What does it take to become a top performer in today's competitive sales field? In Sales as a Science, author Allan Lobeck focuses on helping salespeople understand the sales process from both the customer and sales perspective. Based on twenty-five years of experience in worldwide sales, Lobeck communicates that selling commercially is a science, not an art; it is a long-term activity that requires both a plan and a pre-defined process. He presents a logical, documented, process-based approach for activities and sub-activities in a sales cycle. He also provides flow diagrams for each phase of the sales cycle giving professional sales staff the best potential roadmap for success. Sales as a Science defines the many steps and roles in the sales process, from planning, to account research, customer contacts, presentation and follow-up, negotiation, and customer evaluation. It outlines the commitment necessary to begin transforming your sales techniques in order to transition to financial independence and become a consistent top performer.

Sales is a Science

How the Top 2 % SucceedBy Allan Lobeck

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Allan Lobeck
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-8393-9

Contents

Acknowledgments.........................................................................xiiiIntroduction............................................................................xvChapter 1: Beginning the Transition to Your Financial Independence......................1Chapter 2: Elements in an Effective Sales Process.......................................19Chapter 3: Creating My Sales Plan—Step 1 of My Transformation.....................39Chapter 4: Account Research Prior to Contact............................................67Chapter 5: Initial Customer Contact.....................................................81Chapter 6: Developing Customer Contacts.................................................103Chapter 7: Begin Your Transition to Selling.............................................125Chapter 8: Presentation and Follow-Up...................................................141Chapter 9: The Customer's Evaluation of Your Offering...................................155Chapter 10: The Negotiation Process.....................................................177Chapter 11: Increasing Your Revenue by 20 Percent.......................................193Chapter 12: The Successful Sales Process................................................199Bibliography/Recommended Reading........................................................203Index...................................................................................205

Chapter One

Beginning the Transition to Your Financial Independence

Why should you read this book about sales productivity? To discover what the top 2 percent do differently to help them overachieve and consistently be the number-one sales people in their company. How do they do it? They use a repeatable, definable, and measurable process that allows them to use their full team so they can make adjustments to their process to eliminate future challenges.

Then why don't the other 98 percent create a process and use it? Because the other 98 percent feel they fully understand their sales process and follow it 100 percent of the time. Furthermore, they believe selling is an art form; they believe every account is different; they believe that since they have done it before they can do it again; and they believe an individual salesperson's creativity is what is important and makes the sales. This 98 percent believes a measurable process would slow them down and stifle their individual creativity. They do not use measurements to adjust their sales process, and therefore their performance will always suffer from predictable highs and lows. They feel they can walk in and make a deal happen all by themselves, as planned, but there is no actual plan, although they will never admit it.

Selling is not entirely a process, but all the related activities in your process are repeatable and measurable. This shows selling is not an art but rather a science. Since it is a science, you can document and track all input, processes, and results, adjusting them until the process output exceeds your quota. Programmers used to believe that programming was an art. It has been shown that practicing defined measurable processes, such as RAD for IT programmers, increases the quality and quantity of output. The top 2 percent have realized that using a process with measurements is the only true path to success.

Many of you have heard about how after World War II, Deming turned Japan from a low-quality, low-quantity production culture to the world's standard for quality and quantity production. Deming's results were so good that many companies sent teams to Japan to study and use Deming's processes. Almost every company that succeeded in implementing processes has stated that it was their ability to engage and accept change that allowed them to improve the quality and quantity of output.

Deming's quality processes transformed many low-quality companies into world leaders in quality that people recognize and prefer to purchase from. Using some of Deming's ideas and other well-accepted practices, it is possible for you and your company to build the best performing sales team, doubling and even tripling your revenue.

In order to make a transformation, it is necessary to change some of your current processes. The challenge is embracing change. The history of change shows this is the biggest challenge to growth. If you want to be a top sales performer, you do need to change. To begin your change process, open your mind and heart. Intellectual and emotional change is required. Remember when you went to college? You opened your mind and heart to subject matter. You accepted what was taught. Why? Because you wanted to learn and become better than you were. This transformation is similar: change requires commitment to measurable results and adjusting your process to improve your results.

The rest of this book will define the approach and the overall process for sales transformation. This book will help its readers understand, develop, and use the sales process to become a consistent top performer. This chapter will define basic terminology needed for developing your own successful sales process.

What Is a Process?

A business sales process is a collection of related activities that, when executed in a systematic and logical progression, produce value for your customers and sales for you. Since a process is a logical flow, this logic and any related activities can be visualized using diagrams to represent the sequence of activities. This visualization allows all participants to understand how and when their activities need to be executed to help sales communicate with the prospect and secure the transaction successfully.

There are three basic types of sales processes:

1. Sales management processes: processes that govern the operation of a sales system. Typical management processes include forecasting and territory management. These processes should be supported by computerized tools available in your CRM/SALES reporting, such as ACT, SalesForce.com, and many others.

2. Operational sales processes: processes that constitute the core business and create the primary value stream. Some are: defining target customers, forecasting standard definitions, and reporting pre- and post-sales activity.

3. Supporting processes: processes that support the core sales processes. Examples include marketing events, inside sales activities, and technical support.

For a business process to be successful, it must begin with an understanding of a customer's needs and end with fulfilling those needs. Your process must be customer focused. Check your current process. If your process focuses on your quota needs, it misses the true goal of providing value for your customer. Your process must focus on improving your customer's business value proposition and not on your quota.

Small and large companies all have departments with functional roles that support sales in their revenue-producing activities. These departmental boundaries create corporate control points, which create barriers in the sales process.

Process-oriented organizations eliminate such barriers. In order to make this happen, the business culture of the company must change to be focused on the customer...