Eliminating the Tower of Babel Effect

Traditional selling methods focus on nonmeasurable concepts such as relating, prospecting, qualifying, and closing. This book makes these topics and others key ones measurable (review Exhibit I-1).

Because this approach is new, no terms exist yet to allow you to measure concepts such as qualifying or prospecting. This approach required creating new terms that are logical and measurable. Now, everyone involved in a sales opportunity can evaluate it the same way. Otherwise, you end up with a Tower of Babel with everyone using different benchmarks to determine the status of sales opportunities.

It's Your Choice

If you prefer to use your own sales methods, MeasureMax's flexible framework accommodates that choice. However, this book treats sales methods (including MeasureMax) like diet plans. Claims are one thing, results another. The Science of Sales Success works like a scale for whichever ones you choose to use. You weigh yourself throughout sales opportunities to see how well the methods you are using work. If past results mean anything, you will be surprised at which method works, and which ones do not.

Making the gray areas of selling black and white by injecting measurability takes discipline. It also takes courage to stifle our ability to self-rationalize. Not everybody can do it—only superstars. Yet, as a soon-to-be superstar, you know that when selling goes from a subjective and random-occurring art to a manageable and predictable science, the improvements in your performance will be phenomenal.

One last thought on what makes this book powerful. You can give a copy of it to your customers and never be concerned or embarrassed about what has been written. The Science of Sales Success empowers you to help selected customers make well-informed, value-driven purchasing decisions to choose your solutions. Everyone wins.

Notes

1. Peter Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1985), p. 26.

2. Jack Katz, How Emotions Work (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 49.

Chapter 1: Measurability Matters

Overview

Every sales opportunity has two columns that customers use to weigh out their purchasing decisions. Both of these columns have items with actual or perceived dollar figures assigned to them. After adding up the items, customers use the totals of the two columns to decide whether they will buy something and from whom. While customers can assign a dollar value to the Column 1 items on their own, Column 2 requires a salesperson's assistance. You want that salesperson to be you.

In Column 1, customers always (informally) insert the dollar value of the differences between these four items:

Purchase Prices of Competitors ' Products and Services. Customer will use actual values to calculate this difference.
Delivery Dates. Customer will use actual or perceived values to calculate this difference.
Personal Relationships with Suppliers. Customer will use perceived value to calculate this difference.
Costs of Changing to New Products, Services, or Suppliers. Customer will use actual or perceived values to calculate this difference.

Note

The cost of change always favors the salesperson working for the existing supplier. Salespeople often mistakenly form elevated opinions about the effectiveness of their selling skills in situations where the cost of change favors them. The real test of their selling skills occurs when they are in sales opportunities involving competitors' customers (where the cost of change works against them).

Column 2 only has one item: the measurable benefits customers receive from achieving their goals. When it comes to selling value, this one item can more than compensate for the four items found in Column 1. Column 2 always starts out empty. Only you can help customers ( formally ) fill in their dollar amounts to outvalue the dollar differences from Column 1.

Your ability to sell value depends on whether you have the opportunity to fill out Column 2. To compound matters, you have only a limited number of in-person sales calls you can make in a year. Sales calls are your currency; where you invest them will determine your return. Therefore, invest more of your sales calls in Column 2 opportunities rather than those in Column 1. Using the quantifiable value of benefits and the other metrics of the MeasureMax selling system will help you concentrate your efforts on the former, but when necessary, also help you to obtain the most value out of the latter. (See Exhibit 1-1.)

click to expand
Exhibit 1-1: Column 2 makes value measurable.

The chart in Exhibit 1-2 illustrates how customers would assign value to the Column 1 items if you were not the existing supplier. If the customer only uses the dollar value of Column 1, you will lose the sale because the existing supplier's perceived value is worth $10,000 more than yours. Personal relationships and costs of change always favor the existing supplier (more on this subject in later chapters). However, if the customer considers both columns, you will win the sale (as long as you help the customer make Column 2 measurable). Your products and services are worth $15,000 ($25,000 minus $10,000) more than the existing supplier's. You outvalued the competition—and can justify a $3,000 higher price.

*Column 1*	Your Products	Existing Supplier Products	*$ Value to Existing Supplier*	*Column 2*	Your Products	Existing Supplier Products	*$ Value You Provide*
Purchase Price	$73,000	$70,000	$3,000	Measurable benefits customers receive from achieving their goals via your products	Quantifies that products save customer $25,000 worth of lost production	Customer is not sure how much products save in lost production	$25,000
Delivery Date	1 week	2 weeks	(-$1,000)
Personal Relationship	New	Existing Supplier	+$3,000
Cost of Change	-$5,000	$0	+$5,000
*Column 1 Value to Existing Supplier*			+$10,000	*Column 2 Value to Existing Supplier*			-$25,000

Exhibit 1-2: Using Column 2 to win over competitors' customers.

Using the measurements of MeasureMax, you achieve the following three key sales goals:

Provide more value than competitors.
Receive higher profits for doing so (with performance-based compensation becoming the norm, as a sale's profit level increases , so will your commissions and bonuses).
Earn long- term customers by fulfilling their measurable expectations.

Achieve all three goals and you are a consistent, top-performing salesperson. Chapter 1 shows how using measurability to sell value:

Drives your strategies and tactics
Affects customers and your mode of selling
Influences every sales opportunity
Works in negotiated and bid sales

Note

Although this section provides an overview of these topics, later chapters are dedicated to detailing them. The learning strategy is to progress from broad concepts to detailed descriptions, analyses, and applications—one chapter at a time.

Flylib.com

Category list

Similar pages

Eliminating the Tower of Babel Effect