicates the overall and departmental vision, mission and values is critical. Japan is curious in that those at the bottom can quite wilfully ignore what those at the top want to happen, if they don’t agree with it. Poor performance and not following direction won’t get you fired in Japan, so in a way, the troops are in constant state of rebellion. Senior management imagine that middle management is making sure everyone is on board with the direction of the company. Not true. The “what” is communicated and the “how” is worked out, but the “why” has often gone missing in action.
The resources available to the customer service department such as time and money can be insufficient. There may or may not be capacity to control your own destiny.
Okay, so what can do about all of this PRIDE coming before a fall? We need to get consensus and collaboration about solving the issue. We begin by involving people from each section to form a project team to look at the root causes of the issues. Putting a band aid on the wound doesn’t deal with why the wound was there in the first place.
We craft a statement of the problem. We need to define exactly what is the issue we want to deal with. There may be a lot of noise surrounding the problem, but we need to cut through to the essence. Having identified what the issue is we now need to look for the drivers, the causes. We need to trace back to the source of the problem. If that is not forthcoming then that tells us that our systems are weak and unclear. Using brainstorming techniques we now look at possible solutions we could apply. There are no dumb ideas at this stage and no evaluation taking place. We want to be awash with ideas and we will sort them out in the next step. Taking the ideas, we attach priorities to them, to isolate out which ideas are the strongest.
We now attach names, milestones, budgets, evaluations, etc. to the plan, to put the solution in place. We monitor it and make changes where needed. We need excellent communication about what is happening. We need to make sure the key people are involved and that everyone is committed to fixing the issues.
Despite all of this excellent planning, future issues will arise. We have to be vigilant and ensure that we can take quick action, employing this system immediately. Making modifications on the way through is way better than having to build everything from scratch. Keep this template handy and roll it out whenever major incidents pop up. We never lack for challenges in business so there will always be plenty of scope for refining our skills through opportunities to practice.