As some of you know, in addition to writing this blog I’m also the co-host of a podcast about sales and sales leadership.  One of the perks of that job is the fact that people send me free books to read and talk about.  I love my job!

This week, I’ve been reading Sharon Drew Morgen‘s book “Dirty Little Secrets: Why Buyers Can’t Buy and Sellers Can’t Sell and What You Can Do About It” in preparation for an episode of the Sales Management 2.0 Podcast that we’ll be recording this weekend.  I’ve gotta say, I’m blown away by the concept of the book.

Sharon Drew (yes, that IS her first name) is out to change the face of sales, and I’m signing on to help her in any way I can (and I’m only on chapter one of the book).  She’s created a system she calls Buying Facilitation, and it’s based on a simple premise, one that readers of this blog have heard before: while salespeople may control the sales process, your prospects control the buying process.  Which of those two processes do you suppose it’s more important to understand?  Well, if you really want to succeed, Sharon Drew says you should be far more concerned about what’s going on in the buyers head.

I’m not going to ramble on too much, mostly because Sharon Drew does such an excellent job of explaining the concept on her own blog.  I’ll defer to her wisdom on the subject and encourage you to a) go read her blog posts and form your own opinions of whether she’s a madwoman or a maven, and b) pick up a copy of “Dirty Little Secrets” to enjoy.

But I’ll warn you: don’t read the blog or the book unless you’re prepared to have your sales foundation rocked.  I’m not kidding when I say this book is going to be a full-on paradigm shift for a lot of people.

Oh, and I guess there’s a c)…listen to the podcast when it posts up next week over at Sales Management 2.0.  If Sharon Drew turns out to be as much fun as she sounds, this could be one of our best episodes ever.

Apparently May was ‘launch a new coaching program online’ month. Launch guru Dave Navarro wrote about some negative reactions to the flurry of program launches which left some folks feeling assaulted. Dave shares some thoughts from his side of the table; he’s the expert and I’ll stay out of that.

Instead, I’ll get into this: would everybody please stop looking for a magic process, and understand that it’s all about outcomes?

We all want a machine where we drop in $20 bills and crank a handle that turns them into $100 bills. It doesn’t exist. There is no machine to make money in sales. Selling is not about processes.

Yes folks, you read that right: selling ain’t about process.

I know, you’ve read about NEADs, and the steps you go through and in what order and you know you’re supposed to have systems in place.

Here’s the secret: each of those is an outcome, not a process. Following the process without focusing on the right outcome is worthless. Focus on the outcome, and the right process for this single instance will become self-evident.

Sure, you should know what your client is doing now. That’s an outcome; you knowing what they’re doing now. It’s not a process. As long as you ethically and effectively gather this information, it doesn’t matter what ‘process’ you use.

What do they enjoy about the current solution? Yup; it’s an outcome.

What do they want to alter? Again, outcome, not process. But great googlymooglies; what would happen if you found this out before you found out what they enjoy? Is the process broken? Nonsense!

Your desired outcome is to know whether they have a need which you can fill, and whether you and they feel you’re the right one to fill it.

And it does not matter one whit what process you use to reach that outcome, as long as you do it within ethical and reasonable bounds. It will, however, be infinitely more successful if the process you choose in each individual case is comfortable for you and the folks you’re dealing with.

That’s also why copying someone else’s ‘process’ (like all those launch folks have done) or, in fact, why blindly repeating your own process, is short-sighted and lazy.

That’s not a recipe for success in sales.

**This post brought to you by Joel D Canfield, Business Heretic

One of the worst questions a sales manager can ask a salesperson is, “So when is Prospect X going to sign with us?”  I’ve got news for you Mr./Ms. Sales Manager: not only is that question impossible for your salesperson to answer, it clearly demonstrates that your management efforts are misguided.  Instead of managing the sales process, which is squarely under the control of you and your salespeople, you are trying to manage the outcome, something that neither you nor your salesperson is capable of doing.

Understand this: while you and your salespeople are in control of the sales process, your prospects and customers are in control of the buying process.  And the buyer is ultimately the one who controls the outcome of any sales situation.  We’ve all had the experience of executing the sales process flawlessly only to have the prospect we were courting say “No thanks” in the end; it happens, and it’s out of our control.  Getting frustrated or angry about it is silly; it’s like being mad that it rained today.  Recognize that it’s out of your control, let it go, and move on.

Does that mean that sales managers should just forget about the performance of their sales people?  Not at all!  They just need to shift their focus from the things they can’t control (outcomes) to the things they can control (processes).  Are the salespeople in their charge following a good sales process, or are they “making it up as they go”?  Has the process been clearly defined?  Are their rules of engagement and scripted responses for different contingencies?  Those are the things you have control over; manage them.

And if you’re reading this thinking that it doesn’t apply to you because you don’t manage salespeople, think again.  If you’re an entrepreneur or small business owner who is an army of one, you have to apply these same principles to your own sales efforts.  Too many solo business owners are not taking their sales efforts seriously.  Sales is something they do when they feel like it or something they will try to get to “when things aren’t so crazy.”  As a result, they’re in a constant feast/famine cycle that they just can’t break.

See if this sounds familiar: you panic because there’s not enough work, go out and make some sales, shift your focus to doing the work you sold, then panic again when the work runs out.  It’s no way to live, and that kind of panicked sales effort leads to trying to manage outcomes and frustration when deals aren’t happening quickly enough.

There is a way off the hamster wheel: implement and execute a consistent sales process that involves some kind of sales activity every day.  If you’ll commit to managing your sales process, you won’t have to worry about trying to control outcomes; instead, you’ll end up getting more of the outcomes you want by virtue of having a consistent process.

A final word of advice to those who do manage salespeople: if you’re trying to manage outcomes and you think that you can get your way by beating up on the people who work for you, think again.  What you’re actually doing is creating a highly motivated sales force for your competition.

Each day that passes, we’re getting closer to “Yes”.  Are you excited?  Great! Let’s move on to Step 2 in the Getting to “Yes” series: understanding how your prospects make decisions.

Yesterday we discussed the first three questions of the NEADS analysis: what does the prospect do Now, what do they Enjoy about what they do now, and What would they like to Alter or change about what they do now?  That brings us to the D in NEADS, and the spot where I modify this Tom Hopkins piece a bit.

Tom suggests that the D stands for Decision maker, as in make sure at this point that you’re talking to a person who can actually sign on the dotted line when the time for conversion comes. I disagree for two reasons: first, this is a little late in the process to be finding out if you’re talking to the right person; you really should be trying to take care of that while you’re in Getting to “No” mode.

The second, more important reason is simply my belief that the only way you’re ever going to know whether the person you’re talking to is the decision maker is to ask them to make a decision. It’s true: we’ve all had the experience of asking the right question (“So if we’re fortunate enough today to find a solution that fits your needs, who else will be involved in making the final decision?”), getting the right answer (“Oh, no one else will be involved…this is my decision to make!”) and still hearing at the conclusion of the meeting, “Everything looks great! I just need to get my supervisor’s approval so we can move forward.”

My suggestion is to stop worrying so much about whether you’ve got the decision maker and start paying attention to how the prospect makes decisions. That’s why I think that the D in NEADS really stands, not for “Decision maker” but for “Decision-making modality”.

Essentially, a prospect’s (or any other person’s) decision-making modality is the way they receive and process information before making a decision. There are four modalities: thinking, feeling, knowing and sensing. All of us use all four modalities, but there is usually one that dominates the way we decide on a course of action. As Jeremy Marchant and Kay McMahon of Emotional Intelligence At Work put it (in their article “We Make All Our Decisions Based On Feelings“):

They make the distinctions between the four modalities abundantly clear (better than I could) by relating what it would be like to have dinner at a restaurant with one of each of the types:

Got it? Good. If you can remember these differences the next time you’re talking to a prospect, you’ll have the inside track on getting a “Yes” because you’ll be able to present your solution in a way that appeals to the prospect’s decision making modality. But how can you tell which prospects use which modalities? Following the logic above, you might take them out for lunch; if that’s not possible, have a look around their office and really pay attention to the way they speak.

See lots of piles of papers in neat stacks with tons of data on them? You’ve probably got a thinker; bring lots of charts and graphs to support your presentation. She keeps talking about how she’d like to “cut to the chase” and “get down to brass tacks”? Likely a knower; make your presentation quick and impactful, using bullet points instead of paragraphs. Keeps getting misty-eyed when he’s talking about how happy he was the day he bought his first home? Sounds like a feeler; tell lots of stories during your presentation. Wants to see the pictures in the brochure or asks to touch a sample? Definitely a senser; a multi-media presentation would make his day.

If you can tune in to the decision-making modality of the prospect and design a presentation that speaks to that modality, you’re well on your way to getting the coveted “Yes”. Now all that remains to be done is to finish up the NEADS analysis by creating and presenting a Solution ( the S in NEADS) that exactly fits the prospects situation.

And of course, we’ll be talking about exactly how to do that tomorrow.

Question: What have you done this week to move yourself closer to your goals? Do you have a clearly defined, written plan to get you where you want to be? If not, what are you waiting for?!

We’ve all heard that what gets written down gets done, yet the majority of us don’t do it. It really amazes me how many salespeople I talk to who have no idea what they need to accomplish on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis to help them achieve their goals; in fact, I still encounter many people who have no idea what their goals are! I only have one question: if you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you’ve arrived? More importantly, how will you even know if you’re on the right course to get there?

Specific written goals are vital to your success. You know that. If you haven’t written out your goals for this year, stop reading and go do it now. Don’t come back until you’re done, because what I’m going to suggest next will require you to have your written goals in front of you. This is a powerful tool that will help you achieve any goal you set, and it is actually very easy to do. Unfortunately, anything that’s easy to do is also easy not to to do, so I want you to make a commitment, here and now, to try this method out for the next seven days. If it doesn’t work for you, you can stop; but you have to try it for at least seven consecutive days before passing judgment. Ready?

Looking at your list of goals, I want you to think of the six most important things you could do tomorrow to move you closer to their accomplishment. Limit your list to only six things, the six most critical. Now, prioritize the list in order of highest impact; in other words, the most impactful thing you could do becomes number one and so on. Now comes the hard part.

Tomorrow morning, start your day with task number one from your list. Don’t do anything else until you have completely finished task number one and can cross it off the list. Next, move on to task number two, again not moving on until it is completely finished and can be crossed off. Do the same for the rest of the tasks on the list. If you get to the end of the day and haven’t completed all the tasks, those left unfinished move to the top of tomorrow’s list. Do this for seven days, and you’ll be amazed at what you’ve accomplished.

How do I know this works? When I first read about this technique in James Arthur Ray’s new book Harmonic Wealth I decided to give it a try. You wouldn’t believe the impact this habit has had on my effectiveness every day since! Knowing what you need to be doing now and what comes next is truly one of the most powerful methods I’ve ever used to get more done.

It’s like my friend Tibor Shanto of Renbor Sales Solutions said in his blog the other day: taking daily action is the key.  If you’re not in action every day, you’ll find your motivation beginning to wane.  You can have grand plans, but without action you’ll also have massive frustration when those plans don’t materialize.  

So, no excuses now! Get out your day planner and make your “Must Do” list for tomorrow; repeat this practice every day for the next seven, then let me know what you think. I look forward to reading all your comments.