Sales is hard. But it needn't be.

It’s a well-known fact that one of the most challenging aspects of running a business or team is sales. If you want to know how to enable your salespeople to succeed, then this article is for you.

Humans have had needs and wants since the dawn of time. And since around about then and because of these needs and wants, the opportunity has existed for someone to come along and help us out. Whether it’s picking ticks out of fur or selling someone a holiday, Desire + Supply = Value.

So sales should be relatively straightforward: 

1. Understand a consumer’s needs 

2. Give them something that addresses their need 

3. Charge them a price you’re both happy with. 

But for many organisations, it’s not so simple. Many find revenue growth a real challenge which holds them back from greatness.

So why is this, and what can you do?

Let’s break it down:

1. Understanding the consumer’s needs 

Whilst the words “customer centric” adorn most salespeople’s CVs and LinkedIn profiles, I challenge whether they’re really living up to this. How well do they know their customers? How much time do they spend with them? Do they spend their time with a cross-section of customers or just the ones they feel most comfortable with? Are they able to identify the key groups of people they serve? How much time do they spend analysing their purchasing behaviour and how well do they know them above and beyond what they’re buying?

The fact is that when you really strip back what many salespeople know about their customers, it often isn’t that much. There are lots of assumptions and anecdotally-informed opinions. But how can you sell successfully if you don’t really know your customer?

 Quick tip:

Pull together a panel of customers and make them a compulsory part of your salespeople’s induction and ongoing training process. Do not allow your salespeople to start selling until they know your customers well enough to truly know how to engage with them and meet their needs.. 

A panel can be as formal or informal as you like - regular meetings over coffee or email surveys are good starting points. Make sure you’ve got a representative selection of your different customer types in there and ensure that all salespeople regularly engage with these people (either face to face or digitally).

 2. Give them something that addresses their need 

Many sales teams I’ve worked with over the years start from the assumption that their products are perfect for their consumers. Often they know this ‘intuitively’, often it’s based on very old data. While larger organisations often have outstanding Business Intelligence capabilities, many sales teams use this only to supply stat for presentations.

Lots of sales training focuses on how to speak to consumers (objection clinics, etc.) and memorising the features of their products. However, how can you meet the customer’s need if you don’t really know what it is?

Quick tip:

Implement regular (at least monthly) product discussion sessions with a cross section of your customers. These should be focused on existing products and what they do/don’t like, as well as forward-looking to identify new opportunities. Heed the feedback: if they don’t find a particular product compelling, you need to learn from that.

This is a good way to start, and you can later evolve your approach to take in more data points.

 3. Charge them a price you’re both happy with. 

This is crucial. The deal is almost done. Now all that’s left is to agree a price that is a fair value exchange for the product or service you’ve provided. Value is the key word here: if you’re providing a lot of it, then that should be reflected in the price.

However, since salespeople love happy customers, something they often do to please is needless discounting. I’ve seen this in a range of industries where the salesperson is so happy to close the deal, that in their euphoria they give away a huge amount of the margin their employer would otherwise generate from the sale.

Quick tip:

Run a report (by person) of the average sales price per product as well as average discount given. Follow this up with analysis of a sample of each salesperson’s transactions. The objective is to identify where the highest discounts are being given in order to understand whether they are necessary or how they can be reduced. Incentivisation also drives this behaviour so will be a key action to address broader trends later on.

If this sounds simplistic, it’s because it is. As Isaac Newton said: “Truth is to be found in simplicity. Not in multiplicity and confusion of things.” And that’s the truth.