Selling in every industry and every size of business is changing so radically that every month makes a difference. What’s happening is so revolutionary that constitutes a selling practice that’s totally new. Here are two examples of the changes taking place in sales today:
It was 120 days before the lease on my car was up for renewal. The telephone call was professional, sincere, and low-key. What were my plans for the car? Would I be keeping it or getting a new car? Far from being intrusive or offensive, the questions were framed to obtain information. When I expressed frustration over a problem with the leased car, I was told that the caller had made note of the difficulty, which would be followed up on. I asked about upcoming leasing deals. “They’re posted on our Web site,” the caller said. “Be sure to visit it. If you have any questions, please contact me.”
The call came from the auto manufacturer, not a dealer. I was impressed: General Motors was clearly taking the initiative with the customer. With the information I provided, a program would be crafted to make sure I’d be driving another General Motors car. And that’s not all. GM was putting me in the driver’s seat by making certain I had the information I needed to make a buying decision-and they had equally important information about my expectations.
It all added up to a powerful sales strategy: personal contact in advance of the replacement date, information gathering about my plans, empathy over a frustrating experience, and helpful information. General Motors not only wanted me to buy another car, but was making an effort to make sure I was a satisfied customer.
Not every company sees it this way. For years, I was a regular customer at a large bookstore chain, buying books every week at a nearby store. Then about three years ago, my trips became less frequent and, for a period of 12 months, stopped altogether. Since my purchases were charged on my American Express card, there was a database of information. The bookstore chain knew my name, the amount of my purchases, my buying behavior (including the frequency of my visits and type of books purchased) yet it did nothing to keep me informed about new books or attempt to retain me as a customer. To this day, I haven’t heard a word from it. Did I die, move away, stop reading, or start buying books elsewhere? The company never bothered to find out. Today, I’m buying more books than ever-from Amazon.com.
These experiences suggest that selling is different because the customer has changed. One company makes it easy for the customer to do business with it, while another fails to take advantage of available information to retain the customer’s business.
The important point which many in sales seem to miss is that General Motors established a relationship with me based on gathering more information about me, not trying to sell me a car!
Here are a few thoughts about the role information plays in the sales process today:
Giving customers a satisfying experience is what satisfies them
A couple of hours before a speaker was to present a seminar, he discovered that he had forgotten to pack the A/C power supply for his laptop computer. Even though it was 6:45 a.m., he found a local store in the Yellow Pages and dialed the number. To his surprise, the call was answered on the second ring. After hours, the owner uses call-forwarding to his cell phone. The missing part was located and delivered by taxi before the laptop’s batteries gave out.
The owner of the Apple computer store in Virginia, Beach, VA, understands what his customers require. He focuses on making sure they have a satisfying experience. To him, making the sale has nothing to do with “establishing a relationship” with the customer but everything to do with creating a satisfying experience by giving the customer access when the customer needed it and providing necessary information.
Jim Bezos, the founder of amazon.com, notes, “In the old world, the right thing to do was to spend maybe 30% of your time, energy, and dollars on creating a great customer experience, and 70% spouting about it. Today, you want to invert that.” Sales hype, so-called “salesmanship,” and traditional selling techniques don’t work any more.
Personal contact is not nearly as important as personalized contact.
It’s easy to understand why this statement drives many sales executives and their representatives into a frenzy. They fiercely defend their contention that “Good selling depends on good personal relationships.”
Merrill Lynch is attempting to deal with this problem. The company seems to recognize that the future of selling stocks is on the Net, and the future of its sales force is shrouded in doubt. Real estate brokers should take note, because they’re the next group slated for “significant downsizing” and eventual extinction. Customers are becoming empowered by the Net to buy only the services they need at a competitive price, rather than paying a difficult-to-justify sales commission.
CyberLoan.com offers an excellent example of the dramatic change toward “personalization.” It offers a digital loan pre-qualification, analysis, and routing system used by hundreds lending institutions nationwide. CyberLoan allows borrowers to submit loan applications electronically to multiple lenders, reducing the usual two-week process to 30 minutes. The CyberLoan system matches financial information found in the loan application with a database detailing each institution’s underwriting criteria. CyberLoan then automatically routes the application to the “most likely” lending institution, branch, and loan officer.
CyberLoan provides another instance of the power of personalization: the right information in the right place at the right time. This is the test for making any sale. But it has nothing to do with establishing personal contact.
Talking to customers isn’t nearly as crucial as communicating with them
Selling is usually based on lots of talk but little communication. An Amazon.com customer purchased a book by e-economy author Evan Schwartz. A year later, he received an E-mail message from the Net bookseller: “As somebody who has purchased books by Evan Schwartz in the past, you might like to know that his newest book, Digital Darwinism has hit the shelves. For the next few days, you can order your copy at a savings of 40% by following the link below.” One click and the book was ordered!
Good selling is proactive in the sense that it reflects exactly what the customer wants when the customer wants it-and by communicating this message in ways that are acceptable to the customer. In other words, customers don’t need more lunches or golf outings; they need vendors and suppliers who can anticipate their requirements. Salespeople who sit around and ask, “What can we sell them?” are asking the wrong question. Such lack of communication loses sales.
Based on these three basic principles, here are some guidelines for improving the sales process:
- Concentrate on customers’ experience, not on what you want to sell them. The usual sales approach is to decide what you want to sell a customer and then build a plan to make it happen. This made sense in the past, but it doesn’t work today. Unfortunately, many in sales continue to race down the same old road, failing to realize that it leads to a dead end. It’s time for a difficult, somewhat painful, 180-degree change: Focus on what the customer wants.
- Let information direct the sales process. Contrary to the view that a good salesperson can sell anything, it’s what you know that controls your sales. Although cleaning equipment is getting high-tech, dry cleaning is still mostly a mom-and-pop industry. Yet one dry-cleaning chain, with nearly 40 locations, assiduously maps each store’s customers to determine where they live and their travel patterns. As a result of the data, each store has its own individual marketing plan and no two locations are alike. Information such as this should guide your marketing and sales.
- Never allow anything you sell to become a commodity. In a recent study, the insurance industry received low marks on customer satisfaction and performance. The results of this “Quality Scoreboard” (published by the Risk and Insurance Management Society and the Quality Insurance Congress) will come as no surprise to millions of insureds. Insurance salespeople commodify their product when they say, “Insurance is bought only because it’s a necessity.” By engaging in an endless quoting frenzy, the industry has allowed its products to be promoted as commodities that can be purchased off the shelf. Customers have learned how to play one broker against the other to drive the price down, without much concern for fundamental information issues such as product quality, exposures, and coverages. In its insatiable drive to sell, sell, sell, the insurance industry has subverted its sales by debasing its own products.
The basic issue in sales in the years ahead has little or nothing to do with selling techniques that was 30 year ago or more. The prime driver of the sales process today is information. What we know about customers, how well we understand them, and the extent to which we’re committed to finding ways to give them an experience that satisfies their needs makes all the difference. This has nothing to do with getting appointments or making cold calls and everything to do with understanding and using data.